The Root of Contest/Martial Logic- Reason & The Death Instinct..Part I

Prelimary thoughts on the Root of Either/or Thinking

Some thinkers have suggested that the logic of Contest/Martial either/or thinking- "us vs Them"- historically regarded as a fallacy in everyday thinking, is the primary logic form of human experience. This is false, though the form of the dynamic is functional within the larger adopted frame of contest, war, and physical sustainment and survival.

The root of this thinking, which has been treated in seminars in the past, lies in the combination of the use of reason as an architectonic categorization of information and the knowledge of ability, with what is known as the death instinct- in situations where the use of reason is necessary in the decision making that avoids immanent serious injury or death.

Following the form of Aristotelian and Kantian categorization/organization of knowledge, the pressure from immanent physical threat, implied in the formulation of the basis of natural right as the fear of death, elaborated in Leo Strauss Natural Right and History, and developed further on this blog, literally provides the structure of a point at which failure to decide and act correctly renders the result of death. We all know this in the more benign social forms of deadlines, bill due dates, qualifying educational tests, etc..

When normally at leisure, or under very little time pressure, the individual has a tremendous array of information and choices by which to select in order to further material and physical sustainment of needs. In physical threat situations where the element of threat is observed but moving closer in distance and time, the information that is useful and the options of successful avoidance or thwarting of the threat, become lesser and lesser, and the individual quickly sorts through the options to find the most effective means of survival- "best thing" to do.

This type of heuristic mechanism then reduces to the deadline and a decision must be made- and historically and anthropologically this meant "fight or flight".

There will be more added later.