The Philosophical Future

Charles R. Reid

The Philosophical Future

Man’s Psychic Journey:
End or Beginning?

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin

Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Reid, Charles R., author.

Title: The philosophical future: man’s psychic journey: end or beginning? / Charles R. Reid.

Description: New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2017

American University Studies V: Philosophy; vol. 229 | ISSN 0739-6392

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016058448 (print) | LCCN 2017012091 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-4331-4058-7 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4059-4 (ebook pdf)

ISBN 978-1-4331-4060-0 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4061-7 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Social problems. | Civilization.

Self-consciousness (Awareness) | Future life.

Classification: LCC HN18.3 .R448 2017 (print) | LCC HN18.3 (ebook)

DDC 301—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058448

DOI 10.3726/b10752

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the ‘‘Deutsche Nationalbibliografie’’; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

© 2017 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

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All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

About the author

CHARLES R. REID earned his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin and his Ed.D. from the University of California. He taught at Iowa Wesleyan College, Fayetteville State University, and Ohlone College. He served in the Korean War and taught at numerous public schools.

About the book

The Philosophical Future surveys the breadth of mankind’s postmodern malaise, which is achieved through a discussion of the major challenges, social and psychological, which every individual faces in the effort to live fully in the twenty-first century. These challenges lay in broadly familiar domains: self- and group-consciousness; common man and his place in a future society in which mental activity dominates; work and leisure; knowledge and values accruing from it, both for self and others; possibilities in education; civilization, with its “Dark Age” phenomena and its dreams of progress; the role of the past in contemporary life; and power, both in society and within the sovereign individual who, though bound by physical and intellectual limits, functions as a seeker after the freedom and self-fulfillment which are so wholly integral to the human condition. And finally a serious question: What fate awaits the perpetual non-conformist, whose views, however unwelcome in his own time and in a contemporary environment, may in fact anticipate future living conditions?

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Man’s Milieu—Happiness, Understanding, Limits

Part One: Lonely and Adrift: Common Man and the Conflicts of Industrial Life

Chapter One: Seeing Forward: Ordinary Man’s Clouded Perspective

Chapter Two: Collective Consciousness: Industrial Man and the Paradoxes of Social Logic

Chapter Three: Common Man and His Critics: From Ridicule and Exhortation to Parity in an Age of Political Correctness

Part Two: Today’s Human Environment: Its Ever More Exacting Global Realities

Chapter Four: Realities of Work and Leisure: The Question of Psychological Costs

Chapter Five: Facts on the Ground: Inequities of a Global Process and Their Human Effects

Chapter Six: The Struggle Against Indiscipline: A Psychological Challenge to Middle-Class Society←vii | viii→

Part Three: The Prospects for Education: A Way Up or a False Dawn?

Chapter Seven: Education (I): The Unfulfilled Promise

Chapter Eight: Education (II): Man the Learner: Swimming Against Cultural Currents

Chapter Nine: Education (III): The Learner and His Cultural Bonds: An Enigma of Modern Times

Part Four: Portents and Certainties: The Paradoxes of Civilized Thinking and Behavior

Chapter Ten: Can Men Suffer the Worst—And See Beyond the Unattainable “Best” as Well?

Chapter Eleven: Progress vs. The Dark Age Scenario (I): Can Governments “Manage” Poverty?

Chapter Twelve: Progress vs. The Dark Age Scenario (II): Man’s Dream of Progress and the Facts of Anti-Progress

Part Five: Individual and Mass: Freedom Within New Constraints

Chapter Thirteen: The Civilizing Process—A Darwinian Enigma: From Religion to Anti-Religion to Neo-Barbarism

Chapter Fourteen: Mankind Evolving: Civilization, Power, the Individual

Chapter Fifteen: The Philosophical Future

Chapter Sixteen: In Sum: A Foredestined Future: The Philosophical Individual

Bibliography

Index←viii | ix→

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the docents and staff of the Seattle Public Library, without whose assistance over many years the research for this book could not have been carried out; and to Marty Thompson, computer professional extraordinaire, whose constant help over a lengthy period of time was so instrumental in bringing the work to completion.←ix | x→ ←x | 1→

Introduction: Man’s Milieu—Happiness, Understanding, Limits

In one of his more memorable aphorisms, Santayana remarked that there is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. Just how one is to live so as to “enjoy the interval” great thinkers like Santayana seem never quite able to tell us. Still, what common sense does reveal is that no answer will be of much value unless it offers some insight into the problem of how to get along with other human beings.

Each individual in any case is a self, a being demanding his own life-space, his right to exist, though not to interfere with the equivalent rights of others. A familiar universal formula therefore defines the just society as one in which each member has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This presupposes certain capabilities internal to the person: self-control; rational judgment; some minimum of social initiative; the capacity for learning. Only humans possess these abilities in abundance. For humans are truly nature’s brain-endowed animal prodigies. As individuals, it must be admitted, they also remain subject to misjudgments, lack of self-control, failure of initiative, and resistance to learning. Yet in one respect, all are alike: Their search for happiness is universal.

What pursuit of happiness demands, it also seems clear, is that the person must commit in some effective manner to the social enterprise; he cannot let himself fall prey to what in popular parlance is termed negative thinking. This is no easy task. It sets limits on behavior. There are prohibitions. For personal happiness,←1 | 2→ so philosophers teach, has a primary ethical component: It cannot come about from causing harm to others. And yet social life as we observe it seems to contradict this basic command. Our world overflows with behavior that obviously harms others. “Correcting” evil behavior, by legal or other means, simply redoubles the quantum of evil involved. As Freud exclaimed, “What an overwhelming obstacle to civilization aggression must be if the defense against it can cause as much misery as aggression itself!”1 Christ’s exhortation to love and forgive one’s enemies has been heard by many, but each has his own conception of justice. Even those who forgive and forget, it seems, may not understand what they are doing or why.

Mohammed’s brief for tolerance and compassion, too, has been ignored in the actions of his more aggressive followers. Yesterday they conquered by the sword and today they sacrifice themselves as suicide bombers—to make the point that unbelievers are enemies who have no right to go on living. To modern secular minds this belief, that such “heroic” behavior must bring them unending happiness in a hereafter supposedly reserved exclusively for them by Allah and his prophet, displays a perverse inability, not just to compromise with earthly realities, but to follow the call to rational accommodation which those same realities impose on every contemporary inhabitant of the planet.

Such examples demonstrate that many minds indulge in a dangerous preoccupation: they seek over and over to reduce reality, and especially a complex social reality, to radical simplicity—to formulas, precepts, rationalizations, any maneuver of mind which permits escape, however temporary, from the complications of real life. Yet inner man even in his most evil actions strives nevertheless for happiness. He may indeed discount the importance of a cruel reality. But as long as he thinks mainly of himself and his own immediate concerns, including his wild dreams as well, personal happiness is beyond his reach. For he lives in society. He must calibrate the moves he makes both to demonstrate and to achieve accommodation. And one way or another he must acknowledge his willingness to function within a network of power relations.

At the same time, today’s industrial culture contains mental and moral ambiguities unknown to the past. Like older cultures, industrial society bids man to do what it asks—or seems to ask—as he pursues his ends. Yet a further ambiguity arises: No single voice, no universal religion or political state, at this stage can define his route to happiness. He must strive—and alone—to attain happiness as best he can. Yet as he matures and is called on to deal with life’s increasing complexity, this ambition becomes harder than ever to fulfill. The old “pull” to facile answers, to a simpler way of life, constantly asserts itself. But as a guide to social living, as he may well recognize, this “solution” actually leads nowhere. The question then←2 | 3→ becomes: Can enjoyment, and through it happiness, be attained other than by an individual who in fact in some measure does understand?