Perennial Problems, Projects & Philosophies - Part 3

The evolution and conservation of ideas on human life.

Fulfilling the promise made in Part 2, I aim to discuss the general contours and contributions of modern developments to the ongoing conversation surrounding the human project and the open query of living well. It is exceedingly difficult and perhaps impossible to adequately address the multitude of important figures in any depth, though I will endeavor to touch briefly on some.

Why do I care about this?

As Albert Camus, a 20th century existentialist philosopher, posits in The Myth Of Sisyphus, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.'' In a way this is an inversion to the question of living well. There is a sort of presumption of hope and courage in living.

One cross cultural observation I find remarkable is the convergence of the Western existentialists’ on the intrinsic meaninglessness of existence with the concept of shunyata, or emptiness, in Eastern religions. And yet they reach totally opposite conclusions. Emptiness is a central theme on the path to awakening in those systems. I suspect the historical context of World Wars 1 and 2 in the West was a contributing factor whereas shunyata arises in the context of a more comprehensive system that also emphasizes and develops compassion.

However, I digress. Let us start in earnest.

My work here is to observe and connect the continuity across the centuries like a temporal constellation of ideas.

Let us briefly survey the birth of psychology and see how ideas that are millenia old relate to present times.

While psychology as a field began in earnest in 19th century Germany, it could be argued that there is a continuity with  older systems of thought I’ve discussed at length.  In a way, it is the continuation of philosophy married with the scientific method. Many of the early psychologists were also philosophers.

There were early experimentalists like Fechner, who was instrumental to psychophysics (an endeavor of "measuring the mind") connecting external phenomena with subjectivity and Ebbinghaus who studied memory. Then there is the American father of psychology William James and his pragmatist approach, and the rise of behaviorism with exponents like Pavlov and Skinner. There is also Piaget, who studied childhood development and education, who adds an important longitudinal perspective to the individual.

As pertains to the aim of this piece, psychoanalytic figures like Freud, Jung and Frankl are pivotal. Notice the similarities among Platonic ideas of the tripartite soul (rational, spirited and appetitive) and Freudian terms like Id, Ego and Superego or Jungian terms like the Persona and Shadow.

One key development of psychology is the transition from studying dysfunction and mental ailments to the topic of well-being and flourishing in the humanistic perspective of the 1960’s connected with figures like Maslow and Rogers. A further development is the emergence of positive psychology in the late 1990’s with founders Seligman and Czsikszentmihalyi, who contributed to research on flow, a term that has entered mainstream usage. In this regard, psychology comes full circle back to Aristotelian eudaimonia.

Interdisciplinary fields like cognitive science also deserve a seat at the table of this conversation, studying the mind from a variety of fields including psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience and anthropology.

A profoundly important figure to me as one sympathetic to synthesis and curation is the work of Ken Wilber, founder of integral theory, which is a kind of meta-theory of everything.

And at the very cusp of the conversation, I find the work of John Vervaeke and Bonnitta Roy invaluable and pertinent in the scope and depth of their perspectives.

One closing cultural observation is how psychotherapy emerged in the West arguably as a consequence of mind-body dualism whereas in cultures like India and China there were already holistic applied and philosophical systems like Chinese medicine and Ayurveda that took into account the whole being, their environment, their activities and their inner life. By contrast, the American Medical Association was instrumental in separating the person such that if one has a physical ailment one should see a doctor whereas if one has a mental disturbance one is referred to a psychiatrist and so forth creating a hydra of specialists from the allopathic perspective.

Why should you care?

Without some measure of consideration, we are swept up in a vacuous and unintentional hedonism, buffeted this way or that by our drives to avoid pain and seek out fleeting pleasures devoid of lasting fulfillment. A meaningful life is both intentional and connected with ourselves, others and the world. With many of the world’s wonders quite literally available at our fingertips, it seems to me deplorable that so many go through the motions of daily life without zest or verve. I see nihilism and anomie more as symptomatic of a disconnected life in a toxic culture more than an actual point of view one can inhabit for very long, as I imagine a truly committed nihilist would end their life and be done with it. 

Despite its trials and tribulations, or perhaps in spite of them, in the next edition I will argue that life is fundamentally worthwhile. Heaven and hell are here, not elsewhere.