Dialectics

Back in the day, nigh unto 200 years ago, along came a fella, a thinking man, a philosopher as it were . . . but he had a streak of common sense that stretches clear into the here and now. . . Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Common sense, yes, because his contemplations and theories focused on the real world, what is really going on in the affairs of men. His Dialectic ultimately became a standard for thinking people to analyze historical developments, the web and flow of ideas that slosh back and forth in the ideas and philosophies of men. In the 19th century, a famous (or infamous, depending on your politics) economist named Karl Marx applied some Hegelian principles to his analysis of history, economics and industry. Long story short, he came up with some new ideas pertaining to capitalism, which during his time was a juggernaut of developing modernity that was rearranging the ways that men work to make a living. During that era, mid-1800's, industrial progress was growing in leaps and bounds. There were conditions in industrial plants that were hard on the workers, even to the point of endangering them and/or even killing them. Karl Marx developed his theories about the workers' alienation and their tribulations in trying to make a living in the industrial establishment that was so dang profit-driven. Marx's theories later spread far and wide and were ultimately summed up in a modern idea call communism. You may have heard of it; it was quite a rabid topic back in the day, when I was a young man. At that time, in the 1950's, the Russians were hard at it, trying to work out their communist plan that had begun back in 1917 when the Bolsheviks kicked the Czar out of his centuries-long dynastic power over the Russian workers. But what I am thinking about now, is this word, Dialectics, which I have seen or heard as applied to history, industrialism and workers' rights. But this morning I encountered, while reading, the word Dialectics applied to Capital investment and making money in the stock market. While reading a random email this morning from some person, or entity, named Porter, who was offering profit possibilities through his investment advice, which happened to center on today's juggernaut of profit, progress and wonder, the mysterious Ai, whatever that is. Therein, I read this sentence: "Let's use dialectic thinking to look beyond the simple narratives." As for me, I didn't bother to click on his money-making link, but I did take note of his use of the infamous "dialectic" word. And I realized that we have come full circle in our thinking since the 1840's, when "dialectic" was appropriated by Hegel and Marx. Now the dialectic is, apparently, considered a useful rationale for making money in the stock market. I can only conclude that, in history, what goes around. . . comes around. But you never know exactly how. So my mind slips back into a memory of an old Dylan song, the one about when God gave names to all the animals, and the man saw an animal producing milk, but the man didn't know how, so he called it a "cow." Go figure.

How's that for some dialecting on a Saturday morn? Glass Chimera