A problem I have been dealing with in Heidegger is that In BEING AND TIME, Heidegger takes a very radical view of dasein's authentic appropriation of tradition which, by necessity, completely takes it apart and puts it back together again as dasein actually knows it instead of the 'everyday' passive acceptance of a vague theme of what tradition is that never examines it rationally in detail or judge even if it fits together coherently.

ALCIBIADES, SYRACUSE, SELF, AND IRAQ

Gary. C. Moore Writes:

Dear  ("Here Comes Everybody' including Bob Guevara,)

Regarding numerous requests to continue with: DIALOGUE: THE DREAM DREAMS THAT MAYBE THERE"S A DREAMER

Thank you for your encouragement but three parts is enough. It did make me think more deeply about the mysterious character of Alcibiades who was both a hero and monster of his day in some ways like Hannibal Lecter without the cannibalism (but I am sure he would not have hesitated in the slightest if the need arouse). He was a political genius on the level of Joseph Stalin and could drink like Joseph Stalin. The only way his political enemies could knock him out of the Athenian political scene was to try to arrest him for the desecration of the street-corner Hermes statues that supposedly happened just before he arrived at the SYMPOSIUM. And that could only have been done away from Athens, and his political base, in Sicily which meant sacrificing the whole Athenian expeditionary force since he was the only person with the brains to pull that off. His enemies were stupid like Socrates' enemies were stupid in the APOLOGY. The Syracuse expedition, if successful, would have been a masterwork of strategy cutting off the wheat supply to Sparta and her allies. So he was also a military genius on the level of Erwin Rommel. Stalin was no military genius. And the battle at Pylos, if I remember right, was his idea and was so decisive the Spartans sued for peace and it would have ended the Peloponesian War. But the 'democratic' assembly of Athens became insanely arrogant and went for the whole hog. And if Alcibiades had stayed in Sicily, Athens would have once again had Sparta under its thumb. Alcibiades could switch political alliances in the flash of an eyelid and always land on his feet. But he was so brilliant that wherever he went, people soon became envious. So he ended up in Asia in a house near the bay of Aegospotami, 'the bay of goats'. The Athenian fleet, like the Assembly supremely overconfident because it had defeated the Spartans and their allies in almost every single naval engagement, puts in for a rest in that bottleneck bay. He rides down on his horse and tells them they need to get the hell out of there. They laugh at him, call him names, and throw things at him, and he rides away. Next morning, guess what's waiting for the Athenians at the entrance of the bay. Someone, maybe Xenophon, recorded that when the news of the total destruction of the fleet reached Athens's port Piraeus, a numinous moan started at the piers, went through the town, up the walled pathway to Athens and reached a soul wrecking climax there. The great ambitions of the Athenian polis were over and it became just another Greek city. Alcibiades ends up with a sword in his hand filled with Thracian arrows. He is one of the greatest 'what if' characters in all of history.

I hope the dialogue addressed some of the social issues in the development of philosophical thinking that Jon brought forward. Usually the word 'social' is suppose to have a benevolent ring to it, but as Thucydides and Jacob Burckhart (Heidegger) pointed out, being 'social' in Athens always had an ever present threat of violence about it. That is why questions like 'What makes a good politician?' (the Sophists) and that a state should have a written and systematic constitution with clearly defined boundaries (Plato, Aristotle) were constant questions among Greek philosophers.

Bob Guevara"

Sunday, May 02, 2004

Subject: Re: RE: Heideggerian Dreaming.

Bob Guevara:

Surely many here do not welcome this kind of conversation; after all, it has nothing to do with Heidegger's ontology. Or does it?

GCM: First of all, I see very little relevant to Heidegger or Hume (whom I believe Heidegger got the best of his ideas from) in the pointless political discussions going on the list raised with such moral fervor when philosophers by now should acknowledge completely there is absolutely no common grounds of morality from individual to individual, much less group to group. What Jud Evans is essentially doing with Heidegger is pointing out is that Heidegger is not rationally self-consistent as a philosopher should be. OR if one finds, as a philosopher, that one CANNOT be self-consistent, one should clearly point the problem out unambiguously as Hume in fact does repeatedly. That is one of the very great strengths of Hume's philosophy -- It hangs together loosely like an AK-47 and works under any and all conditions. The only thing that counts within our very severely limited knowledge of what is really going on is "that way you mentioned. "What works" as distinct from "Right/Wrong" that you mention below. An Alcibiades could make a great political and military victory out of Iraq. MAYBE (and maybe only, a figment of my imagination) this is what is happening, but I just can't see it. A comparison with Alcibiades and Athens at this point of time, I think, is very apt. Is this our Sicilian Expedition?

But my point about Crichton, which I should have brought out but simply did not think of it, is in continuity with my discussion about the nature of the self that had started with Laurence Paul Hemming and that I hope to get back to. How can a self be nothing and yet something? How can it be trivial -- like Hume's God -- and important at the same time? Hume's problematic position is absolutely necessary in understanding Heidegger's concept of 'mineness' or 'ownness' because that is exactly what Hume brings into question, and fundamental questioning without an answer is the basis of Hemming's discussion of Heidegger's methodological atheism as well as Heidegger's BEING AND TIME and his NIETZSCHE lectures, and Hume leaves in question. Great scientific theories have been made in the 20th century from other scientists' leftovers and trivialities. Wittgenstein once wrote in a notebook, "I must be redeemed before I believe." Truly changing oneself as Crichton did -- but not suddenly, actually over a period of years he states -- has all the force of redemption and conversion. The Catholic Church has always said grace must come before conversion, creating numerous philosophical and theological problems, whereas Crichton tries to analyze it logically and scientifically which is probably, like Doubting Thomas, it takes a while for him to get the message. It is interesting that the King James version of the NEW TESTAMENT makes the scene in JOHN after Jesus' resurrection with Doubting Thomas seem to convey the message faith is superior to inductive observation, whereas the Revised Standard Version seems to turn that 180 degrees around. Truly changing one's self is terribly hard. So that process of change or redemption should say much about what the self is or is not. I think the very knowledge of such a thing happening gives tremendous ground to Jud's idea of the a priori "instantiation" of the self. He shows there is a solidity to it very much like Hume's insistence on the solidity of the concept of causality AS A BELIEF! And considering Hume's judgment of validity of any concept whatsoever is its greater or lesser 'vivacity' gives such a 'belief', the average person feels very strongly about the reality of both 'self' and 'causality'.

BOB GUEVARA: Sometimes I experience uncanny coincidence in my world. Some use the word synchronicity. I'd just finished laying out the standard model of the adaptation mechanism that we use in the work I've described in the past here. Then I read your piece. I was already in that conversation. The model is employed with a view to Hume's notion in precisely that way you mentioned. "What works" as distinct from "Right/Wrong." The "problem" that I see, is if we are indeed ontologically determined, then how is the exception manifested? Isn't Crichton given by the same understanding of being that gives us all?

GCM: Yes. We have the equipment. We just don't use it. I have said the same about other animals. It is far too hard or far too painful. He ignores these things. He just sees the problem. He is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. His feet are getting in terrible shape. Everybody including the guide and his girlfriend tell him to go back. He refuses. He climbs to the top. He gets back down. He has spots and scabs on his feet on his feet for months afterward. He never regrets his decision though it nearly cost him his feet. He takes his stubbornness to extremes. It is worthwhile only because he thinks about the experience, why he had to do it in the first place, and what his real motive behind doing it actually was objectively.

BOB GUEVARA: What is absolutely amazing to me is that it takes, on average, 60 hours of rigorously focused conversation for human beings to clearly "see" their adaptation mechanism. It's literally like pulling teeth and it takes what amounts to violence on everydayness. Once clearly seen and in the midst of a community minimally meeting criticality (in terms of number of individuals), then they are free in the sense that a freedom to be is experienced. I feel like a surreal unwinding of one's identity. Very importantly, this freedom is available to everyone in the conversation. Everyone in the community. From the most humble and least educated to the most sophisticated of individuals. There is no need to intellectualize.

However, once back in the midst of the always already conversation, they revert back to their adaptation mechanisms. The experience devolves into a mere memory. This happens without staying in the new conversation and after a matter of a few weeks.

So is Crichton truly an exception? Or is he just an unusual difference from the same ontological basis?

GCM: If he were truly "an exception" versus "an unusual difference from the same ontological basis" he would be God. The second is true, and anyone can do it - but only as a scientist ruthlessly studying one's own activity without any sentimentality whatsoever. It is a matter of doing what you want no matter what the sacrifice even if that means your life. How many people risk anything substantial at all simply to know something?

Bob Guevara 'Doing the Right thing' all the time is making a circle to protect the young when the predator has figured out how to break the circle.

Great piece Gary. "But, once behaviorally adapted, the behavior tends to stay when circumstances change."

Given my experience of watching many hundreds (if not a few thousand) of people get their behavioral patterns, I'm almost tempted to say that this could also describe human being in the current epoch . Seriously though, I don't intend to offend anyone.

GCM:

Dear Bob, Offend! Offend! You have stated Michael Crichton's precise point he has stated in numerous novels, and I tried NOT to imply that precisely so someone might pick up on it. And you did. Also, it was irrelevant to that specific conversation and therefore would have been preaching.

Michael Crichton deserves much more serious attention than he gets. He is a thoroughly trained and experienced scientific observer as well as innovator. That he never mentions philosophy is a plus as far as I am concerned. His self observation and empirical method of changing his own character in his book TRAVELS is something of a marvel and possibly truly unique. He did not like the doctors he was around while at Harvard Medical School, so, while getting his medical degree and going on to the Salk Institute for a couple of years, he refused to be a doctor. But other people have done that: Arthur Connan Doyle, Piercy Walker.

He realized he twice, while scuba diving at Bonaire in the Caribbean, that he knowingly and recklessly put himself in near-death situations. He truly had no specific reason to wish for death, he had everything he could possibly want and tried to achieve, but in reviewing his actions right before he went diving he noticed a strange tendency to question the safety of things he had no real reason to question. It was a strange anxiety, unfocused, but the only observable cause of his abnormally reckless behavior under water.

He hypothesized a number of possible causes for this 'over picky' pre-dive anxiety, but none were convincing. So, on the advice of a psychologist, he started keeping a diary recording every feeling he had, something he had been adverse to ever doing before. He found he did not at all like the person he discovered when he re-read the diary. He found he felt, but relatively rarely expressed it, hyper-critical of everybody and everything around him.

He goes to a nature reserve in Pahang Province, Malaya. He wants to see wild animals in the wild, especially tigers. He gets along alright with his very competent guide, but every one else he comes in contact with irritates the hell out of him because they interfere, to his mind, with his over-riding purpose of seeing tigers. Nothing goes right, nothing is seen, and his manipulation of the situation is a total failure. Frustrated and irritable, he wakes up one morning in their camp near a village to find a deer and its fawn have wandered into camp. They are use to human beings because the villagers feed them all the time. Then he hears the story of how that came about. The deer wanders one day into the village. The villagers welcome it and feed it. But they discover it has a violent aversion to goats and tries to kill them if possible. So what do the villagers do? They get rid of the goats. Crichton thinks at the time this is absolutely absurd, that the villagers had a dozen much more practical paths of action to follow. But they never hesitated at the time: They immediately got rid of the goats and all the benefits having goats around brings. How stupid! His guide listens patiently to his berating of the villagers and says nothing. Then he slowly realizes on his own why he feels so miserable and has had such a miserable time on the trip: He has to have everything and everybody under control, that being that way even when successful doesn't make him feel good. And now when he is a complete failure, he realizes he could have had a very enjoyable experience at the reserve even without seeing tigers if he hadn't been concentrating so much on things going right and making people around him do what he thought was the right thing. The story of the deer became a rite of cleansing humiliation instead of just beautiful or quaint. He said when he finally got back to the States, he felt unusually good and has stayed that way.

This is a man that can change his character. How many people can do that even under the stress of extreme situations? But he does it time and time again, sometimes as a passive realization, but most of the time under his own initiative. Most people who are super-millionaires and highly respected as a matter of course think it absurd that anything could be wrong with their character. After all, everybody obviously thoroughly approves of them. But Michael Crichton truly does not look at himself through other peoples' eyes, and I do not think he even realizes how profoundly rare that is. He just goes on to the next thing that interests him, always changing according to his own desires, something which sometimes appalls his publishers, business associates, and the book reviewers. But he never hesitates and he never stops. His eyes are wide open.

Gary