Self-Actualization as Creative Synthesis

I am not using idealism in the sense that is typically used in philosophy, as exemplified particularly by Berkeley — that is, the doctrine that mental states are primary, and events only exist if there is an observer perceiving them. As a junior in high school I ran (unsuccessfully) for a seat on the Student Council. Before the election, some of us candidates were horsing around, trying to come up with absurd names for political parties we claimed to represent. My contribution was " Pragmatic Idealist, " which sounded to me and everyone else like an oxymoron. Later it seemed that pragmatic idealism was not such an absurd idea and that I really believed in it. It makes sense because one meaning of " pragmatic " is having a realistic set of strategies for attaining one's goals, whereas " idealistic " means having goals which conform to values that promote a better society. * So the two words aren't always opposites. Instead they may refer to different levels of a problem and so be compatible. In fact, the late Olof Palme, former Socialist Prime Minister of Sweden (one of the most politically innovative Western nations), once said that his party members were all pragmatic idealists. Pragmatism and idealism are among the pairs of concepts that common nonsense regards as incompatible opposites (dichotomies) but are really just paradoxes. Other examples include " reason versus emotion " (see Chapter 4), " religion versus science, " " playfulness versus seriousness " and " selfishness versus altruism. " Let's look at some common sense ideas for bridging these paradoxes. My discussion will partly be based on Abraham Maslow's 1 but also incorporate more recent results on neuroscience and on neural network modeling. How are abstract concepts like " emotion, " " reason, " " religion, " " science, " and so forth represented in the brain? We don't yet know. Modern brain imaging techniques such as PET and MRI (see Chapter 2) have uncovered a great deal of information about which brain areas " light up " during performance of