Examines how to develop a Sane Society based on Nexalistic Action, and so challenge the dominance of our often Insane Society by recognizing and combatting the many forms of its Repressive Actions across personal, social, objective, and transcendental domains of life. Concurrently, it discusses how the Infinite Personality and the Finite Personality can be balanced so that individuals can flourish in a Sane Society.
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“Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”
From The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski.
Pockets of sanity are not enough, when insanity reigns. But it’s not just the active insanity—the killing, the gross inequity, the bestiality, the destruction of the biosphere, the meaninglessness… It’s also the passive insanity—indifference, apathy, depression, anxiety, resignation… All of this is well documented, analyzed, and discussed in many books, podcasts, and news shows to the nth degree. So, I’m not going to replicate all that brilliance. Instead, I’m going to make it easy for you.
I’m going to provide a solution. It’s an easy solution. But there’s a hitch. You need to make a choice. Your families, communities, cities, businesses, institutions, and governments—the systems you are embedded in—also need to make a choice.
The choice is sanity or insanity. To not choose is to choose insanity. Sorry, no wiggle room here. It’s a true binary decision.
Since your full awareness and understanding is necessary in the decision-making process, this book was written. In the reading, you will come to understand how different forms of “repressive action,” both dominant and submissive, control individuals and the systems we are embedded in.
But there is hope, lots of hope. In “nexalistic action,” the antithesis of repressive action, individuals and their systems are in an open, collaborative, and integrative process of communication that coordinates the personal (subjective), social (interpersonal), scientific (objective), and nonordinary (transcendent). As a result, individuals and systems are constructively infused with adaptability, creativity, meaningfulness, and compassion, which can also heal the deleterious events of repression action. The foundation for these ideas were based in my interactions with Juergen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, when I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Frankfurt, Germany, in 1987-88.
Nexalistic action? Some personal history is warranted here. The word “Nexalism” comes from the science fiction, Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. Van Vogt. Nexalism was a central ‘ism’ in my adolescence and later in the creation of the Nexalistic Revolutionary Front (NRF), that is a major focus of my memoir, The Disappearance of Steven Kubacki: Conspiracy, Revolution, Revelation. There was no “nexalistic action” back in 1978-79, but rather the concept of “Nexalism” from the sci-fi book represented the capacity to think outside the box by first understanding the methodologies and assumptions of all the sciences and humanities and secondly, in Renaissance fashion, integrating them to develop novel solutions.
As I see it now, as a psychologist and scholar 45 years later with the writing of “The Sane Society,”, the NRF was beset in by forms of repressive action and so was disbanded primarily by me with my reemergence in 1979. (Some of its ideals were in accord with my revisioning of “Nexalism” as “nexalistic action” in this current book.) In short, my thinking has moved way beyond my early adulthood.
What about the second half of the title “The Infinite-Finite Personality?” Intertwined with the choice of a sane or insane society is the problem of how to balance for each individual the infinite and finite personality. Like the infinite universes, dimensions, and realities in the multiverse paradigm of modern physics, humans possess infinite possibilities and potentialities. Yet, like any universe in the multiverse, humans are governed by boundaries, structures, and limitations that limit the probably of any potential becoming realized…
…The overlords of ignorance and fear and their minions want us to believe that our complexities and innumerable possibilities are illusionary; that no one truly has endless complexities, paradoxes, and boundless potential. They would have us resigned to their fabricated definitions of a sanitized, distilled, reduced, and predetermined existence that is not living but stillborn…
…The reality of existence offers expanding relationships and connections in a universe, or more accurately, a multiverse of limitless possibilities. We are most secure, when we are most connected to each other and to all of existence. In contrast, we are most insecure, defensive, hostile, fearful, and least adaptive when we constrict and reduce our infinite relationships and connections to a finite set of certainties. For example, the person who has only one understanding of the world is much less adaptable to changes in that world than a person who has myriad understandings. The person who constrains themselves to one central relationship, is less adaptable when that relationship changes…
…What we should be afraid of is the finite—the banal, repetitive, predictable, boring, stuck, mechanical, joyless, flat, and neurotic. Most people are plagued by feelings of no confidence, no power, little support, hopelessness, helplessness, and meager resources. Most people are not burdened or immobilized by overabundance or infinite possibilities, although they may hope for or dream of them. Beneath the traumas, wounds, belittling, and mental torture that we all endure, resides an infinite personality that can be released as its love and creativity are realized.
There are few who want to be labeled repressive. There are few who would admit they are repressive. No one wants to be called a fucker. And yet, we all know there are lots of fuckers in the world. In fact, most of them believe they are doing good. And why wouldn’t they? Fuckers like to cluster with other fuckers, each telling the other their good, each denying the other’s fuckedness. It’s frightening: Fucked groups, fucked institutions, and fucked nations fucking other groups, institutions, and nations. No wonder no one knows they’re a fucker. Fuckers collude with other fuckers, though everyone thinks someone or some other group is fucking them.
How do we separate the fuckers from the do-gooders?…