Archimedes’ platform is a means for comprehending the society in which we reside. We are splashing about within the belly of our society and the only means for understanding this society is for us to find a platform outside of the monster.
I claim that we are all ideologues within our society and as such our view is seriously compromised. To understand our reality we must first discover how to stand outside of our personal ideologies. Ideology prejudices our view and blinds us to reality and only after recognizing this fact can we begin to analyze our situation.
If we continue to follow our bovine characteristics of either running with the herd or standing blankly staring into the distance we cannot “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negativeâ€.
We display an attitude toward most any subject. An attitude cannot be described explicitly but is a notion, which is an inference, based upon behavior. We are all inclined to behave consistently to a situation and this behavior is attributed to our attitude. Our attitudes and the quality of such attitudes are judged based on observed behavior.
Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.†This predisposition I am inclined to label as an ideology.
If I wish to become conscious of my ideological bias I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition or ideology.
When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitudeâ€. The son cannot change the attitude but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified.
The point of all of this is that it is the intuition we wish to understand and our attitudes are a means to discover the profile of our intuition. Within our intuition are our ideological views.
The attitude directs the behavior. The public and I can observe the behavior and from that gain insight as to the attitude. Under attitudes one might create the categories of values, interests, sentiments, beliefs, predisposition’s, irrational tendencies, taste, knowledge, certainties etc.
The public from my behavior can infer ideology. The question is how do I use the attitudes as a vehicle for making conscious to me the nature of my intuition? The answer is that through solitude and concentration I can focus my conscious intellect and develop inferences as the structure of my ideological bias.
Solitude becomes the catalysis for developing insight into the nature of intuition. This insight may provide a pattern from which further inferences can be drawn thereby making other aspects of the intuition accessible to the conscious intellect.
Solitude is not meant to be sensor deprivation, which can lead to hallucinations. Solitude and perhaps a modification of normal environment can facilitate the faculty of imagination.
Solitude creates a mood that enhances the faculty of imagination, which becomes the driving force for conscious action. The faculties of imagination and reason are what sets the human species off from our non-human ancestors. Imagination as a force for human discontent is therefore the force for human advancement. Human flexibility motivated by the discontent of imagination has provided the impetuous for human material advancement.
Goya said that fantasy united with reason “is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.†Fantasy the child of imagination plus reason has produced all the scientific and humanistic and artistic accomplishments.