079 - Using Hegel's Triad as a Model for Success

Hegel's "triad" of Being, Nothing, and Becoming are central to his ontology.  And it can also be used as a framework for personal achievement.  This episode explains how. 

The Being/Nothing/Becoming dialectic comes first in Hegel's Science of Logic, but it also presents the pattern for his overall project of Mind (Idea), Nature, and Spirit (Geist).  And it is just this framework that one must use in pushing to new heights of success in life.   

The basic approach is goal setting (Mind), assessing the path to take, including the obstacles to overcome (Nature), and boldly embarking on one's action plan in the world (Spirit).   

The correspondence of Hegel's triad  to real life achievement is the subject of this episode. 

Transcript

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Hello. This is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist episode 79. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to explore philosophy psychology and modern science. With a special emphasis on the great philosopher, George Wilham Friedrich Hagle. And just to note, as regular listeners know, we often explore as well. The psychological teachings of Carl Young. As well as the media. Theorist Marshall McLuhan plus other philosophers, such as American pragmatic philosopher, Charles Pierce, French philosopher, Henri Bergson and the British analytic philosopher, Bertrand Russell, just to name a few. All of whom are relevant to today's world. And that's what I intend to do with this podcast. And in particular, this episode, and that is to make philosophy and psychology. Actionable and understanding and acting within today's world for best results. Now in this episode. I want to get at an issue that is at the core of Hegel's philosophy. And that is his introductory triad of being nothing and becoming. With which he begins his Magnum Opus, the science of logic. And in particular, I will. Try to show how this triad can also provide the basis for a success model for individual achievement. And I have clearly covered the being nothing becoming triad numerous times here in the various episodes of the podcast, but it never gets old. It always bears fruit when re-examined. So going to start with that. And the beginning of Hegel's science of logic. At the beginning of it all there is being and nothing, both, both being in nothing. That is because when you strip everything away from being, you left with nothing. So being actually turns out to be nothing. They turn out to be the same thing that is because being without any presuppositions is really nothing. There's nothing left. But on the other hand, nothing in this context is not just an absence of something. But it's pure nothingness itself. And in this respect, it has its own being. So it flips back to being, being so. Even though both being in nothing, maintain their essential immediacy, pure being, and pure nothingness. They each turn out to be the other. And this is Hegel's first use of identity and difference something he returns to again and again. But what is key here? Is that Hagle demonstrates that it, rather than an analyst changing back and forth being to nothing, nothing to being and so on, it settles into one new notion. And that is becoming H becomes the other. And now becoming is the central notion, the immediacy, the truth of being in nothing. So. Now, this may sound like a philosophical word game. But it is not. It is absolutely important to understand this concept in order to understand how our world is made up. First of all many asked the question from young children to philosophers alike. Why is there something rather than nothing? And we did an entire episode in this question back in 2021 episode number 29. And there I showed the four possible answers to that question. Why is there something rather than nothing first? First answer. Is that the universe was created and I have nothing that's by God as many religions teach. The second possible answer is there was no creation. The universe just is why does there have to be a creation? Why can't it just. Exist. The third is that the universe in fact popped into existence by some quantum fluctuation, as we observe and subatomic particles. And fourth, the fourth possible answer is that the question itself is a false choice because both being and nothing have always existed. And I presented the argument in that episode. That number four was in fact, the answer in my view. Both being in nothing exists as moments within the core reality of becoming. Now I realize this is a hard concept to wrap one's mind around. We tend to think of being as a static concept and nothing is the absence of being, but this is not what Hagle is saying. His premise is that both are two sides of one singular notion, which is becoming, which is called becoming two sides of a coin, two ends of the same stick. And that is becoming. Becoming is the reality. The ontological reality is change. But not just random change. Purposeful evolution you see becoming must constantly evolve and grow to stay ahead of nothing. It is life itself. And I believe this ID is easily understood in the context of the flow of time. The past and the future both do not exist, but the present moment does, but it will also die and go into nothing the past. But at the same moment, the future will move into the present view. And both things happen concurrently simultaneously. And there is. His identity and difference here as well. The present moment persists in this identity of becoming that contains both being and nothing. The present moment is an identity in difference of the future becoming the now and the now becoming the past. Which ties the two together. As one. And then what we are calling, becoming. Now we've often talked here in the podcast about the right brain left brain divide. The left brain is always wants to freeze things into something that is there, isolate something and freeze it. The left brain wants to separate. And isolate, as I said, But in the real world, nothing is frozen. All in everything is constantly undergoing the process of change. And even if it doesn't move, it's moving in time. And this big picture process is better understood by the right brain. Now, what is important to understand is that underneath all this is thought, thought is alive. Thought is life thought is comprehension and thought moves. It becomes. Change is not just some blind process going on with mindless subatomic particles. Thought is that the bottom of it all? Hey, hill calls this, the idea or the concept, but pure thought must actualize itself. And it does this through nature. It needs nature. Its other. To provide the ground for itself, actualization. And this self-actualization process is what Hegel calls, spirit or Geist in German. But it's the same formula. If you will. We're being actualizes itself through nothingness in the process of becoming. The. Logic actualizes itself. Through nature in, in the process of spirit becoming it's a three-step process, being nothing becoming, and likewise, my nature and spirit, this is Hegel's. Triad, if you will. And I'm going to show in a moment how this can be the basis for a success formula. Spirit is becoming it's it's alive in the world. It's the basis of the world. It's what drives things forward and it's an age old historical process. It didn't start with, with human beings. It certainly goes. through fits and starts. It's been going on over time, over centuries, over millennia. The light, the life and the love and the freedom of spirit is increasing. You know, one big mistake that Einstein made perhaps as big as was to think that time was an illusion, that there was only one block space time where the past and the future all exists together in one. One entity like a finished book on the shelf or a movie that is sitting in the can, so to speak. But by itself, the book on the shelf and the movie and the can are dead. It is the live reader. Or the live viewer, the movie that we experiences the life described in the book or the movie. So Einstein was essentially saying that the universe is dead. True. Change is impossible in the block space time. We may think that things are happening and changing, but Einstein felt that this was just a stubbornly persistent illusion, as he famously said, Now nothing against Einstein here. We certainly revolutionized our understanding of the world. But it got this wrong. And never really accepted the empirical findings of quantum physics is the final answer. He felt there must be more an underlying deterministic cause of the quantum weirdness. But he did deny the essential nature of time of change and have the freedom necessary to enact real change. And this was his big mistake. I mentioned the left brain's habit of taking things in viewing them as lifeless still life's like a painting or a photograph. That's not how real life is. And nobody pointed this out better than Xeno back in ancient Greece. You probably heard many of his famous paradoxes. We've covered them here before. Like you can never walk to the other side of the room because you have to go halfway first. And when you reach that point, you have to go halfway again. And this goes on forever. So you never actually reach the other side of the room. And also there's the one about the tortoise and the Hare. If you give the tortoise a head, start in a race against the hair, the hair can never pass the tortoise. Because he must get to where the tortoise was first. And by the time he gets there that. The, the tortoise would have moved somewhat slowly, but he would've moved forward ahead. And then the hair would have to reach to that point. And then by the time the hair reaches that point, that tortoise would have moved further ahead. And this continues on forever. So the. The hair can ever pass it towards. Uh, now what this shows is that you cannot freeze a moment of time that the left brain model breaks down in real life. Time does not break down into discrete atomic units. It is a flow and we are in that flow. And this is so important to understand. Now it brings up a big question. Who or what thought up the soul scheme? What we seem to be in the middle of it. And we also don't have an owner's manual that we're given at birth. Uh, we don't have a clue to what's going on here other than our own instincts, our own capabilities and what our thought tells us. And this can be a lot, actually. In fact, I believe it's enough if we choose to think about it. Now my contention is that there is no other. Thing or being, or God behind the curtain, driving the process. We are the process. And I believe Hagle shows that it can not really be any other way. Mine thought is fundamental. At the root level, it can only conceive itself in a state of becoming, given the dichotomy of pure being and pure nothing. And it carries this out on the macro level, through spirit by overcoming the nothingness or the finite world, the dead world, the Einsteinian world. To a better awareness of its freedom. And this freedom is always a growth and evolution of self-understanding. But the key question here is this, why does mine need nature to do this? Why the struggle. Well, the answer goes back again to Hegel's triad regarding being in nothing. Being only becomes real by settling into becoming becomes determined to being, being that is there and becoming entails movement. Abstract mind has no movement. It's just an abstraction and outline. So to speak no movement. Because of this in order to live, it must move within nature to become real. An analogy. Is this a script for a movie? It's it's a script, but it's not the movie itself. The actual movie brings the motion to the thing. Now it is also important to realize that this process of becoming it goes back before there were even humans. To the early life forms that struggled for greater freedom and awareness to allow for productive. Evolution. It goes back even further than that to the stars and the planets, which, which evolve to allow conscious life to emerge. And it goes even further back to the big bang and. Before the big bang. When the laws of nature were actually established. Uh, most likely in a previous existence in a previous round, and we've discussed this here before. It's amazing concept. The laws of nature themselves may have evolved from round to round from big bang to big flame out or whatever happens at the end again and again. To support this evolution. And this is the evolution of consciousness of freedom, of light of love. Of life. And. Charles Pearson. I mentioned held this belief that the laws of nature evolved, they evolved to. For a better life. To provide life and they evolve then for life to provide mind. And several contemporary scientists also holds this view, including physicist Lee. Smolin who've. Talked about here. So, what does this mean for all of us? Well, it means. Many things actually. First we are the ones that are steering the ship. And guess what we also is individual. Finally, bodies fit into the being nothing becoming triad as well. We came from nothing and we will return to nothing. And our mission here. If we choose to accept it is to enhance the evolution that is proceeding within us and outside us during our time here, not just to accept the status quo, but to move things forward. And this is what Hagle calls. True infinity. True. Infinity does not mean living forever, but it means breaking out of the bonds and constraints of everyday existence to make things better. And when you make things better for yourself, you often make things better for others as well. You make things better for yourself by not taking from others, but by improving things for you, for yourself, for your family, for your community, for society at large. Now I want to make an important point here. Oftentimes we don't seize on opportunities because we are not actively looking for them, but they are out there. Allow me to relate an example. It's called the red car test. Red car test. Take a moment to think about the last time you took a drive in a car anywhere he went to the store, you went up for a drive, whatever. Okay. The last time. Got it now. I asked you during that drive, how many red cars did you notice? Oh, you can't recall. Don't worry, neither can I. But if I told you to go on for a drive now, Go anywhere, drive a couple of miles and I'll pay you 50 bucks,$50. 50 pounds, whatever your currency is for every red car you see. And I'm sure you would be then actively looking for them and you would find some. Now life is like that. We have to have intention and intent. Once we have a goal, we begin to see the things around us that will help us succeed. And reach our goals. It's an example. Let me go back to when I was first getting out of college and I was looking for a job. My father had me go to see a number of his friends. To see if they could give me advice or provide me with key contacts of their own. And I'd go into their office. I'd sit down and basically just say something like, I am looking for my first job, any suggestions, and they would usually respond by saying, well, what are you interested in doing? And I would say something really, you know, Plain, like I would like an entry-level position with career potential in the management, and I'm a hard worker. And I kept repeating this in. And interview after anything, nothing seemed to happen. They would say something like, well, I'm sure you'll find something good luck. And then send me on my way. And for many meetings like this one person finally confronted me and he said, Greg, you know, when you come in to a contact to talk, it's good to have a specific goal in mind. Such as an industry or specific service area that you want to work in and be as specific as possible as to the exact job you seek. For example, it would be better if you came in here and said, I would like to work in financial services, particularly the investment business, specifically as a financial advisor handling other people's money. Do you have any contacts in that specific area that I could meet with? It might have an entry level opening or that I could at least discuss possibilities with. And it was great advice. I realized that I was expecting the opportunities to come to me, but the world doesn't work that way. I needed to have a firm and specific goal in mind and express that goal to others. That's when things started happening. I needed to ask my father's context for recommendations and helping me achieve my specific goals. So I changed my approach in Lomi hold, everything changed and the meetings went much better and I was able to express a specific goal, which triggered a memory in the context mind, and they were able to provide me with much better advice and follow up contacts. And I eventually secured my first job. As an aside, it was in marketing research, not financial services, but I just use the financial services here as an example. My point in all, this is that the notion of becoming entails more than just getting by. Is am I going beyond the given circumstances to create new and better opportunities? And one must actively seek for these opportunities. They're not going to just come to us. We have to go out and, and hunt for them. And the universe will respond. Our intention and our activity is key here. We all have dreams and we can fulfill these dreams by having a specific burning desire. So let's put this in the language of the pig alien triad. The first element is our burning desire. The second element is the world out there. The reality of the situation you have to deal with. The third element is to bravely enter this world with our intention firmly in place to let the world know of our intention and actively seek to make it happen. I know this sounds real simple. But if one can break it down like this, I think it can help one see where they may have gone wrong in the past. For example, regarding step one. Do I have clear objectives? I have ever written them down. Have I told my goals openly to others. All these actions are critical for the first stage of implanting the desire within both in yourself and in the world at large. Yeah, we're, we're connected to the world at large. So when we implant this desire, it's in the world. And then, and then the world starts to react. And next regarding the second step. Have I accurately assessed when I'm up against, out there. What are the obstacles? What are the ways around those barriers? And there's always a way where the will is strong enough. There is a way. The third step involves action. One must act. You can't score a basket unless you take a shot. You can't make a sale without asking for the sale. And you can't ask for a sale unless you're speaking with a prospect. So ask yourself, am I taking the right action? And also. Do I have a do it now? Propensity for action. Remember, never put off to tomorrow. What can be done today? Often it is necessary to act first, then evaluate even if this leads to problems. I do it now. Attitude will get more results. Some call it the ready fire aim way of getting things done. And I believe this is a great strategy. Also an important thing is makes you Shefsky hall of fame, duke basketball coach used to say. If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough. So in your daily quest expect errors. Don't freak out when they happen, but, but embrace them. If you're not making errors, you are not pushing hard enough. And also these errors are some of the best learning devices for improvement. This is actually how we grow. if you try to avoid air is too much, you're keeping the status quo. You've got to really. Shake things up and get out there and do things. And there will be some errors and you'll learn from them and you will improve from them. We don't want the status quo. We want to go beyond the status quo. So. To summarize here. The metaphysical foundation of an 18th century philosopher. George Wilhem freighter. K. Or can provide. Us with a roadmap, if you will, for success. I believe this to be true. And it's up to you and no one else to go for it. Are you up for it? I believe if you've been listening to this podcast over the last few years, I think you are up for it. So again, the three steps based on the galleon triad are this one think. Get that objective in your mind. To assess the, the territory. What, what are the obstacles? That. the, you need to overcome to achieve your objective. And the three act. All three of those are so important. This is a simple process that can allow you to achieve so much. So that is a wrap for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. I really do appreciate your time that you spend with these episodes. I look forward to your feedback. You can reach me on the podcast, Facebook page at cunning of Geist. I post there often in between episodes in it. We get into some really great discussions with page followers. So please like, and follow that page. That's important at cunning of Geist on Facebook. And please tell your like-minded friends about the podcast. Help spread the word. So I'm in closing. Once again, I say. Um, Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. See you next time.