Cyclical Revolutions of Evolution; Progress?

Dropping our sloppy preconceptions is not easy to do
Being the exception plays to Individualism's rules

The tools and rules our minds exploit to carve out human consciousness
are evolving like our species and contain a few useless remnants

Like the 'tailbone' of competition that causes a basal kind of pain
That old jealousy that preserved the apes makes us revert to them again

Nothing's the same yet life's cyclical; our children wear our worn out genes
And dropping preconceived jeans in public is much harder than it seems. 

Generational Cycles

Did  You Know of the Day:
Did you know that you didn't invent yourself?

Ok, well in a way you did, but it's like you've been handed a spiral-shaped canvas of colors and it's been up to you what artwork you've made.
The sky may seem blue because of your inherited genetics, it could also be painted grey thanks to a different palette of D to the N to the A.

What we have inherited becomes bangingly conspicuous when we bounce it against people from other families of origin - more than likely our spouse/partner.

We see that we were raised to:
        Express love differently
   Use money differently
   Aim for different things in life
   Seek attention differently

Yes I could have found other synonyms to prevent typing the word different 4 times, but I was trying to prove the point of difference with a repetition of sameness...oh nevermind...

Here's the thing:
Not only do we approach this epic game called life with divergent sets of "rules" handed down from our upbringing, but we have also inherited the battles of previous generations.

Alcoholism may have squished your dad and his dad, and his old papa...you gonna let it squish you?
Depression may have dampened the skies of yo mama and her mama's mama, as well as Ms. Jackson.
Learned helpness is not only learned, but taught, and maybe it's been taught to you.

But uh ha, there is a glorious ray of sunshine shattering rain into a spectrum of  colors, and it is this:
YOU have the power to break these cycles!  And the stakes are so much higher than just your own life.  It will affect your kids, and their spouses, and the world we leave behind and eternity into forever and ever Amen.

Oh, but that's not the end, it's the beginning.  Wanna slay some dragons?

The 3 Phases that Everything, and I mean Everything, Goes Through (According to Hegel) - PART 3

     The Grand Finale

Oooo you excited little critter you!  I know you can't wait for me to reveal what Hegel's 3rd phase is!  Good news: I'm a compassionate individual and you have to wait no longer!

Yes the 3rd, and final phase is called...

DIFFERENTIATED UNITY

The circle finally closes on itself like a golden 18th century ring.  It's a marriage of the dispersed elements that were haphazardly causing mischief in the second phase.  It's a new unity that's not primitive like the single life of the first phase, but not overly self-conscious like the adolescent 2nd phase.  It's adulthood, and it's anything but boring!

This Differentiated Unity brings about a new harmony as we can transcend our obsession with difference.

Hegel says that this is evident in Christianity in which God & humanity, Law & grace, Self & Other are reconciled.  There may or may not be confetti involved.

It's love, see, that allows us to live by the Spirit of the Living WORD instead of the written letter of the LAW.  Make sense?  Ok it's abstract...

...but it's also not.  Let me summarize:

When we are young (and when history is young, and philosophy is young, and thought is young) it is necessarily simplistic in its constructions of the universe.  Ignorance is bliss and it's a jolly good phase what...if you can be satisfied with it. 
Once consciousness (or global communication) allows for the idea of contradictory ideas, we are flung into an overly self-conscious phase in which we question everything, and for a while lose our identity.  Woe is us. 
But never fear, because if you are willing to expose yourself to the Dark Knight...no wait, the Dark Night, then the 3rd phase will dawn with new, unifying light: You can transcend difference without some tacky eclecticism.  You can be yourself because you are accepted just the way you are because of something that's happened on a cosmic scale.  

"Oh there he goes talking about religion again," you may say.

Well firstly, yes.

and Secondly...duh!!

Oh, and PS: http://www.AsleepInEden.com/

The 3 Phases that Everything, and I mean Everything, Goes Through (According to Hegel) - PART 2

Dum dum dee dum...Phase 2 of the growth: 

Now this part is both paradigm-shifting and uncomfortable.   Remember what it was like when you first realized that everyone was forming opinions about you?  Everyone!  Ah, the glorious hyper-self-consciousness of the teenage years!  What dawning had you awakened to?  Metaphorically, of course.  I'm well aware that you hardly ever awoke at dawn in your teenage years!

You awoke to the 2nd of Hegel's phases: A Dualistic Split.

This involves a fragmented view of reality caused by fractured divisions between Self and Other.

- In religion this is typical of the Judaism.  A chasm between people and God leads them to live a nomadic lifestyle and live in, what Hegel calls “an unhappy consciousness” (42).  Wondering around, waiting for paradise.  Some Christians...a lot of Christians...still inhabit this mindset.  The Law is something imposed on them from above; something they can never live up to.

- In child development this takes the form of developing the analytical left side of the brain through education and acculturation.  The terrible two's say waddup.  This process peaks in adolescence, when the child realizes the power of their own opinions.   

- This is the modernist phase of philosophy in which Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” rules.  And it's all about me.  Humans abuse the planet to make themselves nice pretty outfits, or to make their bank accounts look nice and pretty.  Hey, everything is a bank account, we begin to think.  Time is divided into neat little compartments, each allocated to particular causes.  Time itself is a bank account with an unalterable balance that we continuously make withdrawals from.

It's an uncomfortable phase because it's the recognition of how far we have to go.  We suddenly understand something of how little we understand (for some teenagers that takes longer than others :)  But it's necessary. 

At this point you could run back to where the world was unified and everything seemed hunky dorey...and live a life of denial...

Or you could jump down the rabbit hole head first and hope that hitting your head on the bottom causes you to become open-minded instead of well...the Mad Hatter.

If he was sane he'd never be spilling the tea!

On God and Philosophy

Evolution is self-correcting and so is faith. Evolution needed the big bang and faith needs a first step. Martin Luther King said “you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” It’s only through the transmutation (tranfiguration) that occurs through the renewal of our minds that we can start to fathom these things. As Aquinas asserts, faith is not a way of knowing that leads to believing, but a way of believing that leads to knowing. Empirical philosophy is trying to put the cart before the horse and then whipping the poor equestrian!

Look, your conception of God is wrong, as are all of ours (courtesy of our finite minds). Although there’s proof that babies and animals have very different frames of consciousness than we do, any ENCULTURATED conceptions of God present in adult rationality are almost certainly flawed from genesis (as in both from the beginning AND also cos of Genesis the book). As usual, the finite symbols of language that we paint our rational consciousness pictures in are too dualistic to accurately speak of esoteric principles. The word “truth”, for instance, has been hijacked by empiricists and applied to a very narrow range of observable phenomena. This wasn’t the only conception of truth that philosophers originally pondered over. Truth is also a way. Its what is meant to be and, beyond human distortion, IS (ie. truth). Scripture says “test the Spirits [cos many can seem wise but aren't] and that “a tree is judged by its fruit”. So you KNOW that you’re experiencing God when the ongoing encounter produces the following:love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and self-control. It may sound cliched but these “fruits of the Spirit” are profound and empirically verifiable (at least psychologically) frames of mind. Seek and you’ll find bruv. It’s philosophers’ prerogative to conduct these kind of mental/spiritual/abstract experiments. You can’t see it as testing GOD (remember He’s not a fan of that). But test the power of prayer and the application opportunities that it produces (by following the inner promptings when the situations arise), and then check for increases in these Spiritual fruits in your life. And walla, you’ve found God. (For yourself at least, it’s a secondary concern to try and prove it to the empirically-obsessed who’s hearts are hardened.)

Cyclical Revolutions of Evolution. Progress?