The Problem: Freedom in Nature

[coberst]

The Problem: Freedom in Nature

Dewey’s Pragmatism is a modern elaboration of Kant’s Critique.

Kant’s philosophy informs us that wo/man is a creature immersed in a transcendent nature. This immersion leads to a limitation of knowledge. Wo/man cannot ‘know’ nature in itself. Humans are forever isolated from an epistemology that can comprehend the natural world.

Wo/man can only know that part of nature that nature has empowered the creature to know. Truth shall forever elude the mind of men and women. The world that we think is ‘real’ is only a small part of Reality and Reality we will never ever know.

Hobbes informs us that we humans are fated to live in a nasty and brutish manner within a nature that cannot care how we live. Wo/man is limited by its nature as a creature seeking only to satisfy his or her own appetites.

Kant, followed by Dewey and others, saw a different fate than that which Hobbes defined; the fact is that wo/man is not totally an atom drifting in a mechanistic world that is determined by Newtonian laws. Rather, humans are not just atoms but are self-energized creatures who can mold there own destiny by becoming partners with the natural environment and not mere passive slaves.

The question upon which we must focus is ‘how can wo/man find freedom that is distinctly human in this natural world’? The answer to this question is that men and women must create a new reality of its own and to continue to create and expand it.

Dewey restated Kant’s conclusion with the observation “cosmos examined by a speck of cosmos”; Dewey declared that “truth is two-faced”. He concluded that it is reality “as discovered by man” and is not reality “in-itself”. Truth is the result of human groping and knowing; “it is always on the make”.

Pragmatic wo/man judges truth in only the practical manner, if the knowledge is meaningful and useful to men and women in their voyage then it is true (until proven to be false). Pragmatism points out that there are geometrical, mathematical, and logical truths but these are arrived at within a closed system unrelated to action. Such truths are absolute by definition within their closed domain and are not arrived at in the scope of human action. Such truths are not matters of fact and human search is for matters of fact upon which to base human action. Action itself is the main determining factor for truth in practical matters.

Rather, humans are not just atoms but are self-energized creatures who can mold there own destiny by becoming partners with the natural environment and not mere passive slaves. This seems to me to be the heart of the matter to which Becker is drawing our attention. Becker finds that wo/man is entirely too passive in accepting what appears on the surface of reality. We fail to mold our destiny in light of our nature and thereby we too easily accept what is formed for us by those who use us for their interest. We are the bull constantly focusing upon the cape rather than the reality behind the moving cape. We must find a means to energize our self sufficiently to take control of our destiny.

Ideas and quotes from “Beyond Alienation” by Ernest Becker

 

[PureX]

Dewey declared that “truth is two-faced”. He concluded that it is reality “as discovered by man” and is not reality “in-itself”. Truth is the result of human groping and knowing; “it is always on the make”.

I agree with this statement. And this is why truth for us is always relative.

Rather, humans are not just atoms but are self-energized creatures who can mold there own destiny by becoming partners with the natural environment and not mere passive slaves. This seems to me to be the heart of the matter to which Becker is drawing our attention.

I agree with this as well.

But I don't agree with this:

Becker finds that wo/man is entirely too passive in accepting what appears on the surface of reality. We fail to mold our destiny in light of our nature and thereby we too easily accept what is formed for us by those who use us for their interest.

I would say that our mistake is not that we are too passive, but just the opposite: we are forever trying to force the natural world to comply with a fantasy image of it that we create in our minds based on the assumption that the natural world and all of reality should be serving us, exclusively. It's not passivity that is our shortcoming, but a kind of myopic and terminal self-centeredness, in which we imagine all things to exist for our benefit. It's in this way that:

We are the bull constantly focusing upon the cape rather than the reality behind the moving cape.

I disagree that:

We must find a means to energize our self sufficiently to take control of our destiny.

Rather, we must learn to let go of our endless desire to force the world around us, to serve us, so that we can then fulfill our rightful destiny of living in conscious alignment with the world around us, to both it's benefit and our own.

 

[coberst]

Purex

Sometime ago I concluded that Americans live in a world that they do not comprehend. I often use the bullfight as a metaphor. I think that we are like the bull always hooking at the cape and never comprehending our self and the society we have created.

Occasionally I stumble across an author who can help me comprehend more clearly that which I see “through a glass darkly”. Ernest Becker is the ultimate in such authors for me because he is a scholar who has written a book for which he has received a Pulitzer Prize and because he thought the same things that I did and he set about writing books about the matter.

When I concluded that we are like the bull I decided to set about to understand my self and my world; I become what I call a self-actualizing self-learner. I also decided to take my fellows with me in this journey thus my essays on Internet forums. I write almost exclusively about ideas that I am convinced my probably readers have never become conscious of. Thus when a reader does not easily comprehend what I write then that is par for the course. My goal is not to teach anyone but to make everyone conscious of important ideas.

Why is it we do not comprehend our self and our world? It is because our society does not make such comprehension easy. To recognize our state of unconsciousness is hard work and contrary to what we want to focus our thoughts on.

We cannot perceive it because our society frames the matters upon which Tom and Jane ponder in their daily lives such that these alienating factors are hidden from easy public perception. Frames are conceptual structures, often expressed as metaphors, which shape the way we see the world. A frame only allows you to accept facts that fit within it. Thus, speaking rhetorically, who succeeds in framing an issue, will be difficult to beat in subsequent debate.

Language is, as Edward T. Hall put it, "a system for organizing information and releasing thoughts and responses in other organisms," not for implanting thoughts or transferring meaning from one brain to another. In other words, “the meaning contained within metaphors is already in us, just awaiting the words to call it forth.”

“When you think you lack words, what you really lack are ideas. Ideas come in the form of frames. When the frames are there, the words come readily... A conservative on TV uses two words, like tax relief. And the progressive has to go into a paragraph-long discussion of his own view. The conservative can appeal to an established frame, that taxation is an affliction or burden, which allows for the two-word phrase, tax relief. But there is not established frame on the other side. You can talk about it, but it takes some doing because there is no established frame, no fixed idea already out there."
—Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff

I write in an effort to bring to the reader’s consciousness these kinds of ideas. The reader will gain understanding of these matters only if the reader also becomes a self-actualizing self-learner. I am not trying to give knowledge to anyone I am trying only to raise their consciousness.