
“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.” -Eric Fromm
“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.” -Eric Fromm
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Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci |
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The burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600 |
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Albert Einstein |
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Matthew Giobbi, 2012. |
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William James |
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C.S. Peirce |
I was recently asked to address a group of students on this question: what is the single most important issue facing America today? As expected my fellow guests, a philosopher, a sociologist, and a psychologist, seemed to situate themselves around a predictable hub of economic, ecological, and national security issues. Instead I proposed that the greatest threat to America today was the American attitude itself. It is not an external threat, but rather, an internal locus, a sort of pathological way of being that has come to be a hallmark of success. I want to outline what I had to say in that discussion. It centers on the ideas of two thinkers, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, and is nicely articulated by a third, Erich Fromm.
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Erich Fromm |
We call this cultural force desire. The social animal is a transcended Being that is not governed by cause-and-effect chains of logic, but rather, by an integrated being-in-the-world in which an individual’s environment is not an objective situation that they are in, but rather, an active interpretation that they are participating in making. We find here a main point in Fromm’s thinking, that we are not confronted with culture, but that we are a vital, shaping agent of culture. This is a sort of feedback-feedforward loop that is experienced as the world we live in. In fact, it is less a world we live in and more a world that lives within us.
This blog originally appeared on September 11, 2013.
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The chromatic gradation effect. |
I entered into psychology as many of us do; through the life-theorists. I call them life-theorist because they are not merely clinicians who treat the psychologically disturbed, but also, they think about our common experiences of living, and how to go about those experiences most effectively. They can also be called life philosophers because their interest is often less on acquiring facts and more on effective living. Most of us enter into psychology via our interest in Freud, Maslow, Jung, and others that have come to be called psychotherapists. For me psychology was never wholly about therapy and patients; it was more about living, life, and thinking; the psychology of the practitioner.
Not unlike music theory, in which each note is analyzed in the context of its harmony and progression, scientific psychology seemed to get to the foundation of what it was considering. I have always relied on analogical thinking to grasp new ideas. It seemed like an easy enough comparison; music had theorist who analyzed its form, harmony, progression, rhythm, and dynamics; we even referred to these as the elements of music. Like the ingredients of a recipe, things could be broken down and analyzed by the elements and procedures that brought them about. It is important to note that in conservatory we never assumed that these elements caused the music. We looked at analysis as a description, not as an ultimate explanation of music. We all understood the function of a V-chord in an I-IV-V progression, but we never felt that the progression (or the chord) caused the music. We simply understood the harmonic analysis as a symbolic representation of the music itself. I would say that, if asked what caused the music, most musicians would say that it was caused by the composer or the performer. As for the emotional aspect of music, that was enisled to our private conversations. Most of my professional musician colleagues were likely to discuss technical aspects of music rather than the emotional experience of the music. Even when emotion was discussed it was referred to as “interpretation” of the composer’s intention.
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Max Wertheimer, originator of Gestalt theory. |
One psychological tradition, in particular, has resonated with me both as a social scientist and as an artist. The Gestalt tradition, originating with Max Wertheimer, continues to bridge the two worlds of art and science for me. The Gestalt theorists were interested in how contextual structures determine meaning. In psychology we find the Gestaltists exploring the then new medium of motion pictures, Virtual Reality, art, and social meaning. Kurt Lewin, who is considered to be the founder of social psychology, was a Gestalt thinker. The essence of the Gestalt position is best expressed, I believe, in the chromatic gradation effect in the above graphic. We find here the phenomenon take on meaning in relation to their environment. The Gestalt (the grounding) is the empirical or rational background that the phenomenon emerges within. Like notes in a chord or melody, we manifest not from our environment but with it.
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Leonard Nimoy in A Quality of Mercy (1961). |
“We’ve seen enough dead men to last the rest of our lives. The rest of our lives, lieutenant, and then some. Now you’ve got a big yen to do some killing? Okay, we’ll do some killing for you. But don’t ask us to stand up and cheer.”
“You’re a pea-green, shaved hair, and just fresh from some campus. Afraid you won’t bag your limit, or worse all shook-up because somebody might spot you as a “Johnny come lately” instead of a killer of men… You want to prove your manhood, but it’s a little late in the day, there aren’t many choices left as to how to do it. It all boils down to that cave full of sick, pitiful, half-dead losers and a platoon of dirty, tired men who’ve had a craw-full of this war.”
“You’re a lousy soldier, and that goes for the rest of these poor, sick boys that you want me to bottle-feed. When you fight a war, you fight a war, and you kill until you’re ordered to stop… No matter who they are or what they are, if they’re the enemy they get it! First day of the war or last day of the war, they get it!”
“The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain of the heaven upon the place beneath. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
It is easy to do this from a distance, because from afar we can only see the generalizations of our assumptions. As we get closer to the other, just as Lieutenant Katell becomes closer to Lieutenant Yamuri, we begin to see the other as a person, rather than as a conglomeration of that which we resent in ourselves. This is the entrance into empathy. Sigmund Freud tells us in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego that empathy begins with identification. It is not until Lt. Katell identifies with the other, literally seeing the world from their eyes, that he develops a sense of himself in relation with the other. In this way, it is only through empathy, or mercy as Shakespeare puts it, that one can take away the self-hatred that one acts upon others.
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Giobbi’s Timeline of Intellectual History |
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Raffael’s The School of Athens |
“…an individual who respects power and the powerful above all and despises weakness and helplessness, who tyrannizes those beneath him and is submissive to, wishes to “fuse” with, the powerful ones above.”
“These individuals continuously take their own measure, and many rigid persons live with a self-important consciousness of their superior achievements, rank, and authority, their membership in some prestigious group or category.”
“To put the matter another way, to inflict suffering on a relatively powerless individual, an ‘inferior,’ or to inflict further suffering on one who is already suffering, is the intrinsic nature of sadism.”
“When his already exaggerated and uncertain sense of personal authority is chafed further by feelings of inferiority, shame, and humiliation, the rigid individual may become defensive, his attitudes harder and angrier.”