Jeff's World

In a course on 20th Century Analytic Philosophy, Prof. Buller was attempting to relate the rejection of the phenomonological approach in favor of logical atomism. While I won't bore you with what these movements actually entailed, his analogy is appropriate. He related these advances to Freudian stages of psychosexual development.

There's the oral phase, the anal phase, the phallic stage, the latency phase, and the genital phase. The oral is a dependent phase marked by blind acceptance of their surroundings. The anal phase is marked by a controling characteristic, very rigid and, in a sense, anal-retentive. The phallic stage, albeit most controversial, is a stage of agression towards and eventual identification with their same sex parent. In essense, the child begins to understand their position in the hierarchy of life. The latency phase is just chillin' out for a bit. Then comes the genital stage, which is self explanitory. But Buller added onto to these the appropriate philosophical movements. Once the individual understands his or her role, what they can do with themselves and what they can do with others, they begin to wonder why they exist at all? Existential angst is bound to follow. I'm sure most people who are reading this have gone through a period, normally in the very late teens, early 20's, where they wonder what the meaning of it all is, why they're confined to function as they do, and to what end. And then comes the British Idealism phase (logical atomism, logical positivism, empericism). While I'm just now getting in this scholarly movement, I understand that, basically, it is an attempt to put to rest those existential questions in light of what we can understand of our reality. From what I understand about understanding reality, it's some pretty cool stuff. And yes, sometimes I feel like I'm in Sophie's World; my life mirroring my philosophical inquiries at the time.

But to the point, the collective human consciousness has succeeded in a relatively small number of adventures. We, as a society, have developed through the oral (meat...good), anal (um...3rd century A.D....'nuff said), phallic (sword envy...I mean, come on, who doesn't want a Anduril or Narsil of their own?), latency (dark ages...perhaps still going on), and genital (free love, baby!). Ok, given, that's over-simplified as a matter of jest, and yes, you could make the analogy of human progress fit any developmental model. But it does leave the question of what lies ahead. Because, Sophie's world or not, philosophy does correlate well with where we are as a race.

It seems as though I had so much more to say, but I'm having difficulty writing it out. Maybe it'll get drafted in the next couple days, because in the back of my throat, where all thirsts originate, I can tell its important. Till then...

Namaste'.

Post Scripts...