Spiritual versus Material basis for Status

Now for the big guns. Hegel. Sure this has been mentioned before. The explanation of Status as the competition for physical existence is only half the coin.

The other side is the coin is the competition for spiritual existsnce: or what the kids of today in UK call "Respek" (OED respect).

Life as has been messily discussed in this blog has two sides to it. There is the biological which is very simple. Bacteria can do it, worms do it, apes do it, humans do it. Quite how we all do it is one of the greatest mysteries and a play ground for scientific investigators - but in essence it is about entropy and energy. Living things reduce their entropy with energy from the environment. (famously so too do refrigerators: but refrigerators don't reproduce). Such a simple basis for life means that life is easy - at worst just a solution to a few games - something that the human race with all its "alleged" progress should have ticked off centuries ago.

What has been troubling for the writer however is that actually life is very hard and very complex and there is no clear indication how to do it well. There are as many ideas on how to live as there are people. It is hard to see any area of life where mankind has the upper hand. This is an extraordinary state of affairs given the obvious difference between a man and a worm. Yet can we find anything to separate them really?

The missing dimension in the materialist view is what we term spiritual. This is the dimension which reflects the material view of life (as a mirror reflects) and enables us to, amongst other things, ask questions about the material world. As annoyingly remains to be proven - a purely material thing could not construct a representation of "materialism" anymore than a hand could grasp itself, or a painter paint of picture whose subject was itself. But this dimension is only hypothetical - it cannot be constructed within itself for the same reason. The temptation to envisage a material basis for the spiritual is the first and only and greatest hurdle to realising our spirituality. It is "empty" as Buddhists often descrive it - a real problem for material loyalists.

Hegel (as opposed to Marx who was a materialist) produced the definitive model - I think - for spiritual processes. He packaged it all in a rigid system as was the fashion of his day which is the weakness of his thinking - but its nuts and bolts are very useful: The Hegelian Dialectic. Put in crude terms it is the thesis, antithesis and synthesis model. You think you know something. But then it does unexpected things. A new idea is formed from all the exceptions which challenges the original model. Conflict exists between the two incomplete one-sided ideas. And then in "theory" this unstable energy spawns the miraculous creation a new-paradigm greater than the sum of the parents. In more modern speak: the two narrow minded people finally think out of their respective boxes to inhabit the larger perspective which includes there previous boxes and where they find harmony.

This is the dream of discussion (or dialectics) envisaged as far back as Socrates and before, and which informs our understanding of multi-party politics and scientific progress. I think it is also pertinent to our own progress as individuals where our life seems to be the endless surmounting of obstacles and conflicts which cause stress, but which are resolved in a stronger self (if it doesn't kill us).

In Hegelian Dialectics the critical struggle is for recognition. To recognise someone is to grant them autonomy and freedom. That is we are saying that we understand that they are a law unto themselves, valuable in their own right, and free to conduct themselves. However in so doing our own mind has presented itself a deep problem. Our own mind has no restraints (why would it restrain itself) but it also has no understanding of itself, and nothing to perceive - you can't see or meet yourself. To understand another person however as being free is to be presented with an solid percievable object which you understand as being independent and free. There is a big crisis present because you now depend upon that other person to return the belief in yourself and prove your own existence and credibility. If they 'dis' you (modern speak for OED disrespect) you are faced with an identifiable physical agent who you have credited with the ability to be free and to chose, and that solid agent has ignored you - where you are unable to find an example of yourself to believe in. You can stare in the mirror and try to fathom out what you are but the mirror reflection is a second you and so can't be the real you. To become real we must be singular and ourselves, yet both seer and seen in 1 object. This is impossible - it is the self reference issue at the heart of being. Our only hope is to credit someone else and have them credit you. This is the dream of love we all seek and true mutual respect, faith and trust.

It thus involves a vast risk. If we hold back on respecting another, then their respect in return is tainted. We must give 101% respect and risk the death of being rejected.

This is the battle for status which we all fall short of seeking material props to support us if our carefully managed games of respect and power play should be defaulted. We don't give 101%, we receieve tainted love in return. The currency is depreciated and the system collapses. In Hegel and Marx this is the fuel for the blood letting of history.

Realising that we are empty in the end however we realise that actually there is no risk to giving 101% and receiving only hatred and disrespect in return. But it is a long and painful and insecure and dark journey. I wonder if the experience with "my muse" has taught me anything here because that is what it was about.

So Status is not just competition for limited resources, but competition for an infinite resource that of Love. Love is actually all anyone needs, there is no shortage of supply. It is all we have to give.