GG draws attention for declaring slavery an ongoing practice in Africa
Fri Apr 16, 5:59 PM
By Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press
GOREE ISLAND, Senegal - First she drew attention in Africa for bluntly declaring that slavery remained widespread, and then Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean visited a dungeon with a dark past to illustrate her point Friday.
Jean's statement about the plight of children in Senegal was widely reported by media in that country, where an in-depth survey has concluded that at least 50,000 boys are being exploited and frequently beaten at their religious schools.
Her sentiments are supported by a new report from Human Rights Watch, an organization that also describes as "slavery" a common Senegalese custom: Islamic schools that send children out to beg for money all day, then often beat them when they don't return with enough cash.
The country's so-called talibes, boys as young as four, can be seen wandering through traffic in tattered clothes and pleading for money. Because charity is considered a religious duty, people hand over enough donations to make the schoolmasters wealthy by local standards.
Jean's visit made the front page of several newspapers Friday.
"Exploitation of Children In Senegal: Michaelle Jean Calls It Slavery," was one headline in Le Quotidien newspaper, the day after Jean surprised some journalists at the presidential palace by making that assessment at a joint press conference with the country's president.
Human-rights groups estimate that as many as 27 million people live in modern-day slavery - and that there are more slaves in the world now than at any point in human history.
They include unpaid labourers who work for room and board, women forced into the sex trade, underage soldiers, and child workers who are paid a pittance.
The UN's High Commission on Human Rights has suggested a variety of means to fight the problem, including product boycotts and mandatory labelling of goods in industries - like carpet-weaving - where child exploitation has been a problem.
This week's report on Senegal by Human Rights Watch urged the Senegalese government to better regulate religious schools, which are popular because they offer the promise of a free education.
As she visited a former slave-trading centre Friday, Jean used the occasion to illustrate her point for the second day in a row.
She was received jubilantly by dancing and singing locals on Goree Island. Now a pastel-coloured tourist destination and UN World Heritage Site, the French used this island to imprison slaves traded for guns and alcohol.
Jean toured the former prison where slaves were once chained to walls by their necks; where children were crammed, in the words of her tour guide, "like fish in a sardine can," with 150 kids crowded into a separate dungeon half the size of a bowling alley; where men were sold for the price of a barrel of rum, while women fetched the same price if they had attractive physical attributes.
"These captives were not considered human beings," said Jean's guide, Eloi Coly.
"They were considered merchandise."
People had their names taken away, and were assigned a number. They were marched down a stone hallway through the infamous "Door of No Return," then loaded onto ships that carried them on a three-month - often fatal - journey to the new world.
A teary-eyed Jean, after the tour, said descendents of former slaves and former slave-owners can work together today on a common cause: ending modern-day slavery.
"This place is not about the history of black peoples. It's about us all," Jean told Canadian and Senegalese journalists.
"Whether we are of European descent, and probably related to those who committed that crime of slavery and slave trade, or whether we are of African descent, we all belong to that history."
She delivered a similarly contemporary message four years ago during a visit to Ghana. During a visit to a similar prison there, she knelt on the ground and broke into sobs, then waved off a question about what special meaning the place carried for someone like her, the descendant of African slaves.
Jean repeated Friday that it would be a mistake to view slavery uniquely through the prism of African history.
"It's about us all. And it's about how life can triumph over barbarism. And we must stand together today, to really fight every situation that denies rights, dignity and humanity to people in the world today. Slavery is still a fact today, in so many different ways," she said.
"Human-trafficking, injustices, are still a reality today. But we are together - and we can say no to it. It's a responsibility."
On Friday, Jean also addressed a school where Canadian aid money has helped train young Senegalese journalists over the years and, on the second full day of her 10-day trip to Africa, she met with a women's group after touring Goree's House of Slaves.
Just outside that old prison, young Amadou Guisse spends the whole day working. He started three years ago, when he was only 10. Guisse follows tourists onto a ferry and, to earn a few dollars on the ride back and forth from the capital, Dakar, he goes around the boat urging tourists to let him shine their shoes.
Guisse shook his head when asked whether he keeps any of the money he earns.
"It's for my family," he said. "Everything."
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
The Dynamics of 'The Will to Power' in 'The Master/Slave Relationship' -- And The Conflict Between The Will To Power and The Will To Democratically Negotiate to a 'Win-Win' Conflict Resolution...
Life is full of opposites...and much positive energy and results can be derived from engaging opposites -- opposite perspectives, opposite concepts, opposite theories, opposite personalities, opposite characteristics...-- into contact with each other, playing both sides towards the middle in a way that brings creative new integrative possibilities into existence where none existed before...
As Carl Jung has stated, the energy comes from the tension of the opposites interacting with each other...sometimes in the heat of attraction, passion, and sexuality, other times, in the heat of argumentation, disagreement, and conflict...Either way, I call this the 'dialectic force of Nature/God/Evolution'...
The first 'dialectic philosopher' in the East goes back to whoever created the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...the 'feminine' and 'masculine' forces in Nature and Evolution...I have this philosopher pinned as Lao Tse. However, the roots of Chinese philosophy go very, very deep, and it could have been someone unknown before Lao Tse who created the yin/yang dialectic concepts...
Over in the West, back in Ancient Greece, before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I have Anaximander pinned as the first Western dialectic philosopher. Anaxamander's philosophy was both very mystic and primitive on the one hand, but interpreted in a particular way, it becomes very profound and wise, and just as relevant today as when he created it somewhere back about 650-700BC...
Anaxamander's idea -- and I am paraphrasing and interpreting -- was that opposites are born from Chaos (The Apeiron, The Universe, The Boundless, The Infinite, The Shadows...Jung/Gestalt Psychology)...From Chaos and The Shadows are born opposites (night vs. day, hot vs. cold, men vs. women...) which are differentiated from each other and enter the World as we know it, and experience their differences in contact with each other. From this contact of differences, boundaries become apparent, and a Battle For Power ensues...(Nietzsche's 'Will to Power'...)...
Out of this 'battle for power', 'winners' and 'losers' become apparent based on the difference of 'superiority' and 'inferiority' (Adler)...and based on this principle of superiority and inferiority becomes the beginning of what Hegel would come to call over 2000 years later, 'The Master/Slave Relationship'... Translated into Marxian Philosophy, this becomes 'The Bourgeoisie' vs. 'The Proletariat'...translated into Capitalist Philosophy, this becomes 'The Employer' vs. 'The Employee, The Union, The Workers'...translated into Feminist Philosophy, this becomes the old 'Dominant Husband vs. Submissive Wife role positions'...translated into Religious Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Catholics and the Protestants, the Christians and the Muslims, the Palestinians and the Jews...translated into Political and Economic Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Capitalists and The Socialists, The Liberals and The Conservatives, the Republicans and The Democrats...the Politicians and the Citizens...
Everywhere we look the 'fight for power between opposites' is evident....
In some cases, we at least partly strive to 'balance this power' in the idea of a 'democracy' or 'egalitarianism'... The idea of 'balancing opposite powers' goes back to Heraclitus in the West (following in Anaxamander's footsteps but taking Anaxamander's philosophy to a different level in the idea of 'balancing opposing forces'); and again to the East and the idea of 'balancing yin and yang forces for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining health'...In contrast, the idea of 'an imbalanced power force' between yin and yang forces -- either yin dominating yang, or yang dominating yin, becomes associated with the idea of 'medical pathology'...This idea can easily be transferred to psychology and to much, if not all, of life....
Thus, even in the realm of 'yin and yang (masculine/feminine; testosterone/estrogen) relationships', we can talk about Hegel's idea of the 'master/slave relationship'...which has roots in the ancient 'Power Philosophy of Anaxamander'...
Now this 'master/slave relationship' is a little more complicated than we usually assume it to be, and Hegel was the first to point this out...Indeed, the relationship of the 'master' and 'slave' is often a relationship of 'co-dependence'...and 'attraction' as well as 'repulsion'...People want freedom and yet they are afraid of freedom and in the words of Kierkegaard, Sartre and Eric Fromm often get 'terrified by freedom' and 'back up' to 'Escape From Freedom' (Fromm)...
They often 'retreat to the Master/Slave Relationship' in order to 'escape the terror of their own individual freedom'....
Regarding the issue of 'co-dependence', the Master and The Slave are often tied to each other in a co-dependent relationship in which both perceive that they need each other -- just as often, they resent and hate each other for the same reason. They both have a different type of 'power' and a different type of 'weakness'. The Master knows how to 'lead' and how to 'tell other people what to do' but at the same time, often he or she is either incapable of, and/or unwilling to, do the work the Slave knows how to, and is capable of, doing...
Thus, take away the Slave, and the Master becomes terrified -- he or she loses his or her power and doesn't know what to do because he or she doesn't know how to do the work that The Slave was doing...The Master feels a deep emotional and behavioral void and vacuum in the absence of the Slave...unless the Master knows how to, and is capable of doing, the work just vacated by The Slave...
Now the Slave may feel terrified of running away from The Master for any or all of a variety of different reasons: provocation, intimidation, prosecution, persecution, victimization, loss of food, shelter, and/or money...
Which heightens the Master's power....
Until the 'cycle of power' changes...
This was the essence of the wisdom of Anaxamander's 2700 year old philosophy...
The cycle of power always changes...
People do injustices upon each other...
The Master exploits injustices onto the Slave...
But The Slave, over time, learns how to exploit injustices back onto the Master...
And over time, the powerful (the Master) becomes weaker, while the less powerful (the Slave) becomes more powerful...
To the point, where one day the Slave becomes Master of either his or her own freedom, and/or the Slave becomes Master over The Master...(Adler, 'superiority striving', 'the mastery compulsion')...
But there are a lot of steps -- and steps backward -- to getting here....
For both the Master and the Slave...
The Master needs to learn how to 'give up control'...to 'listen' to the Slave...and to 'learn' from the Slave...to learn from the Slave how to do those things that the Master may not know how to do properly...
And the Slave needs to learn from the master how to take more 'initiative' and 'risk'...to have more 'courage to leap into the unknown'....'to take chances'....to 'jump across the Nietzschean Abyss from Being or non-Being to Becoming'...
In short, the Master needs to learn more 'social sensitivity skills', more how to 'give up self- control',
While the Slave needs to learn more 'self-assertiveness skills', more how to 'take self-control'...
The Master too often has no ears to listen...
While the Slave too often has no mouth to speak...
The Master usually has too much 'yang'...
And the Slave too much 'yin'...
They both have 'gaps', 'holes', 'voids' in their personality....
They both long for freedom and strive to achieve and/or maintain power, while avoiding self-accountability for their own respective 'weaknesses',
They both can learn from each other...
Such is the nature, essence, the ongoing dialectic, between The Will to Power and The Will to Democracy and Egalitarianism...
In the combined words of a number of historical, philosophical friends of mine...
'Thus, Anaxamander, Lao Tse, Hegel, Nietzsche, Zarathrusta
And dgb...
Spoke...'
-- dgb, March 5th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
As Carl Jung has stated, the energy comes from the tension of the opposites interacting with each other...sometimes in the heat of attraction, passion, and sexuality, other times, in the heat of argumentation, disagreement, and conflict...Either way, I call this the 'dialectic force of Nature/God/Evolution'...
The first 'dialectic philosopher' in the East goes back to whoever created the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...the 'feminine' and 'masculine' forces in Nature and Evolution...I have this philosopher pinned as Lao Tse. However, the roots of Chinese philosophy go very, very deep, and it could have been someone unknown before Lao Tse who created the yin/yang dialectic concepts...
Over in the West, back in Ancient Greece, before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I have Anaximander pinned as the first Western dialectic philosopher. Anaxamander's philosophy was both very mystic and primitive on the one hand, but interpreted in a particular way, it becomes very profound and wise, and just as relevant today as when he created it somewhere back about 650-700BC...
Anaxamander's idea -- and I am paraphrasing and interpreting -- was that opposites are born from Chaos (The Apeiron, The Universe, The Boundless, The Infinite, The Shadows...Jung/Gestalt Psychology)...From Chaos and The Shadows are born opposites (night vs. day, hot vs. cold, men vs. women...) which are differentiated from each other and enter the World as we know it, and experience their differences in contact with each other. From this contact of differences, boundaries become apparent, and a Battle For Power ensues...(Nietzsche's 'Will to Power'...)...
Out of this 'battle for power', 'winners' and 'losers' become apparent based on the difference of 'superiority' and 'inferiority' (Adler)...and based on this principle of superiority and inferiority becomes the beginning of what Hegel would come to call over 2000 years later, 'The Master/Slave Relationship'... Translated into Marxian Philosophy, this becomes 'The Bourgeoisie' vs. 'The Proletariat'...translated into Capitalist Philosophy, this becomes 'The Employer' vs. 'The Employee, The Union, The Workers'...translated into Feminist Philosophy, this becomes the old 'Dominant Husband vs. Submissive Wife role positions'...translated into Religious Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Catholics and the Protestants, the Christians and the Muslims, the Palestinians and the Jews...translated into Political and Economic Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Capitalists and The Socialists, The Liberals and The Conservatives, the Republicans and The Democrats...the Politicians and the Citizens...
Everywhere we look the 'fight for power between opposites' is evident....
In some cases, we at least partly strive to 'balance this power' in the idea of a 'democracy' or 'egalitarianism'... The idea of 'balancing opposite powers' goes back to Heraclitus in the West (following in Anaxamander's footsteps but taking Anaxamander's philosophy to a different level in the idea of 'balancing opposing forces'); and again to the East and the idea of 'balancing yin and yang forces for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining health'...In contrast, the idea of 'an imbalanced power force' between yin and yang forces -- either yin dominating yang, or yang dominating yin, becomes associated with the idea of 'medical pathology'...This idea can easily be transferred to psychology and to much, if not all, of life....
Thus, even in the realm of 'yin and yang (masculine/feminine; testosterone/estrogen) relationships', we can talk about Hegel's idea of the 'master/slave relationship'...which has roots in the ancient 'Power Philosophy of Anaxamander'...
Now this 'master/slave relationship' is a little more complicated than we usually assume it to be, and Hegel was the first to point this out...Indeed, the relationship of the 'master' and 'slave' is often a relationship of 'co-dependence'...and 'attraction' as well as 'repulsion'...People want freedom and yet they are afraid of freedom and in the words of Kierkegaard, Sartre and Eric Fromm often get 'terrified by freedom' and 'back up' to 'Escape From Freedom' (Fromm)...
They often 'retreat to the Master/Slave Relationship' in order to 'escape the terror of their own individual freedom'....
Regarding the issue of 'co-dependence', the Master and The Slave are often tied to each other in a co-dependent relationship in which both perceive that they need each other -- just as often, they resent and hate each other for the same reason. They both have a different type of 'power' and a different type of 'weakness'. The Master knows how to 'lead' and how to 'tell other people what to do' but at the same time, often he or she is either incapable of, and/or unwilling to, do the work the Slave knows how to, and is capable of, doing...
Thus, take away the Slave, and the Master becomes terrified -- he or she loses his or her power and doesn't know what to do because he or she doesn't know how to do the work that The Slave was doing...The Master feels a deep emotional and behavioral void and vacuum in the absence of the Slave...unless the Master knows how to, and is capable of doing, the work just vacated by The Slave...
Now the Slave may feel terrified of running away from The Master for any or all of a variety of different reasons: provocation, intimidation, prosecution, persecution, victimization, loss of food, shelter, and/or money...
Which heightens the Master's power....
Until the 'cycle of power' changes...
This was the essence of the wisdom of Anaxamander's 2700 year old philosophy...
The cycle of power always changes...
People do injustices upon each other...
The Master exploits injustices onto the Slave...
But The Slave, over time, learns how to exploit injustices back onto the Master...
And over time, the powerful (the Master) becomes weaker, while the less powerful (the Slave) becomes more powerful...
To the point, where one day the Slave becomes Master of either his or her own freedom, and/or the Slave becomes Master over The Master...(Adler, 'superiority striving', 'the mastery compulsion')...
But there are a lot of steps -- and steps backward -- to getting here....
For both the Master and the Slave...
The Master needs to learn how to 'give up control'...to 'listen' to the Slave...and to 'learn' from the Slave...to learn from the Slave how to do those things that the Master may not know how to do properly...
And the Slave needs to learn from the master how to take more 'initiative' and 'risk'...to have more 'courage to leap into the unknown'....'to take chances'....to 'jump across the Nietzschean Abyss from Being or non-Being to Becoming'...
In short, the Master needs to learn more 'social sensitivity skills', more how to 'give up self- control',
While the Slave needs to learn more 'self-assertiveness skills', more how to 'take self-control'...
The Master too often has no ears to listen...
While the Slave too often has no mouth to speak...
The Master usually has too much 'yang'...
And the Slave too much 'yin'...
They both have 'gaps', 'holes', 'voids' in their personality....
They both long for freedom and strive to achieve and/or maintain power, while avoiding self-accountability for their own respective 'weaknesses',
They both can learn from each other...
Such is the nature, essence, the ongoing dialectic, between The Will to Power and The Will to Democracy and Egalitarianism...
In the combined words of a number of historical, philosophical friends of mine...
'Thus, Anaxamander, Lao Tse, Hegel, Nietzsche, Zarathrusta
And dgb...
Spoke...'
-- dgb, March 5th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
'The Devil Made Me Do It!!' On Self-Accountability -- And Integrating 'The Disowned' With The 'Owned'...The 'Marginalized' With The 'Dominant'...
Freud was an atheist. I'm not saying this is necessarily good or bad. But basically, he believed that 'God' is an 'external projection' of our own 'internal psychological forces' -- and particularly, one force, one wish, one choice, to believe in a Creator and an 'Ultimate Force' that is either behind our own individual choices, and/or is so great, so important, that we become willing to 'submit' to what we believe 'God wants us to do'? But how do we know what God wants us to do except through our own choices of what we want to believe God wants us to do? One person might choose to believe that God wants us to go out and be 'kind to all people'...While another person may choose to believe that 'God wants us to go out and kill anybody and everybody who does not believe in the same God that we do'...
Who's right? Who's making the choice? God or us?
I say we are all 'accountable' for our own choices, our own beliefs, our own values, our own actions...
And anyone who chooses to believe anything else other than 'self-accountability for one's own actions' is 'choosing to run away from, avoid, escape from, bury his or her own head in the sand from, his or her own individual freedom to make choices...
That goes for 'choosing to give God responsibility for making us choose what we ourselves choose', and it also goes for any Freudian theory of determinism which is cloaked in self-deception as well.
Most of us are fully aware of the type of thinking that comes out of our 'id'. First, understand that 'the id' is only a concept and a label that Freud invented in order to help us understand how the personality works. Look at 'the id' as a 'teaching device'. It is a 'classification device'. Anything to do with 'sexuality, sensuality, pleasure, hedonism, aggression, violence, evil, immoralism...' we lump into our teaching device, our classification device, that we then say is 'responsible' for these types of thoughts, feelings, and/or impulses. They may start in our 'unconscious' but here again we have a 'troublesome word' that seeks to avoid self-responsibility, self-accountability...'The devil made me do it'. The 'id' made me think of it'...Same idea...different starting point, different name...people have lots of different names and different 'starting-points' for basically the same ideas...The 'id' at least recognizes that the thought, the feeling, the impulse -- of a possibly 'diabolical' nature -- is coming from us. When we use words like 'the devil' or 'Satan' or 'Hell'...we are usually taking one further step away from self-responsibility, self-accountability. Because now we no longer even acknowledge that the thought, the feeling, the impulse...is coming from 'inside us'...Rather we have to 'project' and 'eject' our thought/feeling/impulse/action out into the world and onto someone else's shoulders -- the 'Devil's shoulders' -- let us all make 'the Devil' responsible for our 'immorality', our 'sexual desires', our 'evilness'. If we say that the 'Devil made me do it'...then I don't have to take responsibility for looking at my own potential for 'sexual thoughts', or 'violent thoughts' or plain downright 'evilness'....Because the Devil -- Satan, Dionysus -- is not inside me, or if he or she is, The Devil is certainly not a part of me -- not a part of my own personality and character that I have 'ostracized', 'marginalized', 'alienated' from the rest of my personality. No sir...because once again to recognize the 'id' and/or the 'devil' (same thing, different name) as a part of 'Me' would mean that I would have to be accountable for, and responsible for, a part of me that I might not view as being very 'ethical', 'moral', 'nice', or 'good'. I might not like this part of my personality...
So, in classical Freudian and/or post-Freudian theory, I 'split this disowned part of my personality' off from the rest of myself, from the rest of my personality...and say it 'doesn't belong to me', 'I don't take responsibility' for this part of my personality...'I throw this part of my personality into the 'garbage of my psyche' -- my 'unconscious' or my 'subconscious' or my 'out of awareness'...Do we know that it is there? Yeah, usually we know that it is there...Will it always stay there -- in the 'garbage' or the 'files' of the conscious psyche -- i.e., the 'unconscious or subconscious psyche'? No, this is one of the first things that Freud and Breuer learned about the unconscious -- or in Freud's later language -- the 'repressed'...
'The repressed will always return to haunt you' until the day that you can finally look at your own repressed material square in the eye -- look at your 'id' square in the eye -- and say, 'Id, you are me, and I am you...and we have to learn to live together as harmoniously as we possibly can because we live in the same house, the same psyche, and isolated from each other, alienated from each other -- without proper mutual self-acceptance and self-integration -- we will tear each other apart, bring each other down to our knees, and destroy each other, as we both seek 'to win power over the same personality domain' when, by ourselves, separate from each other -- our 'id' alienated from our 'ego' if you wish, or alternatively our 'impulsive, sensual Dionysian Ego' alienated from our 'righteous, ethical, restrained Apollonian Ego' -- neither of us can win. We both only can lose in self destruction.
Together we win. Separate and alienated from each other, we both lose and/or we all lose.
This was Freud's most essential message to the world.
And even though Freud might have been an atheist, it is probably also the most essential message from the Bible, or the Quran, etc.
Together, we flourish. Divided, we fall.
Both inside and/or outside our own Integrated and/or Divided Selves...
This is the most important message of Freud, The Bible, the Quran...
And Hegel's Hotel...
Integration works...alienation doesn't...
-- dgb, April 7th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
-- Democracy Goes Beyond (Personal and Group) Narcissism...
Who's right? Who's making the choice? God or us?
I say we are all 'accountable' for our own choices, our own beliefs, our own values, our own actions...
And anyone who chooses to believe anything else other than 'self-accountability for one's own actions' is 'choosing to run away from, avoid, escape from, bury his or her own head in the sand from, his or her own individual freedom to make choices...
That goes for 'choosing to give God responsibility for making us choose what we ourselves choose', and it also goes for any Freudian theory of determinism which is cloaked in self-deception as well.
Most of us are fully aware of the type of thinking that comes out of our 'id'. First, understand that 'the id' is only a concept and a label that Freud invented in order to help us understand how the personality works. Look at 'the id' as a 'teaching device'. It is a 'classification device'. Anything to do with 'sexuality, sensuality, pleasure, hedonism, aggression, violence, evil, immoralism...' we lump into our teaching device, our classification device, that we then say is 'responsible' for these types of thoughts, feelings, and/or impulses. They may start in our 'unconscious' but here again we have a 'troublesome word' that seeks to avoid self-responsibility, self-accountability...'The devil made me do it'. The 'id' made me think of it'...Same idea...different starting point, different name...people have lots of different names and different 'starting-points' for basically the same ideas...The 'id' at least recognizes that the thought, the feeling, the impulse -- of a possibly 'diabolical' nature -- is coming from us. When we use words like 'the devil' or 'Satan' or 'Hell'...we are usually taking one further step away from self-responsibility, self-accountability. Because now we no longer even acknowledge that the thought, the feeling, the impulse...is coming from 'inside us'...Rather we have to 'project' and 'eject' our thought/feeling/impulse/action out into the world and onto someone else's shoulders -- the 'Devil's shoulders' -- let us all make 'the Devil' responsible for our 'immorality', our 'sexual desires', our 'evilness'. If we say that the 'Devil made me do it'...then I don't have to take responsibility for looking at my own potential for 'sexual thoughts', or 'violent thoughts' or plain downright 'evilness'....Because the Devil -- Satan, Dionysus -- is not inside me, or if he or she is, The Devil is certainly not a part of me -- not a part of my own personality and character that I have 'ostracized', 'marginalized', 'alienated' from the rest of my personality. No sir...because once again to recognize the 'id' and/or the 'devil' (same thing, different name) as a part of 'Me' would mean that I would have to be accountable for, and responsible for, a part of me that I might not view as being very 'ethical', 'moral', 'nice', or 'good'. I might not like this part of my personality...
So, in classical Freudian and/or post-Freudian theory, I 'split this disowned part of my personality' off from the rest of myself, from the rest of my personality...and say it 'doesn't belong to me', 'I don't take responsibility' for this part of my personality...'I throw this part of my personality into the 'garbage of my psyche' -- my 'unconscious' or my 'subconscious' or my 'out of awareness'...Do we know that it is there? Yeah, usually we know that it is there...Will it always stay there -- in the 'garbage' or the 'files' of the conscious psyche -- i.e., the 'unconscious or subconscious psyche'? No, this is one of the first things that Freud and Breuer learned about the unconscious -- or in Freud's later language -- the 'repressed'...
'The repressed will always return to haunt you' until the day that you can finally look at your own repressed material square in the eye -- look at your 'id' square in the eye -- and say, 'Id, you are me, and I am you...and we have to learn to live together as harmoniously as we possibly can because we live in the same house, the same psyche, and isolated from each other, alienated from each other -- without proper mutual self-acceptance and self-integration -- we will tear each other apart, bring each other down to our knees, and destroy each other, as we both seek 'to win power over the same personality domain' when, by ourselves, separate from each other -- our 'id' alienated from our 'ego' if you wish, or alternatively our 'impulsive, sensual Dionysian Ego' alienated from our 'righteous, ethical, restrained Apollonian Ego' -- neither of us can win. We both only can lose in self destruction.
Together we win. Separate and alienated from each other, we both lose and/or we all lose.
This was Freud's most essential message to the world.
And even though Freud might have been an atheist, it is probably also the most essential message from the Bible, or the Quran, etc.
Together, we flourish. Divided, we fall.
Both inside and/or outside our own Integrated and/or Divided Selves...
This is the most important message of Freud, The Bible, the Quran...
And Hegel's Hotel...
Integration works...alienation doesn't...
-- dgb, April 7th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
-- Democracy Goes Beyond (Personal and Group) Narcissism...
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
A Tribute To Martin Luther King....http://mlkmemorialnews.org
To My Readers,
I had this request emailed to me and I am passing it on to any and/or all of you who would like to help the project of building a memorial of Martin Luther King in Washington, D.C. to its completion. Please check out the website listed above and below. It certainly seems to be for a good cause.
-- dave bain.
Memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tue, April 6, 2010 2:03:14 PM
From:
Lowell Dempsey
Add to Contacts
To: dgbainsky@yahoo.com
Hi David
The month of April marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We are commemorating the life and work of Dr. King by creating a memorial in our nation's capital. The Washington, DC, Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial will honor his life and contributions to the world through non violent social change. I'm reaching out to ask if you and your readers would help spread the word by posting about this wonderful project on Hegel's Hotel: American Politics...DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics....
I've put together this blogger-friendly micro-site to help get the message out - there are videos, photos, banners, and even a web toolbar that, when used, donates money to the creation of the memorial:
http://mlkmemorialnews.org
After years of fund raising, the memorial is now $14 million away from its $120 million goal. This will be more than a monument to a great humanitarian, the National Memorial will be a place for visitors from around the world to share the spirit of love, freedom, and peace. If you are able to post or tweet about this please let me know so I can share it with the team. If you have any questions please pop me an email. And if you are able to help, thank you so much.
Lowell
--
Lowell Dempsey,
BuildTheDream.org
Twitter @mlkmemorial
Facebook.com/MLKNationalMemorial
"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity"
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Thanks for the email, Lowell.
Your request is being passed along to my readers.
-- dave bain
I had this request emailed to me and I am passing it on to any and/or all of you who would like to help the project of building a memorial of Martin Luther King in Washington, D.C. to its completion. Please check out the website listed above and below. It certainly seems to be for a good cause.
-- dave bain.
Memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tue, April 6, 2010 2:03:14 PM
From:
Lowell Dempsey
Add to Contacts
To: dgbainsky@yahoo.com
Hi David
The month of April marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We are commemorating the life and work of Dr. King by creating a memorial in our nation's capital. The Washington, DC, Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial will honor his life and contributions to the world through non violent social change. I'm reaching out to ask if you and your readers would help spread the word by posting about this wonderful project on Hegel's Hotel: American Politics...DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics....
I've put together this blogger-friendly micro-site to help get the message out - there are videos, photos, banners, and even a web toolbar that, when used, donates money to the creation of the memorial:
http://mlkmemorialnews.org
After years of fund raising, the memorial is now $14 million away from its $120 million goal. This will be more than a monument to a great humanitarian, the National Memorial will be a place for visitors from around the world to share the spirit of love, freedom, and peace. If you are able to post or tweet about this please let me know so I can share it with the team. If you have any questions please pop me an email. And if you are able to help, thank you so much.
Lowell
--
Lowell Dempsey,
BuildTheDream.org
Twitter @mlkmemorial
Facebook.com/MLKNationalMemorial
"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity"
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Thanks for the email, Lowell.
Your request is being passed along to my readers.
-- dave bain
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