Subject: Re: HAB: Maslow & PoMo & Habermas
Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 08:02:05 +0000


Fred,

thanks for your comments.

>The concept of self-actualization has several different interpretations.  
>One
>refers to the humanist ideal of fulfilling your true desires.  OTOH, self
>actualization from a more conformist perspective means simply becoming what
>you are supposed to become in terms of normative requirements.  Maslow can 
>be
>thought of as either a humanist radical or as merely normative, as
>elucidating laws of human behavior or laws of behavioral development.

Does this distinction you point out indicate a Kantian/Hegelian dichotomy? 
Two potentials for self actualization. One within subjective reason; the 
other within objective reason?
------------
>Habermas deals with more complicated ideas: the validity of utterances,
>particularly the right to make certain statements or to behave in certain
>ways, and the justification of normative claims.

You are right here, of course. These are the things Habermas deals with. He 
also deals with the metanarrative of the developmental trajectory of 
modernity. This is how I was attempting to link Habermas & Maslow. My 
suggestion was that if Maslow's developmental schema was transposed from the 
individual to the social, then does PoMo more accurately *represent* the 
penultimate stage of self-actualization? Does the application of this type 
of modeling present any heuristic opportunities? Not sure.

What has motivated my inquiry is trying to identify *in substantive terms* 
what Habermas sets his theory of communicative action against (the later 
1970s turn to the right/rise of neo-conservatism in bourgeois democracies). 
How and why was the social democratic paradigm eroded? Is it possible to 
regain the sort of solidarity-consciousness that was more dynamic in 
post-WW2 places like Australia, the U.K, other European states.

What went wrong??? Ralph says it was the 1970s, and I think he is right in a 
way. Something DID happen in the 1970s. Is the potential for a humanistic, 
compassionate social solidarity retrievable? Was it only ever an ideological 
power-based, class-partisan construct in the first place?

Looking at Maslow's framework might assist in examining these issues. Maybe 
we are left with a theory of crises. Whilst capitalism can continue to 
*stage manage* the show effectively, then there is no genuine social need 
for solidarity. Times are still too good, and the alternative socialist 
paradigm has been discredited via neo-conservative propaganda especially 
since 1989.

Maybe all I want to know is why did I receive free tertiary education in the 
1970s in Australia, and my children will have to go tens of thousands of 
dollars into debt-tutelage if they want to go to Uni? Why are there 
McDonalds' advertising hoardings in our primary schools? Why is ruthlessness 
an socially admired trait, and kindness regarded as weakness in our 
*official* cultural mores? Did the socialist paradigm only ever mask the 
omnipresent/omnipotent will-to-power for a century following the crises of 
the industrial revolution age? Did the solidarity-consciousness generated by 
this massive era of crisis in the confrontation between labor and capital 
simply exhaust itself in the 1970s allowing the steady corruption of the 
social democratic paradigm to an extent that we have the Zionist neocon 
tragedy now showing in Palestine at the behest of the most incompetent U.S 
administration in history?

Yet the last thing we need is fanatical religion as the primary Other to try 
and counter balance finance capital's globalizing dominance. Any aliens out 
there :-)?

Regards,

MattP.

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