F.E.D. Dialectics: Part 01: ‘Seldon’s Social Formation(s) Series’. On the Conservation and ‘‘‘Containment’’’ of Conflicts.

Part 01: ‘Seldon’s Social Formation(s) Series’.

On the Conservation and ‘‘‘Containment’’’

of Conflicts.

Dear Reader,

It is my pleasure, and my honor, as an elected member of the Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.] General Council, and as a voting member of F.E.D., to share, with you, from time to time, as they are approved for public release by the F.E.D. General Council, key excerpts from the internal writings, and from the internal sayings, of our co-founder, Karl Seldon.

This 1st release of this new such series is posted below [Some E.D. standard edits have been applied, in the version presented below, by the editors of the F.E.D. Special Council for the Encyclopedia, to the direct transcript of our co-founder’s discourse].

Seldon –

“It is a prominent -- if often neglected or avoided – feature of dialectical ‘content-structures’ at the human-social level, that dialectical oppositions, ‘intra-dualities’, and the social conflicts that they entail, are «aufheben»-conserved in the transitions from one social formation to its consecutive next, and beyond.”

“Internal psycho-social, ‘‘‘psychohistorical’’’ conflicts generate these human social ‘content-structures’, driving the transition from one scale of social formation to its next. But the successor social formations/scales do not solve their predecessors’ internal conflicts. Instead, they «aufheben»-conserve those conflicts. Indeed, those conflicts, along with the predecessor social formations’ units as a whole, are ‘«aufheben»-ated’ as a whole, in all three “moments” of the «aufheben» process – determinately negated, and elevated, and conserved, all three at the same time.”

“This means that their constituent conflicts are mitigated as well as conserved within their own native scales – ‘‘‘contained’’’ – as well as transcended by their elevation up into a new, higher, richer, qualitatively-different form and scale within the human-social level. That ‘‘‘containment’’’, however, should not be expected to be perfect.”

“At the deepest scale of the present, »synchronic, systematic dialectic of the Terran global human-social formation(s), the social individuals, within themselves, suffer internal psychological, emotional conflicts. These conflicts do not necessarily arise to an amplitude whereby they damage, or even destroy, their proximate instance of their next scale up; of their family’s scale.”

“However, as the ever-deepening dissolution of human community and solidarity, the social estrangement – the social alienation -- so characteristic of, most especially, the capitalist form of class society, verges on its historical extremity, in the helical trajectory of human-social ‘meta-evolution’, such breaches of the ‘‘‘containment’’’ of pathological psychological conflict inside the social individuals become more frequent. Their damage to and destruction of families further escalates the already socially pervasive degree of capitalist social alienation.”

“Conflicts within families, from the foregoing-mentioned as well as from other sources/causes, also persist, and are typically ‘‘‘contained’”, within the family household – not spreading into, e.g., the neighborhood in which such a household is contained. But that is far from being always the case.”

“Conflicts from this and other sources also arise within the neighborhood scale of social formation(s) – even as multi-generational feuds and vendettas – between or among family households. These conflicts are, normally, ‘‘‘contained’’’, not spreading beyond the given neighborhood, into, e.g., neighboring neighborhoods, or even ‘‘‘up’’’ into the scale of the village or municipality as a whole. But not always.”

“Likewise, in ‘qualo-fractal analogy’, conflicts internal to a whole village or municipality, or between/among such, from the just-above-noted and from other sources/causes, are usually ‘‘‘contained’’’ there-within, against any spread up into the multi-village/multi-city units’ scale, e.g., up into the “county” units scale. But not without exceptions.”

“Similarly, conflicts within or between/among counties perhaps seldom breach beyond their boundaries and their scale up into the scale of the province or “state” as a whole, except, perhaps, in rare instances.”

“Finally, for the Terran present at least, and at least for our «diairesis» [cf. Platon: ‘dialectical divisioning’ of a given Domain into multiple categories] of the human-social formation(s) Domain’s scales, conflicts within nation-states – even horrific civil wars – somewhat rarely trigger global conflicts.”

“Per our theory of dialectics, human-social conflicts, within the epoch [and within the Terran locus -- or loci?] wherein human ‘meta-evolutions’ are ‘‘‘meristemal’’’, are, generally, not finally ended or resolved. In general, such conflicts are conserved, but also mitigated -- ‘‘‘contained’’’ and constrained -- at best, most of the time. But sometimes, in the transition from one scale to its immediate successor scale of human-social formation, earlier-scale ‘‘‘contained’’’ and constrained conflicts become re-stimulated, and break out of their ‘‘‘containments’’’, all down the line.”

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, and for access to download, free-of-charge, of books, other texts, and images by F.E.D., please see --

www.dialectics.info

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books published by the F.E.D. Press, see –