Reflections on Historical Determinism

All words, all concepts, all theories, all paradigms are defined in great part by their 'polar opposite paradigm'... We think that each of these polar opposite paradigms contradict each other, that they are mutally exclusive from each other, and yet we are fooled because we have all been deeply taught in Aristotelean logic that states that 'A' is 'A' and 'B' is 'B' and never the two should meet. A and B are identified, each in their own right, and each relative to be distinguished from each other by their seemingly mutually exclusive characteristics and properties.

A wolf is a wolf (A), and a coyote is a coyote (B), and nobody knowledgeable in the mutually distinguishable characteristics of wolves and coyotes will ever confuse a wolf for a coyote. Right? Unfortunately, Nature is always capable of throwing curve balls at us. And changes of pace. Just when we think that we have a 'classification system' totally and cleanly mastered -- in Aristotlean style -- along comes a 'new creature', a new 'evolutionary specimen' that doesn't fit totally and cleanly into our just mastered classification system. A wolf mates with a coyote -- and our nice, neat classification system is thrown into chaos. Now we have a 'colf'.

This is what Hegel objected to about Aristolean logic. Many things in life are not neatly classifiable. People interact and are influenced by each other. The direction of 'causal influence' is not always neatly one way. We call one person a 'victim' and the other person the 'victimizer' and by using this 'Aristotlean either/or paradigm', we blind ourselves to the fact that the 'victim' could have also partly been the 'victimizer', and the 'victimizer' could have also partly been the victim'. Like in a hockey fight, perhaps one was the 'instigator' and the other was the 'retaliator'. We will get to the issue of 'historical determinism' in a minute, but bear with me for a minute, as I try to make crystal clear the difference between 'Aristotlean either/or, right or wrong logic' vs. 'Hegelian dialectic, two-way, logic'.

How come our police officers and domestic courts cannot see what any hockey fan can? Men and women often share the responsibility and the blame in the rise and escalation of an argument becoming a case of domestic violence. But when you have a police and court system -- fueled by political and lobbyist pressures -- with the unwritten mandate to 'protect our women from domestic violence', masked under the 'illusion of equal rights', you have an evolving -- or non-evolving -- legal system that is essentially just as 'matriarchally biased' now as it used to be 'patriarchally biased'. It used to be that a woman often had to walk into a court full of men -- both lawyers and judges. Now you have a situation that is just as common -- a man walking into a court full of women -- both layers and judges. 'Feminist bias' is just as inappropriate in a court of law striving for 'equal rights', 'fairness', and 'justice' -- as 'masculine bias' is...

A man should not be convicted -- or even arrested -- for a domestic transgression that a woman wouldn't have been arrested for. A man should have just as much right to 'personal space' and 'personal privacy' in his own home as a woman should. It makes no difference whether it is an angry man hounding a woman from room to room in their shared house, or whether it is an angry woman hounding a man from room to room in their shared house. You can say that the man is the greater physical danger, and that the woman should be more protected, but many angry women are no strangers to knives, threatening with knives, or threaten to do something drastic while her man is asleep... Power -- or the lack of it -- can easily be 'compensated' for.

A man should have every bit as much right to 'feel safe when he falls asleep' as a woman should. And yet, too often, 'threats' made by a woman -- which are not physical, but which threaten to be physical -- are not taken seriously by the police, usually they are not even phoned in, they tend to get 'swept under the rug' by both police and court systems alike, and when the man finally 'reaches his threshold of tolerance', she says something 'that pushes his intolerance button' -- and he 'snaps' -- not a complete snap, but enough to try to 'physically push' her out of his own room, so that he can lock his door and regain some sense of peace and privacy against a woman who has 'also partly snapped and gone verbally postal on him' -- 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' , and then once she gets her man to 'snap', to 'lose it' and 'physically push her', she knows that she has the full weight of the domestic justice system that will paint her as an 'assault victim'...

She just makes the call, and her man is taken away in handcuffs....he may have never spent a day in jail in his life....but regardless, he will now be treated very seriously by the court system, be evicted from his house, separated from his children for the duration of the court case, probably demanded to take an 'anger management' course' which is partly laughable if there had been any videos and microphones in the house to see and hear who was going 'ballistic'....And this is what we call 'equal rights' today -- equal rights under 'Matriarchal Law'.

I use this example to get now to the issue of 'historical determinism'. Let us contrast historical determinism with its polar opposite concept -- 'existential freedom'.

Hegel was a 'dialectic historical deteminist'. He didn't believe in trying to predict the future: just understanding the past -- dialectically.

In this example above, we could say that there used to be 'Patriarchal Law' in which women were much 'abused', 'dominated', and 'neglected' in a male dominated court of law. For the past 10 or 20 years now . we have seen much of the reverse: men 'abused', 'dominated', and 'neglected' in a female dominated court of law. The anti-thesis or counter-thesis of Patriarchal Law is now very much at work in our domestic and sexual court systems. Call it 'Matriarchal Law'. To be sure, this is a generalization -- but still something that we all -- both men and women -- need to think long and hard about. Because what 'goes around comes around'. For both men and women.

Wherever there is serious bias, inequality, and discrimination in either direction -- against either men or women -- we are creating a breeding ground for escalating distrust between the sexes. We are seeing less and less marriages -- even less and less men and women who even want to experience the legal risks of living with each other. Both men and women are becoming increasingly 'paranoid' about protecting their own money and property due to the serious risk of losing it -- or a significant part of it -- in a 'combined' living arrangement.

Nobody -- neither man or woman -- wants to be 'robbed' by a 'golddigger' or by a love relationship turned bad to worse, to worst nightmare. Individuals should be legally required to do 'finanacial asset and liability statements' before they enter into a combined living arrangement. 'Pre-nuptual agreements' -- if that is what you want to call them -- should be 'legally required' so that nobody has to feel bad about asking their partner to sign one.

Both sexes should have their pre-marriage or common-law money and property legally respected and protected. I have seen situations where 'both men and women have been serially married numerous times'. With each passing marriage, I have seen men get progressively 'poorer', and 'women progressively 'richer'. And then 50 year old single women start looking around for divorced men who are as economically well off as they are. And all they find are men who have been through 'the court ringer' numerous times, still have financial responsibilities to pay past wives, and children now in university who are in their 20s' 'but divorced dad is still on the hook for paying their tuition and living expenses', even as married men are under no such court deman, and our poor divorced man may also be trying to help his own parents who are having a very tough financial time with their combined government pension which is not covering their expenses. It seems like everyone -- the courts, the past wives, the children, the parents, the new girlfriend, the tax man --- they all want a 'financial piece of dad' -- even when he has no more financial pieces to give.

Then when middle age dad starts to crumble under all the financial stress and pressure coming from all directions, if or when he can no longer live up to all his 'court committments -- we call him a 'dead beat dad'. I call it a 'dead beat court system' that is crucifiying men on court room crosses... I saw such a man -- with a very, very healthy income, far better than many men -- finally give up and move back with his wife who he had separated from, not because he had resolved to making a 'new loving committment to her', but rather, because he was a financially beaten man. He moved back in with her -- and two weeks later, he had a heart attack and died on his family room couch.

Again, this is a generalization, every case is always partly different, women can get financially crucified too, and women, as they move upward on the corporate ladder, climbing to loftier and loftier positions, all of a sudden like men have been for the last 20 or 30 years, are becoming 'increasingly paranoid' about losing all, or a significant part of, their financial assets in a possible divorce court case. Under such 'new' financial circumstances, suddenly, it is in their interest too, to get pre-nuptual aggreements signed -- and respected in court if their new partner has less money and property than them. Actually, this is not 'paranoia'. It is a real live drama, and messed up court systems that constantly find new ways to 're-distribute wealth' to people that the wealth shouldn't be going to, and never belonged to in the first place. The only exception should be a woman or man has thrown away a good possible career in order to stay home and play 'mother' and 'housewife' or 'father' and 'househusband'. Otherwise, why should a person who has only lived with a person for one or two years suddenly be eligible for 'winning the lottery' and getting half their partner's money and property?

I am getting totally carried away here and losing all contact with my main thesis on historical determinism....I hope you will trust me just a little bit longer to bring this essay together and make the title relevant.

One last area I will touch on before I bring this all together and hopeuflly become 'relevant'.

Now, because of constantly 'evolving' 'sexual laws, a man has to be careful about how drunk the woman he is with, is, before having sex with her, or possibly face horrific legal repurcussions the next day, when the 'Dionysian-- let's get down and dirty' -- part of her personality suddenly changes to the 'Apolloninan' -- how dare you did what you did to me last night! How could you have so taken advantage of me! -- part of her personality. The night before she had literally -- wthout you having made a move -- grabbed a couple of the fingers from your hand and put them in her mouth, and even so, you had thought better about the situation, the potential danger of it, and driven her home (this was probably the part she didn't like), still without having touched either her or yourself (unless you count her having put your fingers in her mouth) and now, the next day, there are words coming from other people to the extent that she is ready to call the police on you.

And you ask why there is a growing percentage of men who afraid to even reach out and touch a woman (as the inside of a courtroom becomes the dominant image). I am not sure that this 'growing distrust and touching paranoia' is totallly good for the direction that our society -- men, women, and children -- is travelling. More and more, we are becoming a 'touchless society'. Maybe good for robots.I am not sure that this is all good for people.

Okay, I have had my rant.

Now to make the connection.

The court system is partly politically determined, partly historically determined, partly lobbyist determined...

'Extreme individual cases' can often have 'extreme effects' on the historical evolution of the law. For every action, there is a reaction. For every inequality and injustice, there is a reverse and equally discriminative inequality and injustice. In the examples, and cases I have described above, sometimes thousands and thousands of men can be 'legally traumatized' -- not entirely by their own actions -- but rather, as much or more, from extreme cases causing extreme political and legal reactions, and then 'new, tougher laws' being implemented to protect the safety of women, in the examples above, but in a way that 'reverses the inequality of the court system' and in effect, punishes men for being men. Men who have had no previous trouble with the law, who have perhaps never seen the inside of a jail cell, are suddenly being charged -- and convicted -- for 'domestic crimes' or 'domestic transgressions' that a woman would never have been arrested for. Women are being taught to 'phone the police' at a moment's notice, 'the second your man touches you in a way that is angry and you don't like'....Meanwhile, a woman threatens a man with a butcher knife, or says that 'if you leave me, I am going to cut you into little pieces while you sleep' -- and no calls ever get to police.

But as soon as the man 'breaks' -- even if it is weeks or months later -- , and pushes such a woman out of his room because she is going 'postal' on him and he is sick as a dog with the flu -- the police, the feminist lobbyist organizations, the politicians, the court system, all want to turn this man into another 'nasty domestic male convict' because he has suddenly become labelled and stereotyped as the 'victimizer' while our poor victim in this case, a 'borderline personality' case if you ever wanted to see one, who was ready to issue a death threat in an attempt to coerce a man from not rejecting her, is lead away to be consoled by all the protective forces of the millions of dollars that have been spent in this direction.

What I am saying here is that all our social and political and legal and educational institutions need to do a better job at teaching "Hegelian Dialectic (Two-Way Influential) Logic as opposed to 'Aristotlean (One Way, Right or Wrong, Cause and Effect) Logic'.

Similarily, all of our justice systems (and the institutions that partly 'historically determine' them by putting pressure and directives on them -- our domestic courts in particular -- need to do a better job of practising 'case to case dialectic humanistic-existential logic and justice' as opposed to 'Aristotlean, cookie-cutter justice' where men in this case, are essentially put on an 'assembly line' and passed through the 'mashing and thrashing and meshing machine of this cookie cutter justice system' (sounds like a scene from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' -- which it at least partly is -- only many scenes, the whole movie done over again with the 'Domestic Court System' replacing the previous 'Pschiatric Hospital' and the female judge standing in for 'Big Nurse').

Sorry, I am a Pisces....my imagination can easily run wild...

Let me try to add a finishing flourish to this essay.

We are all very much like 'Janus', the Roman mythological figure who has two heads, one head looking to the past, and the other head looking to the future....with each and everyone of us -- both individually and collectively -- caught in 'the crossfire' between past and future, Hegel's historical determinism on the one hand, and Kierkegaard's 'anxiety of dizzying existential freedom', on the other hand.

Each and everyone of us can get caught in the stereotypes of 'the dominant paradigm' of 'political correctness' that is at least partly ruling each and everyone of our lives. There are many such 'historical deterministic paradigms'.

I write a lot about Freud and Psychoanalysis, as well as the 'Patriarchal -- Anti-Feminist -- Bias and Paradigm that at least partly dominates Classical Psychoanalysis, today as it did a hundred years ago. I am in the process of 're-building' Classical Psychoanalysis in order to take away this Patriarchal Bias -- at least as much as I can -- in order to help make Psychoanalysis a better personal experience for women as well as men.

'Transference' is a famous concept and phenomena that is central to the theory and therapy of Classical Psychoanalysis. If, say as a child, I tended to 'take for granted' my mother;s love -- and this translated into 'taking my mom for granted'; and now, say through 'transference-analysis', I become aware that I am doing the same thiing to my girlfriend or wife, then I become like Janus, caught between the crossfires of past and present. I can continue to follow a path of 'historical determism', continue to 'take my girlfriend or wife for granted, and then one day, suddenly wake up, and find that she is gone.

Or -- and this is particularly applicable to all you men out there with wives and girlfriends as we get closer and closer to Valentine's Day (but it should not by any means be restricted only to Valentitne's Day) -- I can turn and look into my wife/girlfriend's eyes, see a special beauty there that I have not seen for a long, long time, make sure that I put all other distractions aside, at least for this one special day, focus on everything that is important about her to me, and how much I would be devastated to try to live my life without her...

And in the 'dizzying anxiety of freedom'...

And the 'here-and-now, I and Thou...

Try the best that I possibly can to communicate everything that I feel about her...

And how important she is in my life...

In this crazy messed up world that we live in,

Where more and more things,

Tend to drive the opposite sexes into greater and greater distrust for each other,

It becomes more and more imperative,

If we are succesfully to live together,

To do all the big and little things that bring us back together again...

Not by the things that are historically and economically and politically and legally and socially and educationally determined around us...

And by 'introjection' or 'osmosis' -- in us.

But by 'the immediacy of the moment'...

By our humanistic-existential freedom...

And by communicating to our partner,

And to our loved ones....

Our family and closest friends...

Just how much they mean to us...

And how crucially important they are...

To our health and well-being...

It is in this moment....

That we escape the jaws of historical determism...

And experience the pognancy...

Of being human...

-- dgb, Feb. 10th, 2010,

-- David Gordon Bain