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Immanuel Kant and Scott Peck

Scott Peck was to psychology what Immanuel Kant
was to Western philosophy. In the same way as Kant
had used philosophy, after a blossoming during
Enlightenment and Romanticism, to affectuate a
return to the Protestant dogmas that philosophy had
sought to replace, so did Peck use psychology, after its
psychoanalitic beginnings in early 20th century and its
existential humanistic blossoming in 1960s and 1970s,
to affectuate a return to religious dogmas that
psychology had struggled to overcome.

The philosophy of Kant - and the psychology of Peck -
employed a device referred to by Mortimer Adler as
suicidal epistemologizing and suicidal psychologizing.
Kant claimed that the imperfection of human perception
meant that it was only capable of apprehending the
phenomenal (apparent) instead of the noumenal (the
true); he also claimed that beauty was relative, illusory
and insignificant ("in the eye"). With these claims he
trivialized and denigrated both science and art. In
creating in public mind the suspicion of both empirical
and intuitive modes of cognition, practiced respectively
by Enlightenment and Romanticism, he destroyed both
Enlightenment and Romanticism. In the same manner
did Peck, through his contributions, place in the public
mind contempt for and denigration of both reason and
passion, equating the first with Cartesian logic that was
inadequate to describe his experience of synchronicities,
and claiming the second an invalid basis for either
relationship or meaningful interaction. The result has
been contempt and invalidation of both reason and
passion and the destruction, first by philosophy then by
psychology, of both aspects of humankind.

Both of course are wrong in all aspects. Reason is not
limited to Cartesian dogmatism, and the intellectual and
scientific pursuits, in higher physics, anthropology, and
more advanced psychological studies, have uncovered
knowledge that entirely exceeds Cartesian dogmatisms
and its brainchildren - skepticism, behaviorism, logical
positivism, and similar abominations. Beauty has been
shown scientifically to exist both in absolute and in
relative forms. As for romantic passion, it has been at
the root of the best marriages I've ever seen - marriages
that produced wholesome families, meaningful and
lasting love between partners, beautiful and intelligent
and accomplished children, and are still going strong 50
or 60 years down the road. In taking the stances that
they did, Kant and Peck thus became destructive of
both the intellectual and the passionate aspects of man -
and destructive of all the greatness and progress and
richness of life that these two aspects have produced.
And in pursuit of their dogmas, was created a character
that is essentially necrophilic (death-seeking) and
seeks to destroy, in its relations, policies, thoughts and
activities, all that creates and affirms and adds to life.

In both cases, a pursuit that produced great
improvement for many and at multiple levels was
effectively destroyed by being used against its own
foundations. With Kant, philosophy had destroyed itself -
both Enlightenment philosophy that made possible
Western science and Western democracy, and
Romantic philosophy that made possible the world's
greatest literature, cultural blossoming and richest
interpersonal experience and relations - by claiming the
mechanism for both to be imperfect or trivial. With
Peck, so did psychology, in both its analytical and its
humanistic aspect - by trivializing and denigrating the
aspects of human being to which it spoke and which
it worked to describe. And the pursuits that have given
the Western world its greatest accomplishments -
democracy, science, innovation, freedom, great
literature and art, understanding of nature, civil and
human rights, meaningful and beautiful relationships
between men and women, and humanistic life-affirming
values that went to a great length to make most of both
accomplishment and experience - were subverted by
the pursuit that had conceptualized them being used to
destroy its own foundations. And in both cases, the
result was an imposition, against a flourishing of life
through affirmation of passion and intellect, of orders
and character that were fundamentally anti-life.

The Victorianism that followed Kant, like the three
decades that followed Peck, were contemptuous of both
intellect and passion - contemptuous as such of the life-
enhancing and life-affirming aspects of humanity. It is a
mentality that by its own nature can only lend to
systemic violence, oppression, and war against both
feeling and intellect, which lead directly to abusive,
controlling and systematically destructive mental,
emotional and relational habits in people who are a part
of that mentality. But furthermore still it leads to destruction
of all that thought and feeling make possible: science,
democracy, freedom, ingenuity, innovaton, human rights,
beauty, compassion, art, love, vitality, and every meaningful
form of improvement in people's lives. This, of course, has
been the essential character of both the Victorian era and its
more contemporary equivalent. And just as Kant and Peck
came to believe that the source of evil was hubris - which
their followers use to damn both reason and passon and
people who affirmed, cultivated and benefited from both -
so has the far greater hubris of their own mentality made
apparent itself in its values and its effects.

In both cases, just as Kant used philosophy, and Peck
used psychology, to destroy the ages of reason and
passion, so have the concepts they brought in to
replace them convicted the orders that they had
ushered in. The Protestant morals that were used and
then hideously misused to sustain the dark night of
Victorianism were in the end employed themselves to
convict as morally damnable an order that consigned
the bulk of the people in it to colonization, child labor,
brutality, squalor, suffocating formalism, hysterical
prudery, internecine warfare, disconnection from life
both within and without, and brutal, cruel, degrading,
unforgiving existence. Likewise the concept of
responsibility that was used and then hideously
misused for the last three decades is now making
apparent the irresponsibility of suffocating innovation in
energy sector to keep alive the stranglehold of oil
cartels, giving taxpayer subsidies to beef industry that
takes 10 times as much biomass to produce a burger
than the vegetable industry to produce an equivalent
amount of grain, consuming 4,000 calories a day and
driving SUVs while millions are dying because of
disastrous climatic events caused by ecosystemic
destruction and accumulation of CO2 emissions in the
atmosphere, destroying with no thought for the future or
for what made them possible the natural treasures that
man cannot conceivably recreate, and ladening the
future generations with trillions of dollars in debt, amid
collapsing family incomes, in order to pay for an
economic stimulus that never came. By applying at the
collective level the characteristic that is demanded of
the individual, is seen the corruption of the arrangement
itself. Victorian moralism was rightfully used to show
the moral wrongness of the Victorian order; and the
more modern-day responsibility is likewise making
apparent the irresponsibility of the present one.

And just as personality psychology has been used and
hideously misused in the period following Peck to target
people who thought or felt differently from the social or
communal entities of place and time, whatever the
character of these entities or their intent or the actual
substance of their beliefs and behaviors, so has it been
used by others, rightly or wrongly, to describe business,
politics, religion, psychology, media, and even the
Western civilization, as possessing a psychopathic and
predatory character. The same concept is now used by
me to describe any communal or social entity that seeks
unlimited power over the minds, beliefs, personalities
and lives of the people within it - and then seeks to
impose itself on others.

To believe that an unofficial organ of power, that unlike
official organs of power in a constitutional democracy is
not subject to check and balance and official
accountability, is somehow less prone to corruption and
wrong and abuses of power than official organs of
power, is ridiculous. Such an entity becomes law,
reality and sanity unto itself and therefore is capable of
the worst forms of corruption and systemic crime. And
in countries where the power of official organs is
checked and balanced and made to accord with
constitution and bill of rights, but for some or another
reason the power of unofficial organs is not subjected to
similar scrutiny and is thus used to commit most
horrendous abuses and most illegal abominations
against the people within them and without them, these
entities not only can be seen as unconstitutional, but in
fact should be seen themselves as possessing the
worst of these disorders.

The sociopathic character that does not recognize law,
is the character of the community or the social network
that becomes law unto itself and thus not only
perpetuates and then covers up systemic crime while
totally controlling the people within it, but also
commands of people inside of them unconditional
loyalty regardless of scale of their crimes against
people both inside and without. And it is these
entities, not the people they demonize, that are the true
danger not only to democracy, but to humankind as it
exists at this time and as it stands to exist in the
foreseeable future. The crimes and coverups of small
towns, gangs, old-boy networks, cults, Islamists,
Jehovah's Witnesses, paramilitary organizations, and
corrupt networks and operations in medicine, law,
police, courts, psychiatry, and politics, are a far graver
threat to rule of law than are the works of any number of
axe murderers - and they affect people's lives to a far
greater extent.

The same can be likewise said of religions that think
that they are superior to both nature and to humanity -
indeed to entire universe - and denigrate then destroy all
accomplishments of science, democracy, business, art,
literature, human rights, and nature in all its richness, in
order to make room for their supremacy over a world
that they have inherited both from nature and from the
people who had created and contributed to these
pursuits. The people who claim the universe to be
God's, and all accomplishments of mankind and the
vibrancy of nature and all things lovable to be belongings
of God, appropriate for the Church or the Mosque that
had created none of these things - that destroyed them
where they existed and resisted most of them every
step of the way when they arose in the areas of
their dominion - the credit for nature and for humanity
and all things lovable and life-affirming, both natural and
manmade. All things of course that the Church and the
Mosque condemn, deny, sabotage and then, when
created by others and coerced from others, want to
claim as their own to wield as tools of control against
the existing  and yet-to-exist. Such an entity can by
itself be seen as not only psychopathic and
narcissistic, but totalitarian and indeed necrophilic.
For such an entity to claim to define people, humanity,
nature, and  all that exists in the world, as any kind of
evil or good, is preposterous. The evil belongs with
these entities themselves and with the philosophers and
psychologists - Immanuel Kant and Scott Peck - who
brought them back into influence in these respective
endeavors, after the mind and the genius of humanity in
both these endeavors and their brainchildren had
struggled to help humanity out of their grasp.

The religious supremacism has become so complete as
to war in the past decade, with effective and thoroughly
disastrous results, against both science and democracy
as well as constitutional law. In the same way as it has
warred in the previous two decades against individuality,
relationships, culture, eros, beauty and romance, it is
now warring, disastrously, against science and
democracy. First it destroys Romanticism; then it aims
straight for Enlightenment. And it is then that is seen its
true character, in all its psychopathic totalitarian
apocalyptic horror.

The extent of the necrophilic character of such a mind is
seen in its future predictions. Its hubristic hatred of life
at all levels is so complete as to foresee a violent
destruction of the world itself. And the economics and
politics practiced by those who most loudly claim to
profess Islam and Christianity are all directed toward
planetary destruction and global war. There is no future
in this; the future in this is complete destruction of all that
lives on the planet. And I see it as duty of man, as a
being of life, to not only preserve nature but to preserve
humanity, and to create a future in which both humanity
and nature can live, coexist, blossom, and reach their
ever-greatest fruition and accomplishment.

This comes through thinking - and pursuant that activity
at all levels - that is affirming of life at all levels and
dedicated to its enhancement, enrichment and
perpetuation. The necrophilic mentalities - and pursuant
that the necrophilic effect on the world of all the
activities that they inform - must be replaced with ones
that are biophilic and make most of life - both human
and natural - in short, medium, and long-term. With this
change in mind, all human pursuits - business, politics,
technology, relationships, families, science, art,
education, spirituality - can begin to work toward a
viable future. The people who truly love and embrace life,
will value life, and will create demand for - and supply of -
economics, technologies, policies, ideas, art, and
modes of interaction that are life-affirming and that
add to life, extend life, and make possible life worth
living for their descendants and for humanity, as much
as they will take care to protect life that they have not
created. The people who think that destroying the world
will get them to heaven, will and do take their political,
economic, spiritual and interpersonal activities to the
direction of violence, destruction, plunder, theft, torture,
abuse, and death.

Romantic attitudes are a logical consummation of
rational ones and their further development. The mind is
contemptuous of nature until it actually studies nature
and finds in its workings the mechanisms far more
intricate and intelligent than any that it itself has yet
known how to contrive. By the time the science can
actually create anything of similar quality or complexity
as a living being, it has full respect for natural life; at
which point it can learn to build on it, improve on it,
create sustainable agriculture and development,
recreate some of what was blindly driven into extinction,
and even create new life. Similarly, the mind has
contempt for - "instinct," feeling, passion, eros,
sexuality, nurturing, reproduction - until it actually
studies the mechanisms of these things long enough to
find in them similar intricacy and intelligence - at which
point it realizes the extent of its complexity as being
superior to anything that it itself knows how to create.
At which point it likewise develops respect for what it
would by itself see as inferior function, and then actually
becomes capable of creating and building and even
improving upon humanity. True natural science, like true
psychology, build understanding enough to achieve
respect for what they study. And it is only then that
they can replicate and even improve on these givens. At
this point, the mind becomes an intelligent creator
instead of a dumb destroyer. And then - only then - can
man's rationality be said as itself having legitimately
earned respect.

To tip the balance for life, man must become a creator
more than he is a destroyer. At all levels of thinking -
and all levels of action - man must do more to enhance
life than he is to destroy it. It is then that there is a
better future in view than that of the Apocalypse. And it
is then that man can be said to be equal to nature and
even possibly an improver.

The period after Victorianism saw electricity,
telephones, airplanes, automobiles, skyscrapers,
women's rights, middle class, Panama Canal, national
parks,  higher physics, film, psychology, Harlem
Renaissance, Einstein, Fitzgerald, Akhmatova,
Modligliani, and an open, livable social climate that
directly enhanced both the quality of people's lives and
accomplishment of civilization. What this period of
innovation and freedom was for 20th century, can be
accomplished on even greater scale for 21st at this
time. Solar and hydrogen energy, space travel and
colonization, nanotechnology, biotechnology,
economics designed to maximize intelligent creation
and minimize destruction of what one has not created,
prudent resource management, intelligent collaboration
between private and public sectors, affirmation and
rigorous defense of human rights, values favorable to
innovative and creative thinking, positive regard for and
affirmation of both the feminine and the masculine and a
mutual understanding between one another allowing
beautiful and happy relationships and marriages,
respect for and cultivation of both feeling and intellect,
affirmation and cultivation of both individuality and
dedication to benefit of the species, and political and
economic policies designed to maximize intelligent
creation and minimize blind destruction, can be a seed
of a renaissance with unlimited potential both for the
currently living and for the yet-to-exist.

This can only come from this: An understanding of and
respect for life at all levels, allowing man to see and feel
life at all levels and, enriched with this understanding, to
become an organ of life-creation, life-perpetuation, and
life-enhancement, making possible livable long-term
future for both the planet and humankind. Necessary is
a concept of human being as an integral entity with
relation to self, species and nature, that leads to an
affirmation of individuality and an affirmation of humanity
and an affirmation of nature, allowing people maximal
self-definition, maximal contribution to good of the
species, and appreciation of nature resulting in minimal
damage to it. Necessary is a recognition and valuation
of all aspects of life in both natural and human forms,
creating a life-affirming mentality that finds expression in
people's thoughts, feelings and actions, and thus their
effect on the world as well as the covenants they create.
The values, perceptions, cognitions, and consequently
arts, science, economics, policies, and relationships,
would all be improved by transition to modes of thinking
that are affirming of life at the natural, individual and
species-directed levels. And then all these pursuits
will direct themselves to creation of life and enrichment
of life instead of its destruction, while having respect
enough for what man has not created to minimize
damage to it.

The future can and should be better than present, and
there is a way of making it so. It comes from embracing
the modes of thought, feeling and relating that recognize
and make most of life at all levels and moving beyond
destructive, necrophilic mentalities and orders, to ones
that are biophilic and creative, resulting in similar
transformation in all activities of humankind. It is time to
embrace nature, humanity and life itself, and to create
for all these a viable future. The choice is about nothing
less than artificial destruction of the planet and all its
inhabitants, or a sustained improvement in life human
and natural for as long as the informed genius of
humanity embracing and  building upon the givens
makes it possible for nature and for humanity to flourish,
grow, and reach ever greater achievement and ever
richer experience and fruition of life.

Ilya Shambat
http://www.myspace.com/ibshambat
http://ibshambat7.blogspot.com

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