Seeking Wisdom

Good luck on your quest.


But I disagree with the statement that it is neccesary with historical knowledge to see life whole.
All the "wisdom" of seeing life whole can be understood in principle by examining the duality of any given phenomena, and understanding how this duality is, in fact, an illusion.

The world of dualism is the illusion that has cradled us, and wich still does. But it is a cocoon wich we need to breach to understand the true nature of existence.

Cyracuz


I can think of a few dualisms like mind/body or instrumental versus communicative action rationality, but I do not think you are talking about these.

Let's take the question does democracy work? As I see it democracy works when there is significant involvement of the people in the operation of the nation. That is, our citizens must accept a good number of duties for democracy to work in a way that is not a mere illusion. I think that in America democracy does not work very well and I suspect democracy will become less functional in a real sense. I think that it is an illusion now and will only get worse.

How does dualism fit in the things I am talking about?

Perhaps you would prefer to create your own example to make clear for me what is the meaning of this dualism that you speak of.

Does democracy work?

Well, this is a yes or no question to wich the answer depends on how you define "work".

And there is dualism here, on many levels. The most obvious is perhaps the notion that 'either it works or it doesn't'.

But where is the dualism in democracy?

One truth about democracy is that it needs two sides to work. It needs the eligibles and those who can vote for them. If one of these are not present the democracy fails.
So the mutual dependence of the rulers and the ruled is a dualistic notion in any system of goverment. The two do not have any real substance by themselves, and therefore their existence is bound to eachother, and they are one.

Out of all govermental systems, democracy is probably the idealism wich accomodates this fact to the greatest extent.

But, any govermental system is labeled after what is it's predominating attribute. There is no pure democracy, as there is no pure dictatorship.