Eleven minutes excerpted from a 1998 lecture — below or at YouTube.
5 thoughts on “Nietzsche Perfectly Forecasts the Postmodernist Left”
Michael Benklifa
I love how you made the leftists Nietzsche’s “slave”. Hysterical.
I’ve been studying philosophy for 30 years and I never saw the theme running through the history of philosophy until I read your book on postmodernism. I don’t think the average leftists know the boat they are on.
Stephen Hicks analysis of postmodernist double talk is like a breath of fresh air.
John Shelton Rankin
Individuation vs Postmodern Political Horrors
John S Rankin
January 4, 2018
Issues
An important issue is the use of the adjective “political” to restrict the scope of horrific acts considered as “horrors”, i.e., avoiding horrors committed by those not in the state power structure; as well as selective emphasis on horrors attributed to Western nations.
A second issue is what logical frame structures our understanding of political horrors? The here proposed frame is a negative psychosocial syndrome countered through a positive psychosocial complex which, depending on outcome, can lead to Black Swan violence epidemiology., (Zadi:2019).
Logical Frame:
Existentially. negative psychosocial syndromes challenge a people’s collective consciousness as expressed in proactive or reactive psychosocial complexes, chronically to catastrophically, e.g.:
Complex: Moral solidarity existence → Collective self actualization meaning → Social evolution1.
Third, the negative consequences of pervasive nihilistic ideologies fostering dismissive attitudes toward cognitive and representational veracity as a means to undermine the very basis of a people’s individuation which is the basis of their capacity for formation and maintenance of a viable society providing for the security and quality of human life; especially as indicated by a people’s epidemiology of collective violence, e.g., endemic rates, epidemics, pandemics, collective effervescences of homicide, suicide, rape, bullying, and other physical assaults—is a much needed contribution to framing public discourse and policy.
Fourth, how to intervene to prevent or mediate the pathological relationship of such ideologies with violence epidemiology constituting a “psychosocial violence syndrome” (Rankin:9, 2018), (Rankin:11, 2018)?. Theories of individuation at different phenotypical levels of human experience are, in combination, powerfully constructive scientific alternatives to nihilistic and barren deconstructionism. The development and integration of different levels and types of individuation has in the past and will be the essence of a future agnostic civilization that can save and elevate humanity from burgeoning existential risks of anomie consciousness, existential crisis of meaninglessness due to self denial, i.e., acceptance that the meaning of evolution is to evolve through disciplined altruistic, self actualization; and existential threats of collective violence symptomatic of psychological disorders or cultural syndromes altering consciousness and overt behavior; or condoning violence prone psychosocial pathology such as power complexes of “toxic masculinity” or “toxic femininity” with pathological effects on family, community, citizenship, and possibly globally.
Political Horrors
Political horrors whether enacted by governments, radical, reactionary, religious terrorist, criminal gangs, including existential threats of slavery, torture, genocide, and other forms of collective violence implemented to gain, maintain, and exploit power over humans; have a long evil history, and are erupting yet again to pandemic levels in the 21st Century—aided, obscured, and justified by the existential risk of morbid seditious political propaganda; ideology often masquerading as social science theory/research.
Mustafa, Anwar, and Sawas contribute telling perspective with their argument that “…focusing on gendred aspects of infrastructural and spectacular violence…every day violence too, is deeply policticised and in infected by national and global level geopolitics…even domestic violence takes on a public and a political valence….the routinization of violence in everyday spaces..routinized criminal, state, and infrastructural violence….The policy engagement with the question of global and domestic terrorism, and then everyday violence is scale delimited, where each of the categories match with static macro-global, meso-national and sub-national and micro-local scales, respectively (Flint & Radil, 2007. (Mustafa, Anwar, Swas:2018, pp.1, 55).”
Therefore, Psychosocial Violence Syndrome Theory (PVST) (Rankin:2018) centers on chronic or recurrent patterns of pathological conditions and consequences, typically resolving to existential Black Swan risk of amoral or immoral anomie, meaninglessness, and collective violence (Rankin:2015); seen in ethnographic-epidemiological theories focused on stressful conditions and maladaptive behaviors reciprocally historically resulting from and subsequently producing failed individuation at any and all levels:
“High incidence of violent victimization in certain historical periods, locations, and populations
spreads experiences of psychic impairment, similar to the effects of the much less prevalent but symbolically charged hate crimes that have a broad impact on victims home communities which experience feelings of vulnerability and secondary victimization of those indirectly exposed!
to the emotional effects of victim blaming, and other consequences of having actually been assaulted; and on offenders communities that are stigmatized by association. Such difficult structural complexity is rendered far more problematic by the contesting and conflation of variously accurate statistics and unsubstantiated fork or ideological presumptions. Rankin:2014).”
“Malignant narcissism due to child neglect/abuse as argued by (Kernberg:2008), is far in excess of plain narcissism and even comorbid with psychopathic sadism; it constitutes a huge global emotional and amoral ‘reservoir of infection’ for actual or potential recruits to contagious religious, ideological, or criminal violence extending from bullying to homicidal sadism to genocidal agendas; and an even larger reserve of passive aggressive narcissism evident in those willing to foster endemic, epidemic, or effervescent symbolic representations promoting and shaping toleration, justification, or exploitation of violence for personal gain, for a sense of security or moral superiority, or through misconception or misapprehension (Rankin:9 2018 ).”
Theoretical models such as are championed in this paper, are or will be matched to new powerful statistical analysis capability:
“The premise of this paper is that a transdisciplinary approach to forecasting social breakdown, recovery, and resilience is entirely feasible, as a result of recent breakthroughs in statistical analysis of large-scale historical data, the qualitative insights of historical and semiotic investigations, and agent-based models that translate between micro-dynamics of interacting individuals and the collective macro-level events emerging from these interactions. Our goal is to construct a series of probabilistic scenarios of social breakdown and recovery, based on historical crises and outcomes, which can aid the analysis of potential outcomes of future crises.“ (Turchin, et. al.:2018),”
Stephen Hicks (Hicks:2014) unravels Postmodernism as a Marxist political strategy employing the corruption of language to discount truth, reality, and reason, in order to challenge “political horrors” produced by Western Civilization, through gaining and exercising power to effect social change, e.g. post WWII strategic deconstruction has meant promoting radicalization to push “class struggle”, cultural conflict, and racism directed at the “First world” American sphere of influence from “Third World” populations, through the influence of the “Second World”2 communist-socialists states—with emphasis on historic examples of crimes against humanity, e.g., rape, slavery, colonization, and genocidal assaults. For perspective, it is important to consider the historic and current cases of those same crimes in the past and in the present perpetrated by Second and Third world entities.
An essential question with such an ideology; is what sort of society is being promoted as ideal in place of Western democracies? In the United States, for example, what becomes of the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights, the middle and other classes; European and other forms of ethnicity, professional ethnics in medicine, education, law enforcement, military administration, politics, federal government agencies, and other changes not just from the imperfect status quo, but also from cultural ideals; such that truth is denied in its essence, rather than developed through balanced public discourse?
Such a strategy devoid of reason, truth, reality; is an example of Durkheim’s theory of anomic deregulation—the “rule that there is no rule”—leading to mass anomie consciousness driven by “primitive emotions”; and, according to Stjepan G. Mestrovic, resulting in a “post emotional” society weakened by balkanization, to the point of egoistic barbarism. ….”unwittingly promoting anomie, by advocating the reversal of homo duplex:, i.e., the lower, egoistical pole of the dualism of human nature becomes established as the basis for market economics and for democratic institutions.—The true “crisis of the West” (Mestrovic:2004 p. 174).
Psychosocial Individuation Process Complex Theory (PIPCT)
Psychosocial individuation processes occur on multiple levels forming complexes that must consist of complementary and integrated individuation processes; to avoid psychosocial violence syndromes. Psychosocial Individuation Process Complex Theory (PIPCT) seeks to overcome dysfunctional syndromes addressed by Psychosocial Violence Syndrome Theory (PVST) (Rankin:2018).
Seven essential phenotypical psychosocial3 individuation processes from classic theorists, including Durkheim, Frobenius, and Jung; in combination with contemporary theorists including Wildgen, Tateo, Maclennan, and Muthukumar, explicate the nature of component psychosocial individuation complexes. Although each theorist focuses on different individuation processes; the concept of an “individuation complex” points to the need for integration within and among individuation processes at all seven levels of existence, e.g. cognitive, language, psychological, occupational, and species individuation, would seem to be interdependent through the cultural-technical nexus; variously according to environmental opportunities, challenges, and changes. Given favorable environmental adaptions, the spiritual, religious, psychological individuation nexus would become significant, perhaps decisively.
Durkheim-social individuation through the profane division of labor individuation and through sacred religious individuation;
Frobenius- spiritual individuation
Jung-psychological individuation
Wildgen- language morphogenesis
MacLennan—human species individuation
Tateo-cognitive individuation
Muthukumar- individuation within religious study
Muthukumar points to Freud’s view that religion is a pathological syndrome and to Durkheim’s conclusion that, in effect, religion is a healthy individuation complex reflecting and contributing to social relationships, that create and maintain a people’s altruistic collective existence as a moral entity, which is thereby the sacred core of any functioning society. Muthukumar also warns against “Eliminative Reductionism”— “deny the ontological reality of religion by some “hidden narrative” portraying it as a mere epiphenomena”.
“In his book, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), he [Durkheim] avers that a society should not understood as an abstract concept, but “it is an accumulated body of facts —of language, laws, customs, ideas, values, traditions, techniques, and products, all of which are connected to one another and exist in a manner quite “external” to individual human minds. Thrown into a society, as societal environment is always a given for any human existence.” …..
“[Durkheim] argued that ‘The idea of society is the soul of religion. He also points to the fact of being ‘thrown’ into a society, as societal environment is always a given for any human existence. (Muthukumar).”
Durkheim’s social individuation (e.g. occupational specialization and integration—as well as collective individuation reflected in religion) develops from and contributes to “moral solidarity”(Rankin:2015); including cultural individuation through language expressing semiogenetic morphogenesis affecting processes of collective phenotypical individuation operative in gene expression through phenotypical adaption, e.g., “The Baldwin Effect”;
Basic implications of Durkheim’s “philosophy of language” (Internet encyclopedia:2018) include:
1. Society fundamentally depends on a shareable form of thought that conceives truth as stable ideas common to different intelligences, such that the meaning of words derive from, represent, and guide collective experience.
2. Each society’s language is relative to a people’s collective experience, wisdom, and science, yet can reveal its own important and even transformative aspects of reality—far beyond individual experience expressed in even highly intelligent but highly personalized concepts.
3. Clearly, Durkheim is describing the emergence and stability of a people’s collective consciousness composed of eidetic emotion loaded symbolic representations and signatory conceptions that defines their common identity and sustains their society; the more so, the more advanced their civilization. Disruption of this collective consciousness through propaganda conspiracies can lead to political horrors.
In addition, (Luca, Tateo:2015) addresses the creative adaptive interplay of eidetic memory and imagination, with signatory conceptualization of meaning as higher order mental functions; clearly closely complementary with Durkheim’s analysis of language as reflecting and contributing to collective experience and accumulative of wisdom informing a people’s collective consciousness.
Jung’s eidetic iconic or symbolic archetypal images are adaptive phenotypical representations and presence of primitive, archaic, and, or ancient, but still unconsciously viable processes, products, and tendencies forming the deep substratum for personal and collective mental processes, e.g., archetypal psychological functions, and social relationship oriented iconic memory.
In combination, the six theoretical models provide the foundation for a psychosocial analysis of the formation and interdependence of personal and collective consciousness, i.e., the personal and collective reality of processes, products, and consequences of sharing passive and active behaviors, experiences, memories, imagination, and representations and derived meaning of such elements of human consciousness.
Tateo’s higher mental processes are the evolved phenotypical substructure for the acquired phenotypical super structure that is Durkheim’s collective consciousness represented in a people’s symbolic representations, rituals, and language, which provide input and feedback to those higher mental processes in a reciprocal cycle. It follows that any intrusion that weakens the adaptive phenotypical personal and collective processes and products, is an existential risk for any society so affected.
A key question in analysis of the shared reality, reasoning, symbols, conceptual signs, and meaning of a people’s cultural consciousness as represented by images and concepts, is the extent to which they stem from Tateo’s personal consciousness on a mass scale; from Durkheim’s collective conscience, and, or from Freud’s personal unconscious on a mass scale, or from Jung’s collective unconscious. Wildgen argues for the existence and importance of “semantic archetypes” of “archetypes of “stable existence”, “catastrophic change”, “death of stability” “frontiers…borderlines” (Wildgen:1982).
A second question, is the extent to which images and concepts expressing and shaping a people’s collective conscious have emerged organically from those people, or is in reality an ideological artifice designed to engender a false social consciousness more easily controlled that a consciousness growing from adaptive creative psychological processes.
A third question, is whether ideological sophistry itself is a symptom of false narcissistic consciousness masquerading as benign altruism—while actually constituting either a Jungian conscious pretended persona role or an unconscious, rationalized and, or projected, malevolent shadow manifestation.
Fourth, how are analytical context may be enhanced with traditional/rational explication of a people’s ideal collective consciousness given their history, values, and contemporary circumstances, to compared to attainable resolutions of conflicts between such ideal versus actual conditions.
Fifth, how can development of nonpolitical institutional and media based educational, recreational, occupational, and commercial marketing environments, conditions, and products that provide opportunities and rewards for utilization and integration of Tateo’s higher mental functions personally and collectively.
Durkheim’s conception of language clearly shows that degrading a people’s language weakens personal and collective consciousness and consequently personal and social integration; especially the capacity for accumulating knowledge through objective and creative thought processes that are ever more essential—especially in the still powerful West and those countries ominously needing and wishing to raise their standard of living in this age of atomic threat, overpopulation relative to resources, conflicted mass migration; and aggravating conditions such as global warming, cultural conflict, and global pandemic outbreaks of terrorist, gang, official, and psychopathological homicidal sadistic collective violence.
Tateo’s emphasis on future oriented adaptation processes, [i.e., cognitive individuation] to cope with the uncertainty of existential opportunities and challenges of human existence provides significant perspective for Jung’s individuation of psychological functions through expanding such function consciousness through their application.
Jung’s psychological function archetypes are inherent structures enabling Tateo’s future oriented pre-adaptive and adaptive higher mental functions of memory, imagination, and thinking; to grasp meaning by shaping the knowledge encoded and shared in Durkheim’s dynamic of language enabling the collective conscious to share such meaning. Jung’s social relation-role archetypes, e.g., mother, father, anima, animus, hero, villain, etc., provide ancient awareness and potential wisdom as regressive deformity or progressive enrichment for the contents of Durkheim’s collective consciousness.
Perhaps “occultural” themes are positively/negatively relevant to relationships between psychological and, or cultural individuation along the lines of Frobenius’ Paideuma (spiritual essence) of cultures’ foundational organic ethnic unity formed from Ergriffenheit (primal ontic seizure); originally human reaction to the presence and power of the natural environment expressed culturally.; but arguably extendable, with Durkheim, to possession by immersion in the super individual primitive physical and emotional intensity of massed human collective effervescence; or to submersion in imagined abstract participation in mass materialistic submission to the enveloping super human and often faceless power of the modern state. That is, occult themes might symbolize archaic, unassimilated and unconscious archaic elements in a people’s individual and/or collective psychology.
Individuation processes can develop pathologically and, arguably, the test for all six types of individuation is their effect, separately and in combination, on a people’s existential adaption—versus their pathological violence epidemiology. Potentially, Durkheim’s social individuation through occupational specialization may draw on Tateo’s higher cognitive individuation informed by Jung’s archetypal psychological individuation Frobenius’ Paideuma individuation oriented to the needs and potentials of Maclennan’s human species individuation for “evolutionary success” (MacLennan:2006) ; which might favorably prevent or mediate conditions that contribute to endemic, epidemic, pandemic, and effervescent violence. Maybee suggests a three stage Hegelian Dialectic of Being, Nothing, and Becoming (Maybee:2016), e.g., Western Civilization, Postmodernism, Psychosocial Individuation.
Anomie Consciousness
Anomic deregulation evokes, tolerates, even demand anomie; when anomic conditions aim for and achieve creation of a foggy “false nonconsciousness” crippling a people’s striving for truth through aesthetic and moral idealism informed through realism, reason, empathy, and sympathy, deteriorates to the level of Freud’s “id”, Durkheim’s amoral “primitive emotions”, Nietzsche’s ressentiment. Jung’s “shadow”, kernberg’s “malignant narcissism” (Kernberg:2008), Mestrovic “egoistic barbarism”, prone to horrifically sadistic and disgusting behaviors and consequences.
The denial of reality, reason, and evidence based, best approximate truth,—demands explanation as to how a people individuality and as participants in their collective consciousness, institutions, families, communities, occupations, and other social groups, will be able to function when delusions replace reality testing, emotional/ignorant bias takes the place of reason, and truth is dismissed as merely propaganda—especially given the rise in human population, demographic changes, climate change/global warming? Durkheim implicitly anticipates the conflict between language as the basis for a people’s adaptive collective consciousness, e.g. as seen in the McAdams’ analysis of the history of conceptualization of personality psychology4, versus the anomically amorphous mass egoism portrayed as postmodernism.
Moral Solidarity
Moral solidarity (Rankin:2015) is the opposite of anomie, and denotes Durkheim’s focus on living conditions as the substrate of a people formation of their society, e.g., the physical environment and its resources, population size, growth, demography, density, intensity of interdependence and interaction; as mediated by the people’s moral, technical, and aesthetic culture needed to support the successful blending of such conditions; as well as the psychosocial factor of cognitive and temperament traits needed to actuate a society’s division of labor, e.g., extremes of egoistic introverted neurasthenics5 and anomic extraverted “erethics”6. The existence and interdependence of such conditions which are realities understood through “social construction” capable of significant variation in their accuracy, social effects, and functionality in Durkheim’s sense of adapting to and mediating living conditions—for which adaptable variability is relatively narrow—including pathological division of labor, socialization, social control, and, or other essential societal process functions and structures.
“Moral solidarity” is a concept that points to Durkheim’s emphasis on the moral as altruistic collective responses that meet the needs of individuals and of their society as such, i.e., social individualism combined with patriotism; thereby justifying and maintaining their solidarity and identity as a people. Solidarity, its origins, and its symbols and rituals, define a people’s identity as reciprocal contribution to and consequence of their collective consciousness with boundaries that define the boundaries of their society, and is therefore the “sacred” in Durkheim’s theory. Egoistic perspectives, experiences, motives, and actions, are “profane” because, and to the extent, they weaken moral solidarity.
Sosteric and Ratkovic contribute range to the concept of individuation at the level of the individual and the level of moral solidarity, i.e.,:
”Building upon the work of Abraham Maslow, specifically his dual hierarchies of basic needs and cognitive needs, this article presents seven essential human needs, needs we argue must be met if humans re to develop into healthy, fulled connected individuals who express their highest Self and fullest potential, and who are capable of participating in the development and evolution of the planet.”(Sosteric, Ratkovic:2019)
Strenski’s argument give historical perspective on moral issues that contribute to a people’s Durkheimian collective conscious as reflected in their religious beliefs and morality; understood as a cultural complex:
“No less a Christian philosopher than Charles Taylor recently wrote of the ‘unbridgeable gulf between Christianity and Greek philosophy.’ In doing so Taylor meant to affirm the benignity of the Christian embrace of human flourishing and fellowship over against the heroic, but world-negating, outlook of the Greeks. ….
“The choice could not have been clearer: showing common human compassion for the real potential suffering of the girls meant failing to enforce God’s law. (Strenski:2019)”.
Extremism
Also important, is awareness of potential extremism from the opposite pole of dualism, i.e., positive natural cases of Nietzsche’s “overman” driven by a dominate will to Maslow’s self actualization, Jung’s psychological individuation anchored in the collective unconscious, Plato’s archetypal idealism; or the negativity of (Osuji’s:2013) neurotically obsessive-compulsive “, potentially paranoid, “Idealistic Personality” oppressed by unrealistic aspirations. Nietzscheian “ressentiment’s” dismissal of ideals and “Ubermensch’s” pitiless pursuit of ideals, are inherently anomic and destructive for societies, institutions, organizations, groups, communities, and individuals, that develop anomie consciousnesses that knows no bounds. Such extremism can express and serve the social collective or the individual ego; patriotism or narcissism, but rarely both—unless egoistic pursuit of perfection, power, survival; constitutes dedication to collective perfection, power, survival.
Consequences
Nietzsche’s critique of rising ills of European consciousness and morality centers on the emergence of “nihilism “followed by submission to the “herd instinct” (Leiter:2001). Inherently, such submissive thoughtlessness poses grave dangers to such masses and to anyone withing their reach, i.e, reasoned truth is the solution, not the cause, of the rise of violent collectives.
Often, perhaps typically, violent political horrors begin with religious/political ideologies providing the social-emotional-conceptual context for propaganda conspiracies. That is, intellectual propaganda that undermines a people’s cultural identity and practical understanding of their lives together; which can lead to violent political horrors from the radical left, the reactionary right, or even the moderate patriotic center. Durkheim’s work on Suicide specifically, and Durkheimian sociology generally, provides an alternative to nihilism and propaganda conspiracy that shackles altruistic rational public discourses, understandings, and collective behaviors:
Durkheim’s theory of social integration, in his work on Suicide, clearly and critically connects two macro societal tendencies, i.e., his “Social Types” of societies focused on the form of a people’s social individuation through the division of labor linked with the collective conscious, and its interdependence with their collective or mass consciousness; and the social epidemiology of their tendencies toward violence, particularly suicide and, less obviously on homicide. Moreover, Durkheim’s focus on suicide and homicide; and on rape (Wilson Center:2014); as opposed to economic and political status; reflects his concern for humanity at the individual, group, and societal levels of existence and of analysis. The nature and incidence of violence is the primary psychosocial behavioral measure of societal health or pathology, i.e., application of Occam’s razor7 to national/international public policy and its consequences. (Rankin:2012).
Public Discourse Moderation
Public discourse and policy would move closer to much needed clarification and evaluation, were the “truth” of a society, social program, ideology, social theory, social research; accepted as resolving to the reality of their impact on the survival and quality of life of those involved as beneficiaries or victims—as indicated by endemic rates, epidemics, or collective effervescences of truthful public discourse, propaganda, political horror, and preceding, parallel, or following suicide, homicide, rape, drug trafficking and addiction, and other tragedies. With such clarification and evaluation, public understanding would be much better informed and public discourse far more civil and more free of logical fallacies and propaganda. Postmodern ideology might deny the objectivity of different cultural values, e.g., reason, to pursue political power—but the realities of the quality, duration, and demise, of human life is the primary social reality; shrewd sophism’s not withstanding.
Public understanding of complex issues ranging from national security to local law enforcement, education, health care, birth rate, family stability, personal privacy, and other pressing problems and issues of the 21st Century; would also benefit from organized psychosocial apotheosis through construction of occupational role structures that acknowledged both ideals and realities with input from specialist teams using Jungian psychological functions of human intuition based on archetypal complexes accessing Tateo’s integrated memory, imagination, and intelligence processes; balanced with culturally informed thinking and wisdom informing collective consciousness, as well as feeling, and sensing; supported with framing contributions from the humanities and social sciences, within the context of environmental science and genetics; also including constitutional, ethical, and professional protocol, and other public interest experts.
Such complexity combined with speciously confusing public discourse, is particularly ominous as the gap between technology and modal individual ability or capacity to master innovations and their applications widens in the West and around the globe; perhaps most common and most entrenched in the explicit or implicit requirement for “systems thinking” augmented with C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination”, e.g., Durkheimian social type-Jungian psychological type interaction; at virtually all but the simplest levels of applied technology—yet most daunting with the interaction of large scale technical systems with each other and with the natural climate, and ecological systems and phenotypical biological and cultural evolution versus devolution/degeneration processes.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics provide answers to some social problems such as unhealthy factory work, but are not inherently aligned with humane values and needs; even when AI responds literately to human commands. As many leading AI advocates acknowledge wisdom that centers on consideration of human biological, psychological, and sociocultural experiences while achieving beneficially productive results, is required to balance technical capacities with human needs and rights8.
Moderation
Psychosocial individuation, combining social and psychological individuation, e.g., matching occupational role requirements with psychological type preference capabilities; encourages a moderate approach of practical integration of the collective conscience with the collective unconscious, i.e., psychosocial development of integrated societal with individual apotheosis..
Moreover, societal conditions of mass anomie and egoism reciprocally interact to compose the state of extreme individualism; while master-servant fatalism and fanatical acute-altruism are alternative states of extreme collectivism—with all four constituting pathological societal conditions of varying degrees of development, that are not mutually incompatible; especially in modern societies, i.e., anomie/egoism can divert and weaken a people’s shared consciousness to the point when master-servant fatalism masquerades as patriotism.
Such pathologies are fertile ground for and likely symptomatic of propaganda and horrors of diverse kinds, sources, and motivations, e.g. radical, reactionary, or populist, political movements that resort to totalitarianism, mob rule, criminal syndicates, corruption, or other asocial, antisocial, or inhumane methods. Methodological alternatives of moderation, humanity, rational values-ends-means conflict resolution framed with reality, truth, accuracy, honesty, and verity—oppose anomie, egoism, servitude, and fundamentalist/pragmatist/idealist fanaticism.
References
Baumgold, Deborah. Hobbes’s Political Theory. Cup Archive, 1988.
Leiter, Brian.“Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Substantive revision Wed Oct 7, 2001.
Kernberg, Otto. Aggressivity, Narcissism, and Self-Destructiveness in the Psychotherapeutic Rela: New Developments in the Psychopathology and Psychotherapy of Severe Personality Disorder. Yale University Press. 2008.
Muthukumar, David. “ Comparing the Theories Of Religion of Sigmund Freud and
Émile Durkheim”.
Orb’an Katalin. Ethical Divisions: The Post-Holocaust Narratives of Pynchon, Abish, DeLillo, and Spiegelman. Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory. Ed. William, E. Cain, Wellesley College, A Routhledge series.
file:///C:/Users/John%20Rankin/Downloads/9781135466329_preview.pdf
Tateo L. “(2015) Just an Illusion? Imagination as Higher Mental Function. J Psychol Psychother 5:
2015. 216. doi: 10.4172/2161-0487.1000216.
Turchin, Peter, Witoszek, Nina, Turner, Stefan, Garcia, David, Griffin, Roger, Coyer, Daniel, Midtown, Tale, Benet, James, Napless, Nut My rum, Gantlets, Sergei. (2018). A History of Possible Futures: Multipath Forecasting of Social Breakdown, Recovery, and Resilience. Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution, 9(2): 124-139., 2018).
Wildgen, Wolfgang. The Heart of Catastrophe Theoretic Semantics, chapter 3, p. 35-93.This is the central chapter of my book published in 1982 by John Benjamins, Amsterdam. John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelpha, 1982.
I love how you made the leftists Nietzsche’s “slave”. Hysterical.
I’ve been studying philosophy for 30 years and I never saw the theme running through the history of philosophy until I read your book on postmodernism. I don’t think the average leftists know the boat they are on.
Thanks, Michael!
Faust*
Stephen Hicks analysis of postmodernist double talk is like a breath of fresh air.
Individuation vs Postmodern Political Horrors
John S Rankin
January 4, 2018
Issues
An important issue is the use of the adjective “political” to restrict the scope of horrific acts considered as “horrors”, i.e., avoiding horrors committed by those not in the state power structure; as well as selective emphasis on horrors attributed to Western nations.
A second issue is what logical frame structures our understanding of political horrors? The here proposed frame is a negative psychosocial syndrome countered through a positive psychosocial complex which, depending on outcome, can lead to Black Swan violence epidemiology., (Zadi:2019).
Logical Frame:
Existentially. negative psychosocial syndromes challenge a people’s collective consciousness as expressed in proactive or reactive psychosocial complexes, chronically to catastrophically, e.g.:
Syndrome: Anomic existential risk → Nihilistic existential crisis → Violent existential threat.
Complex: Moral solidarity existence → Collective self actualization meaning → Social evolution1.
Third, the negative consequences of pervasive nihilistic ideologies fostering dismissive attitudes toward cognitive and representational veracity as a means to undermine the very basis of a people’s individuation which is the basis of their capacity for formation and maintenance of a viable society providing for the security and quality of human life; especially as indicated by a people’s epidemiology of collective violence, e.g., endemic rates, epidemics, pandemics, collective effervescences of homicide, suicide, rape, bullying, and other physical assaults—is a much needed contribution to framing public discourse and policy.
Fourth, how to intervene to prevent or mediate the pathological relationship of such ideologies with violence epidemiology constituting a “psychosocial violence syndrome” (Rankin:9, 2018), (Rankin:11, 2018)?. Theories of individuation at different phenotypical levels of human experience are, in combination, powerfully constructive scientific alternatives to nihilistic and barren deconstructionism. The development and integration of different levels and types of individuation has in the past and will be the essence of a future agnostic civilization that can save and elevate humanity from burgeoning existential risks of anomie consciousness, existential crisis of meaninglessness due to self denial, i.e., acceptance that the meaning of evolution is to evolve through disciplined altruistic, self actualization; and existential threats of collective violence symptomatic of psychological disorders or cultural syndromes altering consciousness and overt behavior; or condoning violence prone psychosocial pathology such as power complexes of “toxic masculinity” or “toxic femininity” with pathological effects on family, community, citizenship, and possibly globally.
Political Horrors
Political horrors whether enacted by governments, radical, reactionary, religious terrorist, criminal gangs, including existential threats of slavery, torture, genocide, and other forms of collective violence implemented to gain, maintain, and exploit power over humans; have a long evil history, and are erupting yet again to pandemic levels in the 21st Century—aided, obscured, and justified by the existential risk of morbid seditious political propaganda; ideology often masquerading as social science theory/research.
Mustafa, Anwar, and Sawas contribute telling perspective with their argument that “…focusing on gendred aspects of infrastructural and spectacular violence…every day violence too, is deeply policticised and in infected by national and global level geopolitics…even domestic violence takes on a public and a political valence….the routinization of violence in everyday spaces..routinized criminal, state, and infrastructural violence….The policy engagement with the question of global and domestic terrorism, and then everyday violence is scale delimited, where each of the categories match with static macro-global, meso-national and sub-national and micro-local scales, respectively (Flint & Radil, 2007. (Mustafa, Anwar, Swas:2018, pp.1, 55).”
Therefore, Psychosocial Violence Syndrome Theory (PVST) (Rankin:2018) centers on chronic or recurrent patterns of pathological conditions and consequences, typically resolving to existential Black Swan risk of amoral or immoral anomie, meaninglessness, and collective violence (Rankin:2015); seen in ethnographic-epidemiological theories focused on stressful conditions and maladaptive behaviors reciprocally historically resulting from and subsequently producing failed individuation at any and all levels:
“High incidence of violent victimization in certain historical periods, locations, and populations
spreads experiences of psychic impairment, similar to the effects of the much less prevalent but symbolically charged hate crimes that have a broad impact on victims home communities which experience feelings of vulnerability and secondary victimization of those indirectly exposed!
to the emotional effects of victim blaming, and other consequences of having actually been assaulted; and on offenders communities that are stigmatized by association. Such difficult structural complexity is rendered far more problematic by the contesting and conflation of variously accurate statistics and unsubstantiated fork or ideological presumptions. Rankin:2014).”
“Malignant narcissism due to child neglect/abuse as argued by (Kernberg:2008), is far in excess of plain narcissism and even comorbid with psychopathic sadism; it constitutes a huge global emotional and amoral ‘reservoir of infection’ for actual or potential recruits to contagious religious, ideological, or criminal violence extending from bullying to homicidal sadism to genocidal agendas; and an even larger reserve of passive aggressive narcissism evident in those willing to foster endemic, epidemic, or effervescent symbolic representations promoting and shaping toleration, justification, or exploitation of violence for personal gain, for a sense of security or moral superiority, or through misconception or misapprehension (Rankin:9 2018 ).”
Theoretical models such as are championed in this paper, are or will be matched to new powerful statistical analysis capability:
“The premise of this paper is that a transdisciplinary approach to forecasting social breakdown, recovery, and resilience is entirely feasible, as a result of recent breakthroughs in statistical analysis of large-scale historical data, the qualitative insights of historical and semiotic investigations, and agent-based models that translate between micro-dynamics of interacting individuals and the collective macro-level events emerging from these interactions. Our goal is to construct a series of probabilistic scenarios of social breakdown and recovery, based on historical crises and outcomes, which can aid the analysis of potential outcomes of future crises.“ (Turchin, et. al.:2018),”
Corresponding Author’s e-mail. Peter.turchin@uconn.edu.
https://www.academia.edu/38070804/Turchin_Peter_et_al._2018_._A_History_of_Possible_Futures_Multipath_Forecasting_of_Social_Breakdown_Recovery_and_Resilience._Cliodynamics_The_Journal_of_Quantitative_History_and_Cultural_Evolution_9_2_124-139?email_work_card=view-paper
https://akastg-www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Nihilistic Ideology
Stephen Hicks (Hicks:2014) unravels Postmodernism as a Marxist political strategy employing the corruption of language to discount truth, reality, and reason, in order to challenge “political horrors” produced by Western Civilization, through gaining and exercising power to effect social change, e.g. post WWII strategic deconstruction has meant promoting radicalization to push “class struggle”, cultural conflict, and racism directed at the “First world” American sphere of influence from “Third World” populations, through the influence of the “Second World”2 communist-socialists states—with emphasis on historic examples of crimes against humanity, e.g., rape, slavery, colonization, and genocidal assaults. For perspective, it is important to consider the historic and current cases of those same crimes in the past and in the present perpetrated by Second and Third world entities.
An essential question with such an ideology; is what sort of society is being promoted as ideal in place of Western democracies? In the United States, for example, what becomes of the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights, the middle and other classes; European and other forms of ethnicity, professional ethnics in medicine, education, law enforcement, military administration, politics, federal government agencies, and other changes not just from the imperfect status quo, but also from cultural ideals; such that truth is denied in its essence, rather than developed through balanced public discourse?
Such a strategy devoid of reason, truth, reality; is an example of Durkheim’s theory of anomic deregulation—the “rule that there is no rule”—leading to mass anomie consciousness driven by “primitive emotions”; and, according to Stjepan G. Mestrovic, resulting in a “post emotional” society weakened by balkanization, to the point of egoistic barbarism. ….”unwittingly promoting anomie, by advocating the reversal of homo duplex:, i.e., the lower, egoistical pole of the dualism of human nature becomes established as the basis for market economics and for democratic institutions.—The true “crisis of the West” (Mestrovic:2004 p. 174).
Psychosocial Individuation Process Complex Theory (PIPCT)
Psychosocial individuation processes occur on multiple levels forming complexes that must consist of complementary and integrated individuation processes; to avoid psychosocial violence syndromes. Psychosocial Individuation Process Complex Theory (PIPCT) seeks to overcome dysfunctional syndromes addressed by Psychosocial Violence Syndrome Theory (PVST) (Rankin:2018).
Seven essential phenotypical psychosocial3 individuation processes from classic theorists, including Durkheim, Frobenius, and Jung; in combination with contemporary theorists including Wildgen, Tateo, Maclennan, and Muthukumar, explicate the nature of component psychosocial individuation complexes. Although each theorist focuses on different individuation processes; the concept of an “individuation complex” points to the need for integration within and among individuation processes at all seven levels of existence, e.g. cognitive, language, psychological, occupational, and species individuation, would seem to be interdependent through the cultural-technical nexus; variously according to environmental opportunities, challenges, and changes. Given favorable environmental adaptions, the spiritual, religious, psychological individuation nexus would become significant, perhaps decisively.
Durkheim-social individuation through the profane division of labor individuation and through sacred religious individuation;
Frobenius- spiritual individuation
Jung-psychological individuation
Wildgen- language morphogenesis
MacLennan—human species individuation
Tateo-cognitive individuation
Muthukumar- individuation within religious study
Muthukumar points to Freud’s view that religion is a pathological syndrome and to Durkheim’s conclusion that, in effect, religion is a healthy individuation complex reflecting and contributing to social relationships, that create and maintain a people’s altruistic collective existence as a moral entity, which is thereby the sacred core of any functioning society. Muthukumar also warns against “Eliminative Reductionism”— “deny the ontological reality of religion by some “hidden narrative” portraying it as a mere epiphenomena”.
“In his book, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), he [Durkheim] avers that a society should not understood as an abstract concept, but “it is an accumulated body of facts —of language, laws, customs, ideas, values, traditions, techniques, and products, all of which are connected to one another and exist in a manner quite “external” to individual human minds. Thrown into a society, as societal environment is always a given for any human existence.” …..
“[Durkheim] argued that ‘The idea of society is the soul of religion. He also points to the fact of being ‘thrown’ into a society, as societal environment is always a given for any human existence. (Muthukumar).”
Durkheim’s social individuation (e.g. occupational specialization and integration—as well as collective individuation reflected in religion) develops from and contributes to “moral solidarity”(Rankin:2015); including cultural individuation through language expressing semiogenetic morphogenesis affecting processes of collective phenotypical individuation operative in gene expression through phenotypical adaption, e.g., “The Baldwin Effect”;
Basic implications of Durkheim’s “philosophy of language” (Internet encyclopedia:2018) include:
1. Society fundamentally depends on a shareable form of thought that conceives truth as stable ideas common to different intelligences, such that the meaning of words derive from, represent, and guide collective experience.
2. Each society’s language is relative to a people’s collective experience, wisdom, and science, yet can reveal its own important and even transformative aspects of reality—far beyond individual experience expressed in even highly intelligent but highly personalized concepts.
3. Clearly, Durkheim is describing the emergence and stability of a people’s collective consciousness composed of eidetic emotion loaded symbolic representations and signatory conceptions that defines their common identity and sustains their society; the more so, the more advanced their civilization. Disruption of this collective consciousness through propaganda conspiracies can lead to political horrors.
In addition, (Luca, Tateo:2015) addresses the creative adaptive interplay of eidetic memory and imagination, with signatory conceptualization of meaning as higher order mental functions; clearly closely complementary with Durkheim’s analysis of language as reflecting and contributing to collective experience and accumulative of wisdom informing a people’s collective consciousness.
Jung’s eidetic iconic or symbolic archetypal images are adaptive phenotypical representations and presence of primitive, archaic, and, or ancient, but still unconsciously viable processes, products, and tendencies forming the deep substratum for personal and collective mental processes, e.g., archetypal psychological functions, and social relationship oriented iconic memory.
In combination, the six theoretical models provide the foundation for a psychosocial analysis of the formation and interdependence of personal and collective consciousness, i.e., the personal and collective reality of processes, products, and consequences of sharing passive and active behaviors, experiences, memories, imagination, and representations and derived meaning of such elements of human consciousness.
Tateo’s higher mental processes are the evolved phenotypical substructure for the acquired phenotypical super structure that is Durkheim’s collective consciousness represented in a people’s symbolic representations, rituals, and language, which provide input and feedback to those higher mental processes in a reciprocal cycle. It follows that any intrusion that weakens the adaptive phenotypical personal and collective processes and products, is an existential risk for any society so affected.
A key question in analysis of the shared reality, reasoning, symbols, conceptual signs, and meaning of a people’s cultural consciousness as represented by images and concepts, is the extent to which they stem from Tateo’s personal consciousness on a mass scale; from Durkheim’s collective conscience, and, or from Freud’s personal unconscious on a mass scale, or from Jung’s collective unconscious. Wildgen argues for the existence and importance of “semantic archetypes” of “archetypes of “stable existence”, “catastrophic change”, “death of stability” “frontiers…borderlines” (Wildgen:1982).
A second question, is the extent to which images and concepts expressing and shaping a people’s collective conscious have emerged organically from those people, or is in reality an ideological artifice designed to engender a false social consciousness more easily controlled that a consciousness growing from adaptive creative psychological processes.
A third question, is whether ideological sophistry itself is a symptom of false narcissistic consciousness masquerading as benign altruism—while actually constituting either a Jungian conscious pretended persona role or an unconscious, rationalized and, or projected, malevolent shadow manifestation.
Fourth, how are analytical context may be enhanced with traditional/rational explication of a people’s ideal collective consciousness given their history, values, and contemporary circumstances, to compared to attainable resolutions of conflicts between such ideal versus actual conditions.
Fifth, how can development of nonpolitical institutional and media based educational, recreational, occupational, and commercial marketing environments, conditions, and products that provide opportunities and rewards for utilization and integration of Tateo’s higher mental functions personally and collectively.
Durkheim’s conception of language clearly shows that degrading a people’s language weakens personal and collective consciousness and consequently personal and social integration; especially the capacity for accumulating knowledge through objective and creative thought processes that are ever more essential—especially in the still powerful West and those countries ominously needing and wishing to raise their standard of living in this age of atomic threat, overpopulation relative to resources, conflicted mass migration; and aggravating conditions such as global warming, cultural conflict, and global pandemic outbreaks of terrorist, gang, official, and psychopathological homicidal sadistic collective violence.
Tateo’s emphasis on future oriented adaptation processes, [i.e., cognitive individuation] to cope with the uncertainty of existential opportunities and challenges of human existence provides significant perspective for Jung’s individuation of psychological functions through expanding such function consciousness through their application.
Jung’s psychological function archetypes are inherent structures enabling Tateo’s future oriented pre-adaptive and adaptive higher mental functions of memory, imagination, and thinking; to grasp meaning by shaping the knowledge encoded and shared in Durkheim’s dynamic of language enabling the collective conscious to share such meaning. Jung’s social relation-role archetypes, e.g., mother, father, anima, animus, hero, villain, etc., provide ancient awareness and potential wisdom as regressive deformity or progressive enrichment for the contents of Durkheim’s collective consciousness.
Perhaps “occultural” themes are positively/negatively relevant to relationships between psychological and, or cultural individuation along the lines of Frobenius’ Paideuma (spiritual essence) of cultures’ foundational organic ethnic unity formed from Ergriffenheit (primal ontic seizure); originally human reaction to the presence and power of the natural environment expressed culturally.; but arguably extendable, with Durkheim, to possession by immersion in the super individual primitive physical and emotional intensity of massed human collective effervescence; or to submersion in imagined abstract participation in mass materialistic submission to the enveloping super human and often faceless power of the modern state. That is, occult themes might symbolize archaic, unassimilated and unconscious archaic elements in a people’s individual and/or collective psychology.
Individuation processes can develop pathologically and, arguably, the test for all six types of individuation is their effect, separately and in combination, on a people’s existential adaption—versus their pathological violence epidemiology. Potentially, Durkheim’s social individuation through occupational specialization may draw on Tateo’s higher cognitive individuation informed by Jung’s archetypal psychological individuation Frobenius’ Paideuma individuation oriented to the needs and potentials of Maclennan’s human species individuation for “evolutionary success” (MacLennan:2006) ; which might favorably prevent or mediate conditions that contribute to endemic, epidemic, pandemic, and effervescent violence. Maybee suggests a three stage Hegelian Dialectic of Being, Nothing, and Becoming (Maybee:2016), e.g., Western Civilization, Postmodernism, Psychosocial Individuation.
Anomie Consciousness
Anomic deregulation evokes, tolerates, even demand anomie; when anomic conditions aim for and achieve creation of a foggy “false nonconsciousness” crippling a people’s striving for truth through aesthetic and moral idealism informed through realism, reason, empathy, and sympathy, deteriorates to the level of Freud’s “id”, Durkheim’s amoral “primitive emotions”, Nietzsche’s ressentiment. Jung’s “shadow”, kernberg’s “malignant narcissism” (Kernberg:2008), Mestrovic “egoistic barbarism”, prone to horrifically sadistic and disgusting behaviors and consequences.
The denial of reality, reason, and evidence based, best approximate truth,—demands explanation as to how a people individuality and as participants in their collective consciousness, institutions, families, communities, occupations, and other social groups, will be able to function when delusions replace reality testing, emotional/ignorant bias takes the place of reason, and truth is dismissed as merely propaganda—especially given the rise in human population, demographic changes, climate change/global warming? Durkheim implicitly anticipates the conflict between language as the basis for a people’s adaptive collective consciousness, e.g. as seen in the McAdams’ analysis of the history of conceptualization of personality psychology4, versus the anomically amorphous mass egoism portrayed as postmodernism.
Moral Solidarity
Moral solidarity (Rankin:2015) is the opposite of anomie, and denotes Durkheim’s focus on living conditions as the substrate of a people formation of their society, e.g., the physical environment and its resources, population size, growth, demography, density, intensity of interdependence and interaction; as mediated by the people’s moral, technical, and aesthetic culture needed to support the successful blending of such conditions; as well as the psychosocial factor of cognitive and temperament traits needed to actuate a society’s division of labor, e.g., extremes of egoistic introverted neurasthenics5 and anomic extraverted “erethics”6. The existence and interdependence of such conditions which are realities understood through “social construction” capable of significant variation in their accuracy, social effects, and functionality in Durkheim’s sense of adapting to and mediating living conditions—for which adaptable variability is relatively narrow—including pathological division of labor, socialization, social control, and, or other essential societal process functions and structures.
“Moral solidarity” is a concept that points to Durkheim’s emphasis on the moral as altruistic collective responses that meet the needs of individuals and of their society as such, i.e., social individualism combined with patriotism; thereby justifying and maintaining their solidarity and identity as a people. Solidarity, its origins, and its symbols and rituals, define a people’s identity as reciprocal contribution to and consequence of their collective consciousness with boundaries that define the boundaries of their society, and is therefore the “sacred” in Durkheim’s theory. Egoistic perspectives, experiences, motives, and actions, are “profane” because, and to the extent, they weaken moral solidarity.
Sosteric and Ratkovic contribute range to the concept of individuation at the level of the individual and the level of moral solidarity, i.e.,:
”Building upon the work of Abraham Maslow, specifically his dual hierarchies of basic needs and cognitive needs, this article presents seven essential human needs, needs we argue must be met if humans re to develop into healthy, fulled connected individuals who express their highest Self and fullest potential, and who are capable of participating in the development and evolution of the planet.”(Sosteric, Ratkovic:2019)
Strenski’s argument give historical perspective on moral issues that contribute to a people’s Durkheimian collective conscious as reflected in their religious beliefs and morality; understood as a cultural complex:
“No less a Christian philosopher than Charles Taylor recently wrote of the ‘unbridgeable gulf between Christianity and Greek philosophy.’ In doing so Taylor meant to affirm the benignity of the Christian embrace of human flourishing and fellowship over against the heroic, but world-negating, outlook of the Greeks. ….
“The choice could not have been clearer: showing common human compassion for the real potential suffering of the girls meant failing to enforce God’s law. (Strenski:2019)”.
Extremism
Also important, is awareness of potential extremism from the opposite pole of dualism, i.e., positive natural cases of Nietzsche’s “overman” driven by a dominate will to Maslow’s self actualization, Jung’s psychological individuation anchored in the collective unconscious, Plato’s archetypal idealism; or the negativity of (Osuji’s:2013) neurotically obsessive-compulsive “, potentially paranoid, “Idealistic Personality” oppressed by unrealistic aspirations. Nietzscheian “ressentiment’s” dismissal of ideals and “Ubermensch’s” pitiless pursuit of ideals, are inherently anomic and destructive for societies, institutions, organizations, groups, communities, and individuals, that develop anomie consciousnesses that knows no bounds. Such extremism can express and serve the social collective or the individual ego; patriotism or narcissism, but rarely both—unless egoistic pursuit of perfection, power, survival; constitutes dedication to collective perfection, power, survival.
Consequences
Nietzsche’s critique of rising ills of European consciousness and morality centers on the emergence of “nihilism “followed by submission to the “herd instinct” (Leiter:2001). Inherently, such submissive thoughtlessness poses grave dangers to such masses and to anyone withing their reach, i.e, reasoned truth is the solution, not the cause, of the rise of violent collectives.
Often, perhaps typically, violent political horrors begin with religious/political ideologies providing the social-emotional-conceptual context for propaganda conspiracies. That is, intellectual propaganda that undermines a people’s cultural identity and practical understanding of their lives together; which can lead to violent political horrors from the radical left, the reactionary right, or even the moderate patriotic center. Durkheim’s work on Suicide specifically, and Durkheimian sociology generally, provides an alternative to nihilism and propaganda conspiracy that shackles altruistic rational public discourses, understandings, and collective behaviors:
Durkheim’s theory of social integration, in his work on Suicide, clearly and critically connects two macro societal tendencies, i.e., his “Social Types” of societies focused on the form of a people’s social individuation through the division of labor linked with the collective conscious, and its interdependence with their collective or mass consciousness; and the social epidemiology of their tendencies toward violence, particularly suicide and, less obviously on homicide. Moreover, Durkheim’s focus on suicide and homicide; and on rape (Wilson Center:2014); as opposed to economic and political status; reflects his concern for humanity at the individual, group, and societal levels of existence and of analysis. The nature and incidence of violence is the primary psychosocial behavioral measure of societal health or pathology, i.e., application of Occam’s razor7 to national/international public policy and its consequences. (Rankin:2012).
Public Discourse Moderation
Public discourse and policy would move closer to much needed clarification and evaluation, were the “truth” of a society, social program, ideology, social theory, social research; accepted as resolving to the reality of their impact on the survival and quality of life of those involved as beneficiaries or victims—as indicated by endemic rates, epidemics, or collective effervescences of truthful public discourse, propaganda, political horror, and preceding, parallel, or following suicide, homicide, rape, drug trafficking and addiction, and other tragedies. With such clarification and evaluation, public understanding would be much better informed and public discourse far more civil and more free of logical fallacies and propaganda. Postmodern ideology might deny the objectivity of different cultural values, e.g., reason, to pursue political power—but the realities of the quality, duration, and demise, of human life is the primary social reality; shrewd sophism’s not withstanding.
Public understanding of complex issues ranging from national security to local law enforcement, education, health care, birth rate, family stability, personal privacy, and other pressing problems and issues of the 21st Century; would also benefit from organized psychosocial apotheosis through construction of occupational role structures that acknowledged both ideals and realities with input from specialist teams using Jungian psychological functions of human intuition based on archetypal complexes accessing Tateo’s integrated memory, imagination, and intelligence processes; balanced with culturally informed thinking and wisdom informing collective consciousness, as well as feeling, and sensing; supported with framing contributions from the humanities and social sciences, within the context of environmental science and genetics; also including constitutional, ethical, and professional protocol, and other public interest experts.
Such complexity combined with speciously confusing public discourse, is particularly ominous as the gap between technology and modal individual ability or capacity to master innovations and their applications widens in the West and around the globe; perhaps most common and most entrenched in the explicit or implicit requirement for “systems thinking” augmented with C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination”, e.g., Durkheimian social type-Jungian psychological type interaction; at virtually all but the simplest levels of applied technology—yet most daunting with the interaction of large scale technical systems with each other and with the natural climate, and ecological systems and phenotypical biological and cultural evolution versus devolution/degeneration processes.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics provide answers to some social problems such as unhealthy factory work, but are not inherently aligned with humane values and needs; even when AI responds literately to human commands. As many leading AI advocates acknowledge wisdom that centers on consideration of human biological, psychological, and sociocultural experiences while achieving beneficially productive results, is required to balance technical capacities with human needs and rights8.
Moderation
Psychosocial individuation, combining social and psychological individuation, e.g., matching occupational role requirements with psychological type preference capabilities; encourages a moderate approach of practical integration of the collective conscience with the collective unconscious, i.e., psychosocial development of integrated societal with individual apotheosis..
Moreover, societal conditions of mass anomie and egoism reciprocally interact to compose the state of extreme individualism; while master-servant fatalism and fanatical acute-altruism are alternative states of extreme collectivism—with all four constituting pathological societal conditions of varying degrees of development, that are not mutually incompatible; especially in modern societies, i.e., anomie/egoism can divert and weaken a people’s shared consciousness to the point when master-servant fatalism masquerades as patriotism.
Such pathologies are fertile ground for and likely symptomatic of propaganda and horrors of diverse kinds, sources, and motivations, e.g. radical, reactionary, or populist, political movements that resort to totalitarianism, mob rule, criminal syndicates, corruption, or other asocial, antisocial, or inhumane methods. Methodological alternatives of moderation, humanity, rational values-ends-means conflict resolution framed with reality, truth, accuracy, honesty, and verity—oppose anomie, egoism, servitude, and fundamentalist/pragmatist/idealist fanaticism.
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