Cooking Dialectical Soup for the Self and Others: Hegelian Series Part 3

 

 Below is part 3 of my Hegelian Series. I wanted to post this yesterday, but life happened.

                                 

                              Cooking Dialectical Soup for the Self and Others

As Hegel might have said, “it’s not the individual ingredients, it’s the absolute soup.” The American emphasis on individual uniqueness has resulted in a country with unparalleled diversity. Such a boundless and shifting smorgasbord of humanity creates a paradox of existential security. On the one hand, this fantastic diversity seems to grant us security, for it indicates that we are free to be as we want to be. On the other hand, this very same diversity threatens us; for it also indicates that our way of being is arbitrary and ephemeral.

As Hegel might have also said, It’s not just the absolute soup, it’s the individual ingredients. Whatever one’s particular flavor may be, there is bound to be some in the pot who experience us as distasteful. By the same token, there is also bound to be those who experience us with a sublimity that we could never have imagined. Whether the gaze of our fellow Americans degrades or exalts us depends heavily on a third dialectic: the dialectic of narcissism and empathy.

For democracy to work, its constituents must feel a basic level of security. They must believe that by supporting the uniqueness of each ingredient, they enrich their own flavor in the soup. However, this process cannot happen if Americans don’t practice empathy. With N’s rise in power, narcissism and paranoia have eclipsed empathy. Increasingly, many are seeing others as poisons of the American soup. This increase in narcissistic fear is unmistakable. During the writing of this paper, white supremacists marched in Charlotte chanting “the Jews will not replace us.” I never believed that in my lifetime, I would see something like that happening in America.