A question about the Hegelian Dialectic

Is anyone one here familiar with the Hegelian Dialectic sometimes described as Hegel's method of "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis”?

If so, I’d be interested in what you think about how this theory of the dialectic plays into the polarization of our political views in this country. Is it possible that Americans are being manipulated into this polarization deliberately in order to form something different than the Republic that we now have?

Is it possible that the terrorists have not been captured yet because fear and political polarization serve a preceived greater end - and this falls into a greater plan?

By "greater" I do not mean secular, but perhaps global.

Do you think this is a good thing?

Just curious.

Yes.

Errr, no.

Well, yes and no.





Sorry, I can't resist a dialectic.

Due to the extreme nonconductivity of the dielectric substance (typically, less than 10^^-6 siemens), the synthesis of electrons is completely negated, resulting in the polarization of oppositely charged particles.

Oh.... my bad... I thought you said dielectric.

- Ace

LOL - Yeah - ok, so it's a weird obscure concept - but this is the kind of shit I think of when sitting in traffic.

We've all seen the back of the dollar bill, your answer is right there. It's the Illuminati of course! Nicholas Cage is risking his life to bring us a movie about it coming soon!

As for the dialectic, it's an interesting approach, makes sense in a common-sense way of action-reaction. Could even call it compromise. Of course Hegel I believe took it much further, and the Marxists further still, not so much up on that.

My layman's thought is that US political polarization isn't really a negative dialectic phenomenon, the polar opposites should form a new middle synthesis. Now if you were to put say US hawkish foreign policy and Islamic fundamentalism (hell, even, Christian fundamentalism) against each other, then you might be get a synthesis of the not too pleasant variety.

As for foreign policy, I think it is more of a trump card over other issues that hold more sway in peaceful times. The whole "national security is like oxygen" trope. If one were of the mindset, then this could lead one down to the whole Orwell view of the purpose of war. I don't subscribe to such a view, but no harm contemplating it. But I don't see it is a Hegelian conflict, more a Chewbacca defense.

i can't even manipulate my friends into renting a movie that doesn't suck ass. why do people always think the whole country can be manipulated into going one way or the other?

Hegel aside, my take on the polarization that characterizes the whole of politics these days is that its all a direct result of money being the god-awful mother's milk of politics, and negative campaigning being conclusively shown to be more effective.

Money rules the show because TV advertising is the key to success, and because politicians on both sides have figured out that there's more bang for you buck when you say something bad about your opponenent than when you say something good about yourself.

If all we ever hear is that the other guy sucks, then when you do take a stand one way or the other, we're gonna think that the other guy sucks too.

I'd like to see the FCC mandate that all the broadcasters "donate" air time in equal proportions, and then at least we'd get rid of the money aspect of this stupid game.

But the damn politicians would still all be saying nasty things about the other fellow, so I'm not sure it would solve the entire problem.

- Ace

That's how it works around here. Parties have the legal right to a certain amount of air time.

Opposing views are virtually excluded from major media today (of which there are only six). The Fairness Doctrine (enacted in 1949) was eliminated in 1987 because at that time there were many different networks and the listner could then turn the dial and hear an opposing view. With the consolidation (monopolization) of media, this is no longer true.

More recently the Broadcasting Act of 1996 establishes the Broadcasting Standards Commission. In effect, this merges the Broadcasting Standards Council and the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, creating a single forum for public concerns relating to the portrayal of sex and violence and matters of taste and decency in television and radio programmes, as well as unjust and unfair treatment and unwarranted infringement of privacy by broadcasters.

Because of consolidation, the reasons that led to the demise of the Fairness Doctrine no longer exist. Perhaps it's time to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine?

Do ya think they'll do it? ROTFLMAO

I would love it if you held an inworld event regarding this idea...(any day but today is good for me )

Because it's true. In many ways manipulation of one sort or another is the glue that holds societies and their memes together. There are countless things that we believe and feel that are purely subjective and have no common sense rational basis... that are not arrived at in a vacuum... nationalism, religion, symbol worship, mainstream popular culture, marketing of every kind, politics... they are all forms of manipulation. Some are benign and some are not. Never underestimate the power of the social pressure to conform within communities. There will always be far more followers than there will be innovators and originators. Because of that simple fact of human nature any cultural phenomenon has as much to do with manipulation and peer pressure as anything else. Tell people that the end is nigh and that the mother ship is here to pick us up and you will always find people ready and willing to eat the pudding. How many times have you heard someone (especially right wing politicians) make the claim that the United States was founded by Christians and that our laws are rooted in the Christian bible? It's not true and yet most people in this country believe it without question. Look how many times the Bush people made the insinuation that Iraq somehow had a hand in 9/11. That's not true either and yet a majority of people believed it and it had a major impact on getting support for the invasion. These things are not random happenstance. They're calculated by people smart enough to understand that all that's required to spread mistruth for the sake of changing public perception of an issue is to plant the seeds through the use of repetition. It doesn't take much before you have an army of unwitting accomplices who help to disseminate the lie. When a majority of people believe something it becomes taken for granted as truth. Societies are like bodies of water. Cast a few well aimed stones and you can predict how the ripples will spread.

More pudding?

Law is rooted in morality which is rooted in religion. How can you claim that american laws have no basis in christian thought when 11 states just banned homosexual marriage?
America has frighteningly little separation between church and state.
Around here, if our president so much as uttered the word "God" it would be a scandal.
Our constitution states that the president must be impartial and make his decisions independently of what his personal views might be.

Eggy,

<<Law is rooted in morality which is rooted in religion.>>

I would disagree with the last part of your sentence. I believe that morality is rooted in the human mind, not in religion. Indeed, religion has been responsible for some of the greatest atrocities of which human beings are capable.

By taking away personal responsibility for morality and ethics, religion can indeed justify the most horrendous behaviour. If you can convince yourself that God requires you to burn people alive, slaughter thousands of innocent Muslims (as happened during the Crusades) or fly aircraft into buildings, then you can relinquish all your human responsibility and just follow the Will of God.

I should probably have said that more accurately, our morality comes from our culture which has been heavily based on the past 2000 years of christianity.
Let's get some examples going.
Muslims can have multiple wives. In our world, that would be immoral.
Why? Because we are christian.
Homosexuality is frowned upon today. But in ancient greece, it was fairly common?
Why? Because we are christian.
I think if you started listing everything that is found to be moral or immoral today you would be able to trace a great deal of things to the christian religion.

I like kittens.

I like mice.

Eggy, I agree with you wholeheartedly about how frighteningly little seperateion between church and state there is in the US. My point was that the root of US law is Saxon common law which was around for a good 200 years or more before Christianity was ever introduced among the Saxons. We have way too many laws in this country that deal with religious "moral" issues, but those have all come after the fact and when most of them get passed it's always with the help of the myth that the Bible is the basis for all of our laws.

I agree with Selador too. Go look morality up in the dictionary. It's not a religious word. That's another good example of how misinformation becomes accepted truth through repitition. Most people think that morality is a religious concept which isn't true. To put it another way... Hershey didn't invent chocolate. They just sell a brand of it.

Chocolate was invented by Hersheys right here in the good ole US of A!

Next you are going to try and tell me chocolate was invented by those snotty Europeans.

Sorry, Chip, I just -can't- resist --

The United States was founded by Christians and laws in American are largely rooted in the Christian bible.

However, what few people know -- because it's not taught in public/private school histories, and you don't see it on the History Channel -- is that American colonial history until 1765 was rife with religious wars. American colonists killed American colonists by the thousands over religious issues, and there was actually a full-scale war between the Anglican colony of Virginia and the Catholic colony of Maryland. (Maryland lost.)

The Founding Fathers -- rebels, terrorists, ruthless political leaders from the commercial and professional classes -- were so disgusted with the behavior of Christians in the colonies that most of them accepted Deism -- a practical form of Christianity that taught that God had given us reason and then left most things up to us. And the Founding Fathers enacted laws on the separation of church and state and ruthlessly enforced them -- because they believed one of the three greatest crises facing the revolution and the new nation was getting warfare between Christians under control. So the "Christian" founding of America and the "Christian" foundations of American laws are matters of values and attitudes -- but also matters of controlling Christians' bad behavior toward each other.

I love stuff like this -- it punctures so many balloons, and separates the on-top-of-it people, who say "hmmmm," from the idealogues, who say, "no! no! no!"



No criticism intended, Chip; I generally agree with your points.

Nestle's chocolate is sooo much better than Hershey's. Prolly cause they contain less wax.

And here I was thinking that xocoatl was invented by the Aztecs in pre-columbian mesoamerica.

I think we should just switch back to the Code of Hammurabi. The original has to be best, right?

I wouldnt mind trying some xocoatl. My favorite kind of chocolate is bitter. As bitter as humanly possible please, I'm not too much into sweets. Actually, I dont understand why people dont just sell some kind of soluble cocoa powder so we can make coffee-like cocoa-based beverages.
Your post was entirely tangential though. Historicity has little to do with quality, especially given the obvious fact that quality is subjective.

Laws are supposed to be rooted in ethics not morality. Ethics retain an element of logic whereas morality (according to the average american's conotation of the term) relies upon superstition, fables and fairytales. You are correct in saying that there have been several religious movements, all of which tried their hand at morphing the logical and ethical renderings of the constitution and bill of rights into some Bible the sequel. This was not the intention of the writers who were mostly deists and agnostics. In the past America witnessed the Women's Christian Temperance Movement,
which had a hand in the disastrous prohibition era. During that time, homicides escalated, the black market soared and the Mafia reached its height of power.

This current religious movement is based not upon laws but upon fear, manipulation and a predisposition of the Christian sect towards divine providence. The idea that the Christian code should be followed by all and that God should be called God regardless of the language one speaks or the name of the prophet that supposedly met him. The movement also disregards it's own philosophy by breaking it's moral codes, in this case the ten commandments and gospels, in order to wage war against the infidels AKA terrorists and homosexuals