INTELLECTUAL SELF DEFENCE

I'm confused.

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How is it that ordinary decent people can have such different opinions on how governments should govern and how economies should function? The battle lines seem clearly drawn, like on the battlefield of Kuru in the Bhagavad Gita. On the one hand, there are those who would work to siphon wealth from the bottom and concentrate it at the top; on the other hand, there are those who would work to reduce that inequality. Currently, the top 1% of American society has more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined, and reports confirm that inequalities are increasing. I believe there is a battle for people's minds, and this article is about developing an intellectual self defence.
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In rare cases where the topic of politics/economics is even broached, I encounter vastly different political opinions. Is it just a question of having different values? Are those on the right just more selfish? Are those on the left just more compassionate? I find it hard to believe that ordinary people I talk to--friends, relatives, co-workers--can have such differing values, but that seems to be the case. If you side with Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics you're ostensibly supporting those who would concentrate wealth among an elite and by extension those who would not hesitate to use brutal methods to accomplish that goal (See Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine). If you side with F. D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, you're ostensibly supporting those who care about the less fortunate and would use government to redistribute wealth (See Paul Krugman, Conscience of a Liberal; Adam Cohen, Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and The Hundred Days that Created Modern America).
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Perhaps different values can partly be explained by different structures of development (Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything). In broad outlines, we all start at egocentric stages, progress to ethnocentric stages, followed by worldcentric stages, with each higher level characterized by greater inclusion and caring. In terms of moral development then, a decentering occurs, and we become less and less selfish, more and more compassionate. If the developmentalists are right, we have less freedom to choose our value systems than we might think. These background structures speak through us. So then levels of development and different values that come with those structures can explain some of those differing political opinions, but perhaps other things are at work as well.
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Is it also a question of access to different information? Maybe in a former time this could be so, but today,with our laptops and iphones, this seems unlikely. Cyborg-like, we're hardwired into the Internet. We have the world at our fingertips: we can all access information from the Fraser Institute (Canadian right wing think tank) AND the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (a vitally important Canadian research institute on the left). So probably access to information is not a key determinant of political awareness and opinion, although it might play a role. People are already tilted one way or another, then most likely seek out literature or information that supports that tilt. In Astra Taylor's Examined Life, Avital Ronell says, "There is something called the hermeneutic circle: you have already understood what you are about to learn."
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Is it then a question of indoctrination or ideological brainwashing? I believe Noam Chomsky once said that the longer one spent studying in certain hallowed academic institutions, the deeper the indoctrination. Perhaps this is so, but it just baffles the mind how this can happen. Or maybe it shouldn't baffle the mind--it has taken me almost two decades to be able to write this article. This is really interesting.
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How does indoctrination happen? Does it work like the rules of toxicity? Toxicologists tell us that at certain concentrations and lengths of exposure, most things are toxic. So if we grow up hearing about the benefits of free markets, deregulation, flat taxes, lower corporate taxes, free trade, and cuts to social programs over and over and over and over again, do we just stop thinking critically? If we grow up hearing about the evils of big government and unions over and over and over and over again, do certain aspects of mind and heart just simply atrophy? We just might begin to believe, like President Herbert Hoover during the worst depression years, that helping the desperate meant doing a moral disservice to them.
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So, why do we have such different political opinions and loyalties? Republicans and Democrats, the Conservatives and NDP, The Right and The Left. A tentative answer then would be this: a combination of structures of consciousness and corresponding differences in values, access to information, and indoctrination.
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The battle lines seem clearly drawn and there is a subtle battle for people's minds. In modern democratic states, you can't beat people into submission, as in George Orwell's 1984, and so ideological warfare is even more crucial. We're not quite at Huxley's Brave New World either, where programming and conditioning reached an apex such that everyone was exploited and happy. I would say however that current reality--where presuppositions are often embedded in the questions that frame debates (Chomsky's What We Say Goes)-- is tilted in favor of Huxley's vision over Orwell's. And what's at stake in this battle for people's minds? There is much on the line: nothing less than a greater or lesser portion of the pie we've all worked so hard to produce.

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So let us develop our own intellectual self defence. Let us rise up and be counted then, living authentically and courageously as Heidegger encouraged. There is hope (See In Bolivia, under Morales, the revolution is indigenous, The CCPA Monitor, Vol. 16, No. 10, April 2010).
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The funny thing was, I read some of William F. Buckley's (1925-2008) letters to Nancy Reagan, and I felt, strangely, a feeling that was warm and unexpected. My ideological enemy became, for a moment, another human being. Perhaps, seen from a grander perspective, a perspective that is currently beyond my limited vision, the battle between conservatives and liberals might be just the way it has to be--for now. After all, Bill Buckley is, like all of us, another evolving being in an evolving universe.

HEIDEGGER AND THE LAW OF ATTRACTION

The Law of Attraction is all around me. I suppose I must have attracted it. I hear it from friends, co workers, coaches, and Oprah; I see it in books and websites and newspaper articles. I raise questions, and people object, sometimes quite vigorously. I suppose most people who believe will continue to believe despite what I say. And those that don't believe don't need to hear what I have to say. Nevertheless, let me write down my thoughts, if only for my own sake. I wonder what Martin Heidegger, one of the great European continental philosophers of the 20th century, would have said about it.
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The Law of Attraction is about always being able to get whatever you want , if you focus your thoughts and energies and actions enough. Like attracts like. You create your own reality. There are apparently no limits. You're fully responsible for your own reality, because you yourself created it.
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I turn to Heidegger (despite his associations with Nazism) and my own life experience to help me reflect. I believe Heidegger would have dismissed The Law of Attraction as an incomplete and even harmful doctrine. In Being and Time, Heidegger coined a new word to describe human beings: Dasein, which translates to Being-in-the-World. We are always situated in the world, and this particular world that he refers to is not the physical world of rocks, trees, and buildings. This world is the unseen, interior network of cultural backgrounds and linguistic systems that shape and limit what we think and how we think. It influences how we act in a nightclub, how we behave at a funeral, how we vote, how we make sense of what someone else is saying, how we simply live.

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If I am a subject, then this world is the intersubject, or intersubjectivity, because it is about the connections between subjects. We're embedded in this world and can't escape it. In Heidegger's words, we are thrown into it. This interior intersubjective world affects the other world: the exterior physical world around us, the world I can see and measure with scientific instruments. It influences everything from how we design and erect our buildings and bridges to how we create art. The reverse is true as well: our ideas and designs for bridges must take into account the laws of physics and how molecules bond. And Heidegger tells us both of these worlds - the interior intersubjective world and the exterior world - impose limits on what and how we can be.
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Let's take a look at my own experience. The worlds I live in present me with a range of careers I can choose from. I can be a musician, but only certain types. I can be a symphonic musician, a jazz musician, a rap musician, a world music musician, a composer, an arranger, an instructor, perhaps some sort of combination of the above, but I can't normally be a wandering minstrel of the Middle Ages. That is just not something that even occurs to me!
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In the early 21st century, being an orchestral musician means competing with dozens for a single position, unlike the situation some thirty to forty years ago. Too much supply and not enough demand. And this means not all of us can win orchestral jobs. Even highly qualified musicians have trouble winning jobs. Now according to the Law of Attraction, all of us could eventually win orchestra jobs if we just learned to used the Law. This is just not borne out by the facts.
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Furthermore, if anyone could use the Law of Attraction to be richer, why are inequalities of wealth and income increasing? The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (http://www.policyalternatives.org/) reported that between 1998 and 2006, the 100 highest paid Canadian CEO's increased their compensation by 201 %. In 2006 those CEO's were paid 259 times higher than the average Canadian worker. Am I to believe that the Law of Attraction only works for the rich?
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I believe Heidegger would have concluded the Law of Attraction to be not only false, but even harmful to society. First, it can blind people to the very real inequalities hard wired into our Anglo Saxon neo-liberal version of capitalism (see Jim Stanford, Economics for Everyone). Reality being harsh, it's easy to see why so many people turn to an ostensibly empowering but misguided fantasy, instead of organizing politically for a better share of the pie. It gives people false hopes. In addition, people might end up blaming the poor for being poor, the sick for being sick, the marginalized for being marginalized. Finally, it could exacerbate the documented growth of narcissism in our society by encouraging people to believe that they create their own reality (see Twenge and Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic). I believe it was Ken Wilber who said: "You don't create your reality, psychotics do."
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We are constantly testing our personal freedom against the world's limits. I'm reminded of the serenity prayer of Reinhold Neibuhr:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
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No doubt the Law of Attraction has helped some people improve their lives, mostly in the first world, not the third, and that is no surprise: the techno-economic bases are drastically different. Positive thinking and optimism can definitely help. But make no mistake, there are limits that our world imposes on our thinking and actions--some overt, some subtle, some very difficult to spot. Unfortunately the Law of Attraction doesn't teach us the wisdom to know the difference.
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The positive side is that all of this shows a real spiritual hunger in N. American society. We have normally been given the choice between conventional religion and secular humanism/atheism. What a terrible choice to have to make! The result is that many people turn to dozens of New Age/ New Thought spiritual approaches, one of which is the Law of Attraction. Unfortunately many of these approaches are incomplete: they lack any real understanding of intersubjectivity that continental philosophy has brought to the world in the mid to late 20th century. I believe that supplementing these New Thought approaches with post-modern studies of intersubjectivity (e.g. Heidegger, Foucault, Habermas, Gadamer) could lead to more intellectual rigour. Then we would begin to have a more rounded spirituality, on the way towards an integral spirituality (Ken Wilber: Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality; Integral Spirituality).