A New Book (Of Old Ideas Revised)

6 January 2024

Introduction—Where We’re Going

We are in the midst of a cultural* revolution.  Part of my defense of that statement has to do with my perception of good and evil (Eros* & Thanatos*) and part of it has to do with our newfound ability to communicate amongst people and nations, all over the planet, at the drop of a finger tap.  I am professionally, but not humanly, unqualified to comment on the latter (world-wide communication) issues. 

Eros and Thanatos are names of gods from ancient Greece who stood, respectively, for the forces of life and death.  I work as a psychotherapist addressing addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life transitions.  I see a lot of the work of Thanatos which manifests as chaos.  Together, with each individual client, I try to assist in bringing order, or more life, to the client’s values and means.  I feel this qualifies me to comment on heaven and hell, good and evil, virtues and vices, life and death.

That leap, from therapist of individual human beings to cultural commentator, is partially the result of what I see in therapy.  The premise giving me permission to extrapolate from dyads to diasporas is that therapeutic issues are cultural issues made manifest in individual people.  In simpler terms, therapy deals with cultural issues one person at a time. 

Further, I have studied philosophy* and psychology*, both formally and informally, since I was a boy.  As I write this sentence, I am 64-years-old and the restrictive and socially constrictive changes I have seen frighten me, more for the sake of my children (early 20s), and human well-being, than for my own sake.

From 2015-2023 I returned to two Canadian universities to secure degrees in philosophy, psychology, and counselling psychology.  Although I learned a great deal throughout the course work, and particularly through the paper writing and a practicum, I was also a first-hand witness to what wokeism* has brought to the university and what the wokusts are bringing to our land.  And by our land I mean the land all over this magnificent Earth.  (Wokusts rhymes with locusts but the former have more intent, purchase, and destructive effects.) 

A substantial part of what I’m seeing is epistemic* i.e., there is a large-scale but unnamed attack on how and what we know in the West.  As such, this is an invitation to each reader to disagree with anything I write.  My concern is less with fostering agreement than with fostering free thought.  Yes, free thought along with free markets and free speech, what was known in my early years as classical liberalism.  I believe these ideas are at the core of what I, with the deepest reverence, refer to as the Canonic West. Just so you don’t waste your money buying this book and then throwing it out, I confess, I am also an elitist*.  (I’ll bet you are, too.)

If you agree or disagree, I hope you will base your own arguments on evidence-based thought*.  There are few things in life more impressive than well marshalled facts put together in elegant arguments.  While I cannot promise elegance, I do promise evidence-based thinking with cited sources, whenever possible. 

Finally, as a philosophical psychotherapist, the thing I see most is what Freud called neurosis*.  It is anxiety taking hold of human lives to the point of dysfunction.  If successful, this book may convince you that neurosis can be a sign of health in a world gone mad—again. 

* All terms with asterisks are defined at the back of the book under Definitions.  For the purposes of this blog, I will define terms with the blogs in which they appear.

Cultural Concerning intellectual and social contexts including the pre-conscious drives that seem innate e.g., Eros, Thanatos.

Elitist One supportive of leadership by the best or most skilled of people (Morris, 1975, p. 423).  This term is not deployed as a class-based notion but as the reasonable individual patronage of the best ideas, skills, and products available to members of a free society.

Epistemic Concerned with epistemology, from the Greek, epistēmē, knowledge, understanding, and derivatively, logos, the accounting for or study of.  In plainer terms epistemology focuses on what we know and how we know what we know.  (Morris, 1975, p. 441).

Eros The life force, which is historically the procreative erotic force but, in my usage, includes those and more broadly positive, constructive endeavours.  The opposite of Thanatos.

Evidence-based thought Ideas validated and demonstrable in objective reality.

Neurosis n. any one of a variety of mental disorders characterized by significant anxiety or other distressing emotional symptoms, such as persistent and irrational fears, obsessive thoughts, compulsive acts, dissociative states, and somatic and depressive reactions. The symptoms do not involve gross personality disorganization, total lack of insight, or loss of contact with reality (compare psychosis). In psychoanalysis, neuroses are generally viewed as exaggerated, unconscious methods of coping with internal conflicts and the anxiety they produce. Most of the disorders that used to be called neuroses are now classified as anxiety disorders. Also called psychoneurosis. —neurotic adj., n. (American Psychological Association, 2023).

Thanatos The death force fostered by chaos and destruction. 

Philosophy From the Greek, philo, love of + sophia, wisdom.

Psychology From Aristotle, psuche, the soul and derivatively, logos, the accounting for or study of.

Wokeism A retributive class and racially based set of social beliefs, belief being Plato’s knowingly weakest form of knowledge.  The best definition I know is as follows:

“Four academic doctrines—critical theory, postmodernism, social justice, and critical race theory—are moving the world, or at least the West, from [this] triumph to decline.  These doctrines reject Enlightenment values such as open inquiry, individual autonomy, free speech, scientific skepticism and even reason itself” (Pardy, 2023).

Wokusts, Proponents and practitioners of wokeism. 

Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying).  He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes.  He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.  Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.

References

American Psychological Association.  (2023, 6 January).  APA Dictionary of Psychology. 

https://dictionary.apa.org/neurosis

Morris, W. (Ed.) (1975). The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of The English Language.  American Heritage Publishing Co, Inc.

Pardy, B. (2023, 24 June).  How Canada’s Secular Religion of Cultural Self-Hate Took Hold.  National Post, p. A17.