Four shocking conclusions so far in this search for a theory of spiritual experience:

First, Noam Chomsky is one of the best theologians of today! Don’t believe me? Go back and listen to what Chomsky says about Newton and the mechanical paradigm of nature. Newton is saying, “There are no machines.” I find this very exciting! There must be something wrong with me. Some still don’t get it. Chomsky believes there is great potential in the phenomenology of consciousness and the Cambridge Platonists in the study of language. Only theologians and a few economists get it (See these two fantastic interviews with Steve Keen, and Jim G. Rickards who are way ahead of the times). You heard it a million times. Listen to these lectures by Chomsky. During the four years I spent in graduate school studying philosophy, Noam Chomsky was never mentioned once in or out of the classroom:

Noam Chomsky on Logic/Epistemology/Metaphysics

“You could not have any capacities at all, if you didn’t have limits because the capacities determine the limits.”—Noam Chomsky on principles and perimeters. 

Secondly, I am still laughing about Martin Heidegger being philosophically the Christian theologian Schleiermacher incognito. Right-wing extremists like the Silver Shirts knew it intuitively because they attempted to suppress this entire area of study in the U.S. (The pre-Socratics in particular); the Left-wing does not have a clue. Without any evidence, I pursued Heidegger’s fundamental ontology because of the theological themes found everywhere in his writings, but in a demythologized form. I knew about Schleiermacher's theology, but I did not know Heidegger lectured on Schleiermacher until a few weeks before I posted it!

Some universities in English language countries have been putting out this propaganda for decades that Heidegger was a Nazi. Well, Heidegger was a Nazi in the same sense that you and I are Americans. I am an American while my imperialist government is by remote control, or by proxy murdering, raping, and torturing the guilty with the innocent all over the world. The hypocrisy is astounding as critics point their finger at Heidegger in self-righteous judgment as Americans remained silent while the Neo-Fascist-Mafia took over the country.

The character assassination of Heidegger was a sociological propaganda hit job. A.) I could find nothing in his works “Being and Time” and “Introduction to Metaphysics” that had any fascist ideology. B.) Heidegger had at least two very good character witnesses. First, German-born Jewish philosopher and theologian Hannah Arendt who spent time in a concentration camp before escaping was not only Heidegger’s student, but also his paramour. She never denounced Heidegger. Secondly, German Christian theologian Paul Tillich was the first non-Jewish professor expelled from the German university system by the Nazis. That should tell you something about Paul Tillich. His entire three volume work “Systematic Theology” (1951-1964)(pdf.) is structured on Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and actually refers to Heidegger by name thirteen times. Tillich never denounced Heidegger. C.) Lastly, even if he was a true ideological Nazi it still is an Ad hominem argument. 

I am totally convinced that the entire US education system is designed to only teach college students to make ad hominem arguments because academia is totally bankrupt. They teach Heidegger, Newton, Karl Marx, and Wittgenstein in the most stupid and dishonest ways. The American educational system makes you into a fool. D.) The Nazis didn’t care much for Heidegger and named him the “The Most Useless Professor” then sending him digging ditches by the Rhine. 

Without any historical context, for context is subversive, the entire educational system of America steers students away from Heidegger for fear that Christian Socialism may rise again. The Fascist Nazis and the US government have a common enemy—New Testament Christianity. That’s why today we have this pus some call Christianity that allies itself with any authoritarian movement that comes around. The American oligarchy will never ever tell you the truth. Every word from their mouth is an outrageous stupid lie to make you into an idiot.

Thirdly, the phenomenological Epoche turned out to be something totally different from what I was taught. I am not surprised that this religious interpretation of the Epoche is passed over. Religion is not taken seriously because it is judged a prior as irrational and center right professors are the worst! They are similar to the pseudo-intellectual cultured despiser of religion, Sam Harris. How would you like to have a person like him be your college professor? I had one like him. 

Harris reminds me of something that happened years ago. A politically conservative language analysis professor offered a class on Wittgenstein’s work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). At the beginning of the first class on the first day, he announced that the syllabus would be primarily concerned with Wittgenstein’s analysis of logical positivism’s verification theory and not “metaphysical issues like theology.” He stood their silent and then about one third of the class walked out with their heads up. He tried to humiliate them. It was just so many less pounds of meat to teach. I should have walked out with them, but I was nearly finished with my graduate work. The class was cancelled because of too few students! By the way Professor, Wittgenstein doesn’t teach verification theory in the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations (1953) is not even positivistic…***hole! Wittgenstein had utter contempt for academic philosophy. Paul Tillich is also suppressed in academia because he contradicts the fascist dogma of American Christian fundamentalism.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have been a much better student, and a lot more trouble. 

Logical Positivism is a political movement, not scientific objectivism (My bold text for emphasis):

 Quote:

“But the final view of the Tractatus is that the simples are fixed, immutable things, which exist “independently of what is the case.” If so, they cannot be described by propositions and cannot be given in experience. The Tractatus does not contain, therefore, an empiricist theory of meaning ….The picture theory is not a verification theory of meaning. It is ironical that the role of verification in meaning and understanding receives much attention in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, which obviously is not positivistic, but none at all in the reputedly positivistic Tractatus…” Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability,” said Rudolf Carnap. In view of the Tractatus one may gain insights into the presuppositions and limits of language, thought, and reality. These metaphysical insights cannot be stated in language, but if they could be, they would be true insights and not mere muddles or expressions of feelings”(by Norman Malcolm [Oxford classmate of Wittgenstein]The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edward, Macmillian Pub.Vol. 7. Wittgenstein, pp 334).

Why don’t the Logical Positivists teach verification theory from the Tractatus? Oh, because it isn’t there. So they have to cram Verification Theory down your throat in the later Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations which is not positivistic. All persons that are non-believers in verification theory can now leave the room. You can’t speak because you are not allowed to speak and still be within the sphere of Reason. 

Lastly, Wittgenstein was a serious Christian and mystic. It makes sense that the Vienna Circle Logical Positivists led by physicist Moritz Schlick rejected Wittgenstein’s philosophy just after naming him the founder of logical positivism. Logical positivism is a philosophy of science that originated in Vienna, Austria during the 1920s as a form of extreme empiricism. It proposed that science be based on observable verified empirical facts. Positivism’s most famous contribution is the “Verifiability Theory of Meaning” that says a statement is meaningful if and only if it is empirically verifiable. All judgments must be based on empirical experience as foundational. This school of philosophy no longer formally exists and disbanded in the 1920s because the verifiability principle itself could not be verified! Positivism still has a strong influence in the sciences today.

Positivism simply ignores its epistemological issues. It is a serious problem for an epistemology to not meet its own criteria of meaningfulness. While the verifiability principle seems to work well for particular affirmative existential claims (X is a virus), or particular negative categorical propositions such as  “Not all Scotsmen are Right handed,” (∃x)(Sx * ~Rx). The Verifiability Principle has problems with universal categorical propositions such as “All Crows are Black” (∀x)(Cx --> Bx). The scientist would have to observe every crow that ever existed in order for the proposition to be verified as true or false. Or take the proposition that “All objects on earth fall at the same rate.” Good luck verifying that one. These epistemological problems are all swept under the rug, but still taught as science.

Schleiermacher on the Christian Church

“All institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic.”—Paul Tillich

For Schleiermacher the church has an important role is society and makes a key distinction between religious faith and religious doctrine. The purpose of the Church pulpit is to shape the religious life in a “divine fellowship or kingdom” of which religious consciousness is more important than doctrine. Orthodoxy (Greek: ortho means “true,” or “straight,” and doxos meaning “belief”) is no defense against unbelief so “…Creeds cannot, therefore be absolutely regulative of the Church’s faith” (Munro, p. 104). Rather, Christian theology is not “fixed,” or “immovable,” but a living organ adaptable to each historical era as human existence is a “unity of matter and spirit.” One divine Spirit is manifested through the diversity of the individual’s reason and volition that provides a variety of religious experience adding “infinite variety” and historical renewal making Church orthodoxy relevant to human life.

When the Church relates to its mass membership as a complex formal rationalized organization then bureaucratization takes over by imitating large-scale state bureaucratic organizations. German sociologist Robert Michels formulated the Iron Law of Oligarchy from his research of organizations and oligarchy. Michels, a student of Max Weber, wrote, “It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the elected, of the mandatory over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy” (Political Parties, Michels, 1911). Large-scale government bureaucracies rely on hierarchic structures that weld the “demonic power of the structures of destruction” which are dynamic, creative-destructive, and self-sustaining. The demonic power of institutions is essentially bureaucratic and characterizes both capitalist and socialist societies. Christian theologian Paul Tillich wrote from experience about this dynamic evil in Fascist Germany before the Nazis drove him out of the German university system:

"For the Christ, the Messiah, is he who is supposed to bring the “new eon,” the universal regeneration, the new reality. New reality presupposes an old reality; and this old reality, according to prophetic and apocalyptic descriptions, is the state of the estrangement of man and his world from God. This estranged world is ruled by structures of evil, symbolized as demonic powers. They rule individual souls, nations, and even nature. They produce anxiety in all its forms. It is the task of the Messiah to conquer them and to establish a new reality from which the demonic power of the structures of destruction are excluded"(Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. II, p. 27).

Surprisingly, Schleiermacher believes that Christianity “brings nothing entirely new, or alien into the domain of Ethics…rather supplements the general principles of all morality”(Munro, 257). Both philosophical ethics and Christian ethics have the same content, but in a different form. Philosophical ethics emerges from the moral reasoning of humans in relation to “the race.” Schleiermacher means by “race,” the Human Race. Christian religious consciousness, on the other hand, originates from individual ethics in relation to the Church. Reform should not be alien to Church orthodoxy. However, Church reforms cannot be based on factional interests, egoism, statism, or uncritical crypto assumptions of creed, but rather remain consistent with the universal principles of Christianity as understood by its members.

Schleiermacher absolutely rejects physical force to punish children. It is deeply morally wrong. Corporal punishment of children is anti-Christian and has no place in child rearing. FBI Agent John E. Douglas was one of the first serial killer profilers in U.S. law enforcement. When asked what should be done to stop serial killers he said, “Don’t torture your children.” Douglas’s advise is prescient. With revengeful and scientifically sadistic institutions, the United States routinely torture its citizens and is even allowed to torture by law. American citizens can be legally treated as slaves in prison to provide unpaid labor for corporations and the State. Schleiermacher rejects the entire disciplinary system of rewards and punishments for children. American society is very effective in beating out empathy in its children and citizens. Games of chance are “…immoral in all its forms, produces a bad and empty kind of fellowship, and in the case of some it assumes the unhealthy symptoms of a chronic disease”(Munro, p. 287).

Capital punishment is antithetical to anything bearing the name of “Christian.” The symbol of Christianity is the Roman Empire’s instrument of torture and execution—the Cross. American Christians should wear the lethal hypodermic needle as it modern symbol today. The Christian is asked to imitated the life of Christ--the Christian Pattern-- not worship the instruments of death whether it is a cross, a gun, a guillotine, a hypodermic needle, an electric chair, or a rope. Capital punishment is the remedy for crime in a completely dehumanized authoritarian society. Capital punishment is anti-Christ. Christianity practiced in America is by and large a massive hypocritical self-righteous fraud.

Christianity is antithetical to murdering “uncivilized races.” Schleiermacher is an anti-imperialist—that is to say, America’s foreign policy since its inception as a nation:

“Christianity knows nothing of a right to civilize uncivilized races by means of force. It insists upon the avoidance of everything by which the Christian name might be blasphemed among the nations (i Tim. vi. I   Tit. ii. 5-8) ; and by nothing has it been more blasphemed than by oppression. We rightly wonder how it is that Christians live in intercourse for centuries with pagan peoples without exciting in them any friendly disposition towards Christianity. But the reason of this is to be sought for, not so much in the circumstance that Christian people have no interest in Christianity, as in the fact that Christianity has made itself hated and contemptible through its deeds of violence. Were it not for this, those plastic races with whom it came in contact fifteen centuries ago would have long since been Christianized. That they are now only partially so is a standing disgrace to the Christian name”(Munro, p. 276).

The United States is responsible for the torture and murder of some 250,000 Latin Americans during the 1980s American/Contra death squad inquisition. Many were professing Catholic Christians that are to this day being discovered in mass graves throughout Central America. Those government officials responsible for this mass murder of Catholic Christians have gleefully returned to U.S. government seats of power to duplicate the atrocities of the American/Contra death squads in Venezuela in a publicly admitted effort to seize its natural resources.

The Latent Church​

"Plato told Aristotle no one should make more than five times the pay of the lowest member of society. J.P. Morgan said 20 times. Jesus advocated a negative differential - that's why they killed him." – Graef Crystal

First century Christianity emerged from Christ’s pacifist liberal protest against established orthodox belief. According to first century Christians, by rejecting dogmatic authority, he was fulfilling the true meaning and purpose of Judaic Orthodoxy of his time. This protest also extended to the State’s claim to power and authority. We see this historical cycle of autonomy and new heteronomy over and over again in the secular and religious realms. Christianity first appeared as a critique of authority. Christ was a heretic of the orthodoxy of his time. Christianity is a Jewish religious heresy and qualifies as a cult in Hebrew theology.

Christianity loses its authenticity to the degree it submits, or surrenders, to the dogmatism of orthodoxy. The Roman Emperor Constantine I was converted to Christianity in 312 A.D. and with his Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) he ended the persecution of Christians. Emperor Theodosius later declared Christianity the official religion of the Rome Empire in 382 A.D. Christianity was truly conquered when it became the official religion of the Roman State. This integration of Church and State is called “Constantinism” and prepared the way for the Medieval Inquisitions—and there were many. After the integrating process of Constantinism, authentic Christianity is then transformed into uncritical conformist “Christendom.”

It is exactly this “Mass” Christianity, or religion of the Crowd, that Soren Kierkegaard aimed ten polemical tracks, published collectively as “Attack Against Christendom.” Kierkegaard attacked Denmark’s State Church by calling it corrupt, and an “illusion” of Christianity. In Denmark during Kierkegaard’s life it was illegal for anyone but a Christian to own a whorehouse.

There is more recognition of first century New Testament Christian principles in secular Progressive society than in the today’s organized churches of the Christian Right-Wing. The organized Christian Right-Wing has become a church of idolatrous religious nationalists. With American Progressives and Secular Humanists re-emphasizing human empathy and the social duties of Christianity, they have become an external latent church of conscience. This latent church is based on the universality of moral principles:

"Well, there is an elementary moral principal which is called the principal of universality. The principal says if something is right for us it's right for others [if] it's wrong for others it's wrong for us. If you can't accept that principal, you should have the decency to shut up. So either you accept that principal or you say O.K. I'm a Nazi. I'll do anything I like, no more discussion of right and wrong. Those are the choices in effect." -- Noam Chomsky

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German born American theologian. He taught theology at the University of Berlin, Marburg, Dresden, Frankfurt and Leipzig. Tillich among the first to oppose the Nazis movement and was the first non-Jewish professor to be dismissed from the German University system by the Nazis. The Nazi’s targets where those they labeled with carefully crafted propagandistic names such as “liberals,” “leftists,” “communists,” and “humanist.” Tillich fled Nazi Germany and was accepted to teach at the Union Theological Seminary in the United States and he brought with him the trauma and historical memory of the fascists invading German society and churches by bribery, force, and deception. History is repeating itself now in American society.

One of the many egregious crimes of Nazi fascism was its crude and profane entry into the realm of spiritual consciousness. This historical experience of fascism influenced Tillich’s philosophical thought and theological writings throughout the rest of his life and appear in his own personal political choices and commentary. He comprehended the disappointment and alienation individuals in modern secular society developed toward the organized church because of its moral failure to wholly resist demonic fascism in its capitalistic (Italy) and socialistic (German) forms.

The Catholic and Protestant churches competed for Nazi favoritism in the hope of securing the monopoly of managing the Germany's public educational system. This same struggle is happening is the American school system. The Catholic Church won the prize only because it was more organized and centralized than the Protestant Churches. This moral failure of organized Christianity submitting to Hitler has damaged it credibility for almost a hundred years. And it appears to be happening once again today, but in a collapsing corrupt American society. The atheists have a sound moral case to despise organized Christianity given its poor track record of supporting tyranny throughout the centuries. Anti-religious sentiment is completely understandable given its disgusting tendency of joining tyrannical forces in times of crisis:

“It will not do to designate as non-churchly all those, who have become alienated from the organized Churches and traditional creeds. My life in these groups for half a generation showed me how much latent Church there is in them: the experience of the finite character of human existence; the quest for the eternal and the unconditioned, an absolute devotion to justice and love; a hope which is more than any Utopia; an appreciation of Christian values; and a most delicate apprehension of the ideological misuse of Christianity in the Church and State. It often seemed to me as if the latent Church, which I found in these groups, were a truer church than the organized Churches, because its members did not assume to be in possession of the truth”(The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich, 8, On the Boundary Between Church and Society).

 
Paul Tillich recounts Nazism and Religious Nationalism in Germany during the 1930s and how some “Christians” cooperated with them. The Christian Socialists tried to warn of the coming danger, but the warnings were ignored because they were merely religious socialists:

“Those possessed of demons in the New Testament know more about Jesus than those who are normal, but they know it as a condemnation of themselves in their condition of cleft-consciousness. The Ancient Church called the Roman Imperial Government demonic, because it made itself equal to God, and yet prayed for the Emperor and gave thanks for civic peace, which he assured. In a similar way religious Socialism attempted to show that Capitalism and Nationalism were demonic powers, insofar as they were at the same time sustaining and destructive, attributing divinity to their highest values. The development of European Nationalism [Nazism] and its religious interpretation of itself has fully confirmed this diagnosis of mine”(Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History ).

Just as it is happening today in America, nationalism emerged in Nazi Germany with the patina of Christian symbolism—and it was only symbolism. All nationalism is a violation of the most “fundamental” principle of New Testament Christianity—the sin of idolatry:

"Idolatry is the elevation of a preliminary concern to ultimacy. Something essentially partial is boosted into universality, and something essentially finite is given infinite significance. The best example is the contemporary idolatry of religious nationalism"(Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p.13).

Nation States are well aware of the tendency of organized religion to join in bigotry against an agreed upon enemy and exploit tribal feelings with agitation propaganda. Agitation propaganda is also called "Vertical propaganda" since it originates from the leaders of a regime. Fascism is a top-down revolution pretending to be populism--a very selective populism. Nation States use rape, torture, violence, religion, and theism as weapons of war to encourage proxy religious wars for worldwide profit and power. Valuing cultural diversity and tolerance in society is an obstacle to this use of state power.

Capitalism is essentially a demonic enterprise:

”But real demonry—if this word is to have any special content---occurs only in connection with a positive, sustaining, creative-destructive power...This is true also of the last great demonry of the present, nationalism.... National things receive sacral untouchability and ritual dignity. But just there demonization begins. With the creative-supporting forces, destructive ones combine: the lie with which the self-righteousness of one nation distorts the true picture of its own and foreign reality; the violation, which makes other nations an object whose own essence and independent might is despised and downtrodden; the murder, which in the name of the g-d pledged to the nation is consecrated to holy war. Beyond this, it is the peculiarity of the national demonry of our time that it has subjected itself to capitalism. The nations entered the World War as capitalistic groups of power; and the chief bearers of the will for war were at the same time the bearers of the capitalistic domination in their own nation; not from any personal demonry, but themselves supported by the demonic figure of capitalism which they represent. Thus the social demonry of the present is revealed in its duality, in its immense supporting and destructive strength. Shattered for a moment, it is at present on the point of re-establishing itself, in order better to sustain and—better to destroy”(The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich.I: The Demonic).

Martin Buber, an existentialist theologian, tried to counter the rising fascist tide by arguing that the doctrine of fallen man cannot be used to justify establishing a Police State. Crime is often the proxy issue for establishing a fascist state: 

“In a famous polemic with Friedrich Gogarten, written during the early days of the Nazi regime and published in Germany in 1936, Buber tries to define the political implications of human sinfulness. Gogarten, following a pseudo-Lutheran line, justifies the authoritarian state on the ground that man is "radically and irrevocably evil, that is, in the grip of evil," and therefore must be kept in rigorous control by the state. Buber denies this conclusion, and points out that even in Gogarten's own theology, man stands in "radical evil" only before God, because "God is God and man is man and the distance between them is absolute." Over against his fellow men and society, however, "man cannot properly be described as simply sinful because the distance is lacking which alone is able to establish the unconditional." Gogarten’s justification of the authoritarian state is, therefore, invalid; indeed, Buber generalizes, "no legitimate use can be made in political theory of the concept of human sinfulness" (The Writings of Martin Buber, Meridian, 1959, by Will Herberg, p. 67).

After living through the rise of Nazism in Germany in which there were 80 million casualties worldwide and witnessing the church’s sickening moral failure to resist the demonic forces of nationalism, Paul Tillich concluded, “All institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic.”

The Curse

And the people went into their hide, they oh

From the start they didn't know exactly why, why

Winter came and made it so all look alike, look alike

Underneath the grass would grow, aiming at the sky 

It was swift, it was just, another wave of a miracle 

But no one, nothing at all would go for the kill 

If they called on every soul in the land on the move 

Only then would they know a blessing in disguise 

The curse ruled from the underground down by the shore 

And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before 

The curse ruled from the underground down by the shore 

And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before 

Tell me now of the very souls that look alike, look alike 

Do you know the stranglehold covering their eyes? 

If I call on every soul in the land on the move 

Tell me if I'll ever know a blessing in disguise

Primary and Secondary Socialization Paradigms

"He who lives without society is either a beast or God.”--Aristotle

I noted that Aristotle postulated two human natures: the first nature humans are born with while the second nature is formed by socialization. This second nature is viewed by critical sociology as having two general processes the individual undergoes: Primary socialization, and Secondary socialization. However, I want to change these terms to “Primary paradigm,” and “Secondary paradigm.” Both Berger and Luckmann used the term “socialization” which has the connotation of being about table manners. Sociology texts often use table manners as an example of socialization. It is a good example. One actually has to train a child not to pull the hair of a playmate, or eat out of another’s plate on impulse. This process is mostly successful. However, the term “paradigm” is analytically insightful as is “socialization” since paradigms also define what is real, the self, and knowledge. Luckmann only used the term “paradigm” in a colloquial sense once in his book to describe Robert Merton’s sociological studies. The concept of paradigm is useful for keeping the focus on Mannheim’s critique of ideology. In this study, Thomas Kuhn’s scientific paradigm and Berger/Luckmann’s use of the concept of socialization is understood as both having similar meanings as far as ideological formation is concerned. [1]

The Primary Baseworld Sociological Paradigm

“1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.”-- Ludwig Wittgenstein’s definition of logical contingency, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (pdf)

(∀x)(∀y)[{Ix --> (Ix v ~Ix)} --> Ry]*(x :/: y)^[2]

Aristotle famously said, “Man is a social animal."[3]The Greek word for “cynic” (kunikos/ κυνικός) means “like a dog” as in “canine” because cynics ignore the rules of society.

The child’s first nature is inherently social according to Aristotle. Human as a social being means they are sympathetic and imitative of others around them. The primary paradigm constructs the cognitive scheme for a baseworld, or first home world for the socialized child. The baseworld provides a place for the child’s self-identity as a member of society (Generalized other), and access to the stock of cultural knowledge along with intersubjectivity that allow persons to share common interpretations of experiences, thoughts, definitions, and situations. Language is the most important tool for socialization since it “objectifies” the world by creating the system of symbols to organize meanings and things according to a specific hierarchical epistemological scheme. Wittgenstein believed that language is a public tool to understand the private subjective life. There can be no private languages because they are impossible since how would one know if the wrong word was chosen in a sentence? Language allows the child to construct a social identity in which the inner world of thought and the outer world line up in a “symmetrical relationship.” This world ordering implicitly has encoded within it the “social distribution of knowledge” that is also the constricting content of socialization. This cultural stock of knowledge is inherently constrictive since “There is always more objective reality available than is actually internalized in any individual consciousness” (SCR., p. 133). We referred to this “more objective reality” as the remainder, the non-conceptual, and the non-identical.  The observing subject cognitively subtracts what is beyond the domain of a paradigm.

In addition to language, the second essential condition for socially training a child is “emotional attachment to a significant other” or learning is impossible. The parent, or guardian must not only be physically present, but also intellectually, and emotionally present. Without emotional attachment by the child, internalization of the primary paradigm will fail since identification with a significant other failed. The child “identifies” with the significant other’s attitudes by making them their own thereby learning normative correctness. The child’s self identity reflects back the significant other’s view of the child and is “assigned a specific place in the world” (SCR., p. 132). With this kind of identity formation the self is a reflected social self. Berger/Luckmann further write, ”Every individual is born into an objective social structure within which he encounters the significant others who are in charge of his socialization. These significant others are imposed upon him. Their definitions for his situation are posited for him as objective reality…He is thus born into an objective social structure but also an objective social world”(SCR., p. 131). Berger/Luckmann note that there are tremendous variations from person to person with different biographical circumstances (class) and individual “idiosyncrasies” (intellectual, physical) that make each person unique for better or worst. However, empirical studies report persons view themselves as both being inside and outside of society according to Sociologist Georg Simmel (SCR., p. 205). 

The primary paradigm provides a cognitive “nomic structure” to the world. “Nomic” is from the Greek word, νόμος, meaning “ custom, tradition, political tradition, regime, or structure,” (Slater lexicon), and “law” (Middle Liddell Lexicon). The letter ἀ is a negative prefix, or alpha privative. When the prefix is added to “nomic,” it forms “anomic,” or “anomie” which means “no structure,” or “no law.” “Anomie” is an important concept in describing the secondary paradigm and Mannheim’s study of ideology.

The Secondary Subworld Sociological Paradigm

The secondary subworld paradigm is a second process of socialization involving other areas of society. The secondary subworld paradigm is parasitical (Greek: para, “beside”, sitos, “the food”) in that it presupposes the baseworld with an already formed social self-identity. Personality tests are often given to measure the degree of socialization of a potential employee. The child’s guardian constructs the first primary baseworld, but a person unrelated to the child’s family constructs this other new subworld. Examples of a subworld would be when a person entered the military, joins a corporation, become a university student, or joins a religious organization. The mentors in this social context can be “anonymous, detached and interchangeable” (SCR., p. 142). This second process of socialization is necessary because of the high social division of labor, and distribution of knowledge by stratified industrial sectors. The person learns a new institutional language and new system of schematization. The family becomes less important in this subworld as a vocational advantage-oriented life style becomes the dominant value in this example. Socialization is successfully completed when people are willing to “sacrifice” themselves in someway for the new paradigm (SCR., p. 145).

Paradigm Entropy

"1 The world is everything that is the case."
--Wittgenstein

(∀x)[Wx --> (Ex * Cx)]^[3]

However, the secondary subworld has less of the same sense of reality, inevitability, and naturalism as the primary baseworld. Self-identity is not as strongly defined by the subworld. However, experience in the subworld can cause the destruction of one’s self-identity in both levels of socialization. Internalization of the subworld is a vulnerability from an institutional point of view. In fact, one can “hide” within the role specific knowledge of a secondary subworld although this is becoming less and less possible today with employee surveillance technology. Factional groups and social theorizers can engage in ideological manipulation of reality by constructing paradigms that hermeneutically exclude selective perceptions such as individual intuitive preunderstandings (intuition). The ruling social paradigm does not want to compete with any other legitimizing authority in constructing a socially functional false totality. Society can become repressive in the domains of the cognitive-instrumental (Science), moral-normative (Ethics), and the aesthetic-expressive (Culture). The social totality has coercive force, and the power to kill by action or inaction.

The most important characteristic of the secondary subworld is it can create conflicts of paradigm consistency with the stronger primary paradigm. "Paradigm entropy" is a paradigm that is no longer able to give coherent meaning to experience resulting in an asymmetry between thought and life. The primary and secondary paradigms may conflict with different interpretations of phenomena, or there is a conflict of values between different domains of social reality. Phenomenon that appears as reality-disconfirming is named by Kuhn, “paradigm anomaly.” Karl Mannheim called this damaged paradigmatic world “structureless,” and “enfeebled” (Ideology and Utopia, p. 17). Max Weber referred to this condition as “disenchanted experience” in describing modernity. Critical theorist Roger Foster refers to the “atrophy of experience,” “restricted experience,” and “mutilated experience” in a disenchanted world. [4] Paradigm shift may result from the realization there are many possible interpretations of reality by other paradigms alien to one’s primary baseworld. What the subject believed to be the necessary structures for society (Psychological Egoism) and reality (Nihilism) turn out to be “a bundle of contingencies” (SCR., p. 135). Also, the original primary baseworld paradigm may have serious internal crises being a religious cult or hate group. There is always in the background the possibility of one’s world collapsing and metamorphose into a counter-reality and counter-identity. Consequently, there is a need by individuals and institutions for intense “reality maintenance” to uphold “reality-persistence” with theoretical cultural legitimations to enhance internalization by members of the subworld.

When paradigm entropy reaches a critical mass then revolutions occur or even “Great Awakening” religious movements rise up. Historically, Religious Great Awakenings last for two years. Revolutions in history are typically non-violent because most people do not want to die for an already dead paradigm. Total socialization is not possible in a modern industrial society with a complex division of labor (SCR., 165). Human beings construct society, and society in return reshapes what it means to be human so there are continual metamorphoses of society and the individual.

Metamorphosis

Philip Glass

[1] Footnote: the idea of the “reflective social self” likely originated from William James in his book “Principles of Psychology (1890)” (SCR., p. 206).

[2] Footnote: Wittgenstein never put this proposition into symbolic form, but it might look like this.

Definitions of symbols for expressing logical contingency:

:: equivalent

:/: not equivalent

v = either, or, inclusive

--> = Logical operator for implication: If, then.

* = and, conjunction

~ =Not

(∀x) = for all x

I = each item

R = Remains the same

y = everything else

x = any item

[3] Definitions of symbols for categorical proposition:
W = world
E = everything
C = is the case

[4] For a classic critical analysis of how Internet monopolies are mining personal data for surveillance and monetization of the individual private life see Shoshana Zuboff’s interview about her recent book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.” Sociologist Jurgen Habermas described this process as the  “colonization of the lifeworld.”

The Social Construction of Reality

“For what comes by nature is harder to cure than what comes by custom for the reason why custom is held to be so strong is that it turns things into nature.” —Aristotle, Magna Moralia, Book II, 4 B.C..

“1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.”—Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

A very brief overview of the philosophical school of thought known as the “Sociology of Knowledge” is needed before further discussing Aristotle’s distinction between first human nature and a second constructed cultural nature. Max Scheler (1874-1928) was known in 1920 as the father of the “Sociology of knowledge” (Wissenssoziologie), which is concerned with the relationship between thought, and the social context it arises. His phenomenological examination focused on how existential determination dialectically influences thought.

The best overview of this area of critical sociology is a small book authored by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann titled, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Anchor Books, ed. 1967, here after referred to as “SCR”).” This book is particularly indebted to Emile Durkheim as the first French professor of the sociology of knowledge although authors Berger and Luckman give a dialectical interpretation of Karl Marx’s critique of society combined with sociologist Max Weber’s research into how subjective meanings become reality (SCR., p. 17).  I first encountered this book when an excited graduate sociology student hurriedly walked into the philosophy department holding a paperback book saying, “Have you guys heard of this?” I think in some ways the sociology of knowledge presents critical theory more intuitively than critical philosophy since it has a stronger empirical side that people can relate to instead of abstract epistemological questions. [1] For many readers the sociology of knowledge was their first introduction to critical theory.

[1] Footnote: A point of phenomenological interest is Peter L. Luckmann worked with Alfred Schutz on the text, “Structures of the Life-World (1982).” We discussed the concept of the Lifeworld in regard to Husserl. The sociology of knowledge uses the phenomenological method to critique ideology and understand how ideas are formulated in a social context to create a commonsense worldview.

Max Scheler (not to be confused with Karl Schlegel) further developed Husserl’s phenomenological method by researching a new area of study called the phenomenology of ethics. Interestingly, Scheler understood phenomenological observation to be akin to a “spiritual posture.” The later Husserl likely adopted Scheler’s interpretation of the phenomenological method of the Epoche. Scheler viewed Husserl’s phenomenological method as “an attitude of spiritual seeing...something which otherwise remains hidden....”[2] The German word "Geist" means both "Spirit," and "Mind." Ethics and phenomenological description merge in Scheler’s methodology:

“Rather, that which is given in phenomenology ‘is given only in the seeing and experiencing act itself.’ The essences are never given to an 'outside' observer with no direct contact with the thing itself. Phenomenology is an engagement of phenomena, while simultaneously a waiting for its self-givenness; it is not a methodical procedure of observation as if its object is stationary. Thus, the particular attitude (Geisteshaltung, lit. ‘disposition of the spirit’ or ‘spiritual posture’) of the philosopher is crucial for the disclosure, or seeing, of phenomenological facts. This attitude is fundamentally a moral one, where the strength of philosophical inquiry rests upon the basis of love”(Wiki: Max Scheler).

Scheler’s key insight is that human knowledge is given in society as a priori to individual experience giving thought the order of a “relative-natural view”(SCR., p.8). Scheler developed an entire theory of values based on “beings-of-value” (Wertsein). Heidegger had a very high regard for Scheler’s contribution to contemporary philosophy. Scheler was the only prestigious member of the German intelligentsia to warn of rising German Nazism in 1927. Scheler’s entire works where not in English even in 1967. One interesting historical note is Pope John Paul II studied Scheler’s ethics resulting in his dissertation titled "Reevaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler.“ [3]

“The world expresses itself in the type of the human spirit, and this type represents itself in the world."—Friedrich Schleiermacher

Another important scholar that inspired the sociology of knowledge is Karl Marx with his critique of human activity as labor (Substructure) and the society (Superstructure) this activity produces. 1.) Marx and Engels had a dialectical view of the interaction between consciousness and a dynamic material world: in history human consciousness re-shapes material existence (Nature), then material existence in return re-shapes consciousness (Society). 2.) Ideology holds the stock of cultural knowledge, which can be manipulated to reflect and advance only the interests of factional groups. 3.) Socially functional false beliefs create a false consciousness in which the thinker is alienated from his own life. 4.) Reification occurs when the subject apprehends human phenomena as “things” which are non-human, or even super human that re-appear as an alien force (Economic Depressions). However, reification also includes “facts,” “cosmic laws,” or the “will of a divine being.” Reification is a kind of forgetting of the past and de-humanization of the world (SCR., p.89). When Wittgenstein said, “The world is a totality of facts, not of things,” he means A.) The concepts of  “world” and of “facts” are linguistic interpretations of existence as appearances. B.) “Things” are appearances (phenomena) of which we cannot go beyond to the thing-in-itself (noumena). The key question for sociology of knowledge is how these subjective meanings are transformed into objective facts.

American sociologist Karl Mannheim combined Marxian critique to Scheler’s work in sociology of knowledge. His main interest was the phenomena of ideology and distinguishing between the “part, whole, and general concepts of ideology” (SCR., p.9). Ideology can dominate a part or the whole of consciousness as in Marx’s false consciousness. Ideology influences both the other’s thinking as well as one’s own thoughts. No one is immune to the influences of ideology. Mannheim most famous book is “Ideology and Utopia” (1936) translated from German by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils, Harvest Books, edition, 1996. For editions published in the US after 1936, Part I, was added especially for English readers. Mannheim’s thesis is “utopianism is like ideology, but unlike ideology it has the dynamism to transform that reality into its own image”(SCR., p.10).

Wilhelm Dilthey’s research focused on countering historical relativism by arguing that a historical situation can be understood only in its own social historical context (SCR., p.7). American sociologist Robert Merton made the very important distinction between “the intended, conscious functions of ideas, and the unintended, unconscious ones” (SCR., p. 11). Merton was the first fully developed sociologist of knowledge. Sociologist Talcott Parsons’ studies were a critique of Mannheim’s research. Neither C. Wight Mills, nor Parsons, nor Merton developed the sociology of knowledge further than Mannheim. And lastly, Werner Stark diverts from Mannheim’s focus on ideology by turning from the “sociology of error” to the sociology of truth.

Construction of Reality by Externalization, Objectivation, and Internalization

Dr. Dennis Hiebert of Providence University College, Canada defines the social construction of reality as “…the process whereby people continuously create, through their actions and interactions, a shared reality that is experienced as objectively factual and subjectively meaningful.” This socially unifying process has at least three other related processes. 1.) Externalization is a process in which the institutions of society and nature appear as external and independent of one’s own existence. Reality is that quality of phenomena recognized as being independent of our own existence and volition. 2.) Objectivation is the “…process by which the externalized products of human activity attain the character of objectivity.” Daily life is viewed as having a pre-arranged ordered reality. The dynamics of human created products act back on the producer appearing as other than a human creation. Money capital moving around causing worker dislocation and unemployment is a good example of the objectivation of human labor as profit returning in money form as an alien force. 3.) Lastly, Heibert defines internalization as “…the process whereby the individual learns the legitimations (explanations and justifications) for society’s order.” These justifications could be cognitive, or moral. Knowledge is the certainty that phenomena are real and have attributes. When we define the world, we define ourselves.

The Social Totality

Adorno is known for his intentionally non-scientific philosophical concept of the “social totality.” Adorno argues that 1.) Society gives facts meaning in a social order. The social totality is not a causal chain matrix, nor a collection of disconnected facts. Rather, the social totality is a driven self-sustaining system that provides a social pre-constructive model of the world. At the same time the social totality act as a constraint on thinking. Adorno’s thesis is “…that society, as a totality, is not an object which can be grasped through any of the scientific methodologies adopted by positivism” (Adorno, by O'Connor, Brian, Pub. Taylor & Francis Books, 2012, p. 27). Positivism misses the dialectical process by which objective facts are formulated. 2.) Society is shaped by fundamental ideological beliefs. Most importantly, 3.) Society is a coercive totality that can force persons into self-destructive circumstances. However, this influence cannot be understood with the category of “causality,” but rather by “integration.” It is within the social totality that “ ‘Damaged life’—our condition—is a life pursued within the space of the social totality in which our beliefs and decisions are directed by institutional norms which seem objective and reasonable”(Ibid., p. 27).

Aristotle postulated two human natures: the first nature humans are born with while the second nature is formed by socialization. This second nature is viewed by the sociology of knowledge as having two key general processes the individual undergoes: Primary socialization, and Secondary socialization. However, I want to change these terms to “Primary paradigm,” and “Secondary paradigm.”

Bitter Sweet Symphony