Now I can report I feel calmer because I have confessed…one of
the professed goals of philosophy is to calm the mind, sooth the soul,
and I have achieved this but I didn’t achieve my state of calmness
by philosophical means, I did so by psychological means…
and it certainly isn’t an absolute calmness that exists but a degree
of calmness…
psychology is the understanding of thought, feelings,
and behavior of human beings…whereas philosophy
deals with the thought aspect of being human and
psychology deals with feelings and behavoir … but
philosophy doesn’t deal with feelings or behavior…
so in a real sense, psychology deals with a greater
aspect of being human then philosophy does…
psychology attempts to proclaim itself a “science” whereas
philosophy has given up trying to make itself a science…
it is simply a academic discipline and nothing more…
there are many claims that “big brother” brainwashes us into
certain beliefs… now that may be true but that suggest that we
know ourselves in a psychology sense better then we know ourselves
in a philosophical sense… we have a better sense of who we are, as humans,
by psychology then by any other aspect………
to become human, fully human requires both philosophy and psychology…
for psychology can tell us the how and philosophy can tell us the why…
for psychology can never give us the why… why is it important or to what
end does become emotionally and psychologically healthy mean to us?
Psychology can aspire to making people mentally or psychologically healthy
but then what is that point? One might claim to be mentally or emotionally
healthy allows people to become “productive” members of society…
but I ask as psychology cannot ask, what is the point of being a “productive”
member of society? Is that even goal we should try for? or should we engage
in humanistic education and not just education to train people to have jobs…
as our education system is now…………as for a humanistic education, that
means education is not to train people for jobs or to have job skills but
to better understand what it means to be human and what it takes to
become a better human being? For psychology is to make a person
mentally and/or emotionally healthy, but to what end are we becoming
mentally or emotionally healthy? I would submit that our modern age
of nihilism is creating several generations of people who are alienated
and disconnected from ourselves due to the nihilism of a modern age
which negates human beings and their values for profits/money……
It is one of my contention that psychology can only have arisen in our modern
age because the very nihilism has created our modern age also created
mental and psychology disfunction that exists today…
we remove the system of nihilism that created our modern age we also
remove the severe trauma and psychological stress that has afflicted our age…
trauma and stress that is the cause of the two world wars and the Holocaust
and the cold war and all the Strum and Drang of the last 118 years……
We must merge philosophy and psychology into one discipline because
each discipline affects the other and each runs into the other in numerous
ways, too many ways to count……….
Kropotkin