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A friend of mine suggested I read the book Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger by Waller R Newell. I was flattered he thought I was so well educated.
So many books have been written about human behavior. Dichotomy – Nature/Nurture? Combination? Something else? Add a little Marx and some Nietzsche, Hobbes and Locke, and Heidegger and Rousseau and: Voilà
Except I don’t know the Voilà, any more now than I did before I opened the book. I have to admit that I got lost within the first few pages of what seemed to me to be bafflegab: truth is – it’s way above my pay grade. But the topic is fascinating: The Philosophy of Freedom. It seems to be a push-pull through time.
For me, I believe the Philosophy of Freedom comes from the Bible. If we could just all follow the Ten commandments!
But, let’s carry on.
Try this:
“In order to rescue ourselves from the dreary commercial materialism of the modern age, we must try to recollect and re-energize those latent traces of ancients in ourselves. But one apparently insurmountable obstacle stood in the way of this attempt to recapture the nobility and harmony of the ancient polis – the seemingly irrefutable triumph of the modern physics of matter in motion over the metaphysical cosmologies of the ancients.”(page 1 and 2)
Got that? Well, I get the premise.
Why do we do what we do? Have we evolved or devolved? Or is it a continuum?
While I was trying to read this missive, I remembered something I had learned years ago. Biblical in its origin.
In the Bible there are two stories about the “birth” of Adam. In Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make man in our image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals and all the creatures that creep along the ground.”
The second story comes from Genesis 2:7: “Yahweh God shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being.”
Adam version 1 is the master of all he sees. His job is to subdue the land, to conform it to his needs. He will face life head on, open and curious to all things. He is the first scientist. He will “do.”
Adam version 2 is different. He was made from the land, from adam: “earth.” He is part of nature, not the master of it. He is enthralled with all of creation because of his connection to the ground beneath him. He felt the presence of God when God breathed life into His nostrils. Now he wonders, “Who is this who breathed life into me?” Adam version 2 wants to understand his place in the universe and his connection to all that is. He wants to understand the big picture and his place of “being” in the universe.
Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuro-anatomist and the author of My Stroke of Insight, wrote that her stroke led her to observe the physical and neurological workings of the two halves of the brain. They work synergistically, yet “see” the world differently. She described the left brain as the “doing-consciousness.”(Adam 1) It is the repository of detail, of analytical judgement, of categorizing and thinking in language. The left brain makes sense of the external world, providing boundaries and a sense of self differentiated from others. The right brain exists only in the present moment. It is “spontaneous, carefree, and imaginative.” The right brain perceives the big picture. It is the repository of the sense of oneness with the vastness of the universe. The right brain contains “the being-consciousness.”(Adam 2)
Of all that I have read, I think God got the right dichotomy. We are two parts – a dichotomy: a mixture of “doing,” our place in the world, what we learn in life – nurture and “being,” based on nature. And I have come to a simple conclusion that we either behave like wolves(Adam 1) or sheep(Adam 2): or we behave like cowboys/girls(combination of Adam 1 and 2), along with a side order of narcissistic tyrants(wolves) like Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, George Soros and Anthony Fauci.
The important question is “who wins?” The sheep/wolf, or the cowboy/girl?
Looking back, and not that far, we have been subdued by tyrants, elitists, globalists: Adam 1 on steroids. And the sheep and the wolves have been so busy involved with each other they did not see this happen. Why did they not see? I leave that up to Rousseau, Heidegger and the rest of the theorists. There comes a time when theory is pointless, or perhaps more importantly, a distraction.
But times they are a’changing. And that is also according to Newell.
“Throughout this book, we have seen how Hegel’s successors discovered or envisioned – it is not always possible to say which – a draconian division in the world portending a terrible struggle and a new dawn, whether it be Marx’s polarity between bourgeois and proletarian, Nietzsche’s polarity between Herd-Man and the Overman, or Heidegger’s either/or scenario for our annihilation by global technology or its ushering in of the Shepherd of Being. They were already glimpsed in outline by Heine’s dichotomy between the political Romantics and the armed Kantians. A similar draconian polarity is emerging again, today. Its two divisions have not yet assumed the clarity of their predecessors. But when we think of the words “populism” and “global elite,” everyone senses what those forces are and how the hostility between them is building toward who knows what outcome in the century ahead.” P 297
The outcome always depends on who comes out on top.
And I see the cowboys coming out on top these days after decades of tyrants behind the curtain-the Wizard of Oz, herding the sheep and wolves together to go after each other. The wolves and sheep are always at odds! It is the cowboy who separates them and leads them. The cowboy is a perfect example of the doing and being brain working together trying to lead the wolves and sheep. And I see the cowboys taking down the tyrants; those who subdue the land and make it conform to his needs. Adam 1 devolved.
And I see one cowboy taking the lead over all others.
Donald J Trump.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it.”
Diane Weber Bederman
