Hegelian Series Intro: Part 1

The Jews will not Replace us... In August of 2017, that's what white supremacists chanted as they marched through Charlottesville VA. Were the democratic norms that I always took for granted crumbling? I thought so, and I wanted to do something to stop that. Over the next few days, I began writing an essay that I hoped would rekindle the "American spirit" and bring people together.  The introduction to this essay is posted below. The rest of the essay will be posted in parts over the next several days. 

Despite not fully understanding Hegelian philosophy, I relied heavily on his  ideas in writing this essay. As I explained in previous posts, I am a Master Fool with creative licences in all fifty states. Thus, I can legally do that. 

                       UNTITLED ESSAY (as written in 2017): INTRODUCTION

Trump’s rise to power has left me aghast and wondering what I did wrong as an American citizen. This paper represents my efforts to do more as a citizen. These are divisive, rageful times, so one’s proffered ideas can just as easily provoke rancor as spark fruitful debate. Consequently, I have chosen to express my main ideas in allegorical form. My intent in doing this was to give the reader some initial distance to the subject matter before gently pulling them closer.

I intended this paper to be a small step forward towards healing the divide in this country. My strategy was to create a unifying framework that reconciles the clashing perspectives of various American factions on the role that “our founding fathers” played in American history. Toward that end, I found the sublation principle in Hegel’s dialectic to be a fantastic tool. Hegel’s dialectic states that every idea is existentially intertwined with an opposing idea. In other words, an idea cannot even exist without its opposing idea. In Hegel’s dialectic, opposing ideas undergo a paradox of change and permanence. They become permanent, because they become fixed within the web-work of the absolute. At the same time, they change because of their new connections with other ideas.

On a personal level, my goal is to connect this unifying framework with my own cultural heritage. By doing so, I hope to develop a strong sense of self that is sublated with the reality of “the other.” I hope that through this Hegelian process, I will become a counselor who can connect with all of his clients.

The reader should note that this paper refers to our current president (summer of 2017) as N (short for narcissist). This reflects the following opinions of mine: First, his name shouldn’t be associated with any kind of leadership position, because he has no leadership qualities. Second, the rest of the alphabet has better things to be doing.