Fascinating. I recently read Becker's The Denial of Death, and to get some added depth I picked up a book on existentialism. Working through Kierkegaard right now.
Nothing wrong with being an authentic mother but if your Peter Principle tells you thats the level you rise to then when you venture off past it it becomes blatently obvious. It hasn't been demonstrated enough yet? She gets her 15 minutes of fame daily and is raking in more bucks then she's ever had the potential to due to her advocating in ponds where the money lives -- like Beck. After she demonstrates to Putin how to filet a salmon and the charm wears off then what? The possibility of her overreacting to some skirmish to save face could have her lobbing nukes across the Straits of the Aleutians.
Interesting! By the sound of it, it's very much in line with a lot of the ideas I've been reading over the years. Many thanks for the mention. Should be worth a read. I've also been a fan of existentialism, and others from that and Heidegger's tradition, although Kierkegaard was the one guy I couldn't really "get" for some reason.
Hmm, thanks for the admission. I've been struggling to get beyond the first chapters which treat Kierkegaard, and get into Heidegger and Neitzsche, Camus, and the others. Made me think, "there should be an Existentialism for Dummies book". I google and... there is! lol
But then how many people who could objectively be considered to be operating under transference would admit it -- or could admit it or deny it? See Godel.
Good question. It seems logical that if you are aware of your transference, you are no longer transfering... ? Please, do copy and paste something from Godel.
Kierkegaard's not hard to read, it's just I found myself asking, Ok, what now? It's been a while, but I think it's his depiction of angst that puts him in the tradition. Nietzsche is a terrific entryway to a lot of thought, although I think some of his opinions are poorly argued/reasoned and more prone to sweeping people up in narcissistic rhetoric that sends people way down a sad path (have the same opinion of Ayn Rand). Heidegger was a bastard in his personal/political life and ridiculously impossible to understand, but he "gets it". If you have similar interests as me (given the book you mentioned, sounds like it), I'd definitely recommend Sartre, or even just the cliff-notes version of his ideas. And more optimistic folk like William James.
It's a big Catch-22 of a lot this kind of theory. We often (self included) do things without realizing it, even while knowing and talking about it, and can't get enough distance from ourselves to see anything. The subconscious is one of the most powerful forces I've ever seen operating. My point wasn't really about getting people to admit they're engaging in a defense mechanism. I just find these ideas are parts of a tool set that can be useful to understand how the world works. Particularly on a day when your trading system has no signals and you're wasting money gambling. Not sure how Godel would fit in?
You've gotta go by ...something. I just don't trust people who are too cocksure of their take on an issue, lacking circumspection, not that you were so much at all. What I like about Obama is he seems to be careful enough in the description of his intent which for me suggests he's not reckless in his considerations as to policy. Its passed off as arrogance but I get the opposite take from it. It seems there are reasons behind what he does even if the patience for them to actually work isn't there. I operate from reason not command. Of course who you're advocating for has everything to do with it. In plain english, the system can't judge itself using the systems means is how I interpret the Incompleteness Theory.
Ah, gotcha. Yes, I agree that the incompleteness theorem holds for systems of knowledge. I think when it comes to psychoanalysis, that's a different ball of wax in that it's not exactly recursive. But it does fall prey to the same failures of any totalizing narrative. W/r/t myself, I'm often just making blind jabs at illuminating tiny parts of things and am often butting against knowing that I'm usually just constructing a narrative. W/r/t Obama, there's a great many things I truly respect about him, and I don't buy into premises of the personality takedown that the cultural right in this country has successfully enacted. I agree 100% with your take on his approach to cautious policymaking -- he's an intellectual. The opposite is approach, best exemplified by True Believers like Dubya, is and was a disaster. The second Iraq War infuriated me. I just don't really like supporting politicians, personally, because I think industry and government are now hopelessly permeable and everyone who goes in gets corrupted (plus he reneged on a lot of his promises of dismantle some of the U.S.'s torture apparatuses). I do want to go short here EOD but I must resist the urge...