Interviewer: I use the term, I sort of coin, God is a God of infinite potential; which you are saying different words. I say that in order for infinite potential to reach realization, there must be creation, etc., etc., there must be 7 year olds, giggling 7 year olds and romanticizing 20 year olds, etc., etc.
Dr. Rubenstein: I have a question for you. How do you regard entropy?
Interviewer: I believe it’s not as simple as they make it out to be. I believe that the holy universe is geared towards expansion and development. There’s presumably a counter-veiling force, entropy, but that the basic drive of the concept of water is events, what’s the potential? As we both well know, in many fields, such as is always counter-veiling forces that still would be my sort of one sentence answer.
Dr. Rubenstein: Well because one way of looking at entropy is that order gives way to disorder and from that point of view disorder cannot be reclaimed as order.
Interviewer: You know we have a conference in Bard on my little metaphysics and so there was a world-renown chemist there, Peter Atkins, and he took on the role of the intellectual adversary ad mon of conference, which was fine of course, and we were sort of shocked by his position. But his metaphysics awards entropy. Entropy drives the Catholic order, meaning a sort of decay. He said, one word, decay. So we asked him so where did the original something come from? He doesn’t know. We asked him, well what the purpose that won’t work, he doesn’t know and where’s it going, he doesn’t know and again, where did it come from, he doesn’t know. I said you have a metaphysics written on a metaphysics. Right and then they asked him, it’s all on tape by the way, on You Tube, you’re renowned Peter Atkins, world renown chemist, would you rather view yourself as a product of decay or a product of Divine potential.
Dr. Rubenstein: I’m now 89 and one of the things that impresses me, I’m quite healthy for my age, but old age is entropy or the product of entropy. It’s the coming apart of organization. It’s the dissolution of organization.
Interviewer: Not so simple my friend.
Dr. Rubenstein: Okay.
Interviewer: Not so simple my friend because we get up in the morning and traditionally we say [inaudible 0:03:12.2] we thank the Heavens for another day. What are we thanking them for ultimately in my metaphysics, I think we’re thanking them for the possibility of reaching our potential, of going for our potential and we have a lifetime to go for it. The lifetime may be a day, it might be 120 plus years, that’s the gift. In order for there to be a quasi-infinite universe there has to be apparently life and death, etc. The gift we’re given is that lifetime to make the most of it okay and on the one hand, we can be a negative lifetime, cause death and destruction and in the mid-zone might be be middling, you know sort of survivalist and the other extreme might be a Dr. Richard Rubenstein who on some level shakes the world.
Dr. Rubenstein: Oh I hardly do that.
Interviewer: and maximizes the potential that fulfills the imperative of potential. So it’s not, so in order for you to have had opportunity to shoot to your potential, you had to be part of a self-fulfilling perpetual motion dynamic, which involves life and death.
Dr. Rubenstein: Right.
Interviewer: But you lived it to its full and you’ve still plenty to go. You played it out. So its issue is not so much that there’s an Autumn, there’s a sunset, it’s more that there’s a spring to them.
Dr. Rubenstein: The spring comes first.
Interviewer: Right and the idea is to make the most of it because that’s why we view it and life itself.
Dr. Rubenstein: I wouldn’t challenge that. I’ve tried to make the best of it.
Interviewer: Right, right, life, as we both know, the whole idea of life itself is a triumph even an ant it’s triumph that life exists. Then life with potential for this spirituality or giving this or elevating humanity is a bountiful gift. We have the tendency of seeing the issues and problems and if we can see the potential in things we both well know we are much enlivened by it. So you were saying that run of the conversation that your teaching core, etc., etc., and you had that little segue about it’s my best option, right, my different options. When you keep advancing human condition you are giving yourself life, you enhance your life, you enhance the entire cosmic order and complete you on your level, which is a very high level or a more humble level to that extent though we advance the cosmic order, we keep supercharging creation. That’s how we are, that’s that particular little point.
Dr. Rubenstein: Okay, I hope that was not there. What struck me is how, see to me the question is system of continuity, system of gaps and I recognized immediately that you are a part of a system of continuity.
Interviewer: I sure am.
Dr. Rubenstein: So I recognize that yeah we’re on the same side of the street. You know it was, how I got there I do not know. But I’ll tell you one thing I think helped and I preface this by saying that I have never ever suggested it for anybody else, I’m just telling you that this was very helpful for me, that of course was psychoanalysis and you have the same thing in Freud for example and beyond the pleasure principle where you have the idea that at a certain point things have had their moment and they go. I find it in Freud, I find it especially in Hagle.
Interviewer: Well I view that we all tend to view the life through our own particular philosophical prism. I view everything through the prism in potential and including the field of analysis [inaudible 0:08:11.5] meaning if people are achieving their potential or reaching their potential they feel fulfilled and relatively good. But if they’re off course, they won’t feel good and I suspect that if that were plugged into that whole feel, it would save a lot of time and money, I suspect.
Dr. Rubenstein: Well I think you’ll find that you can find more Sympatico things. Part of Freud’s problem is that on one level he’s a simplistic Atheist that’s 19th century that scientism, but at another level he thinks beyond the pleasure principle, he comes very, very close
Interviewer: I won’t dispute his genius in certain areas, the whole idea, the whole concept of Atheism I find, I can never understand why people are Atheist. I can’t understand why they are Agnostics, but I could never understand why that’s a strong position, an intellectual position.
Dr. Rubenstein: Well people have come to conclusions and I guess where it mostly comes from is from a despair
Interviewer: Is that your final answer?
Dr. Rubenstein: At what they find in the world and they say well, nothing’s in control and or anything like that. Another thing which, as I was reading your material, I thought of a statement of Isaiah, I don’t trust my memory these days, so
Interviewer: Me either.
Dr. Rubenstein: let me just, I should have had it ready, this is not an IPhone, it’s an IPod touch,
Interviewer: I’m impressed.
Dr. Rubenstein: Okay, okay, we are on the 45th Chapter of Isaiah, [inaudible 0:10:54.1] that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the West that there is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is none else, but the next verse is the one I find most interesting [inaudible 0:11:19.4] you know this [inaudible 0:11:22.9] He forms a light and He creates a darkness. [Inaudible 0:11:33.0] He makes peace. [Inaudible 0:11:36.2] And He creates evil. [Inaudible 0:11:42.4] I’m the Lord who created face. To my mind this is really a statement of continuity and from a historical point of view, you know Isaiah is involved with the liberation of Hebrews from their exile in Babylonia, they are brought back to Palestine at least some of them by Cyrus. But what was the religion of the Persians at the time, it was over astrianism, which is a religion of gaps. There is a God for evil, there is a God for good. They war with each other, but they have nothing to do with each other. Isaiah comes along and says [inaudible 0:12:46.4] He forms the light and He
Interviewer: Right. Some people say Judaism is not dualistic but there are many components in Judaism which are very dualistic, like just here.
Dr. Rubenstein: I don’t consider this dualistic.
Interviewer: I think a little dualistic okay. Can I tell you how I see that?
Dr. Rubenstein: Please.
Interviewer: You see one of the main classic questions in metaphysics or philosophy is was there anything at all? Or if there is a God, where did God come from? All right and both Aristotle and his successors and Mymonities [PHONIC] and his philosophical successors both are at an impasse here, respectfully they are at impasse and it’s sort of like constructing a great skyscraper without a foundation, well what’s the foundation? So we all struggled that question and in my mind, my best proposition which I integrated into my works slowly, is as follows, that the only concept which I can posit having exist, have exist eternally, is possibility.
Dr. Rubenstein: You know I like the [inaudible 0:14:08.4]
Interviewer: A possibility I can posit with conviction as having always existed, pure possibility and then I morph it a little bit, that possibility then morphs into quest for potential. I can’t tell you exactly but I can say that they’re first cousins. And here is my next finesse, the quest for potential then splits zero.
Dr. Rubenstein: I came to that and I thought it was very good.
Interviewer: And therefore when you, what happens when you split zero, not that you do this every day, you might end up with darkness and light, good and evil, you know, as necessary components. That would dovetail into your
Dr. Rubenstein: Now look at what you’re splitting zero and my God is the [inaudible 0:15:01.4]
Interviewer: Right, right, they dovetail.
Dr. Rubenstein: Dovetail.
Interviewer: And they’re parallel.
Dr. Rubenstein: Out of the nothingness everything claims
Interviewer: They dovetail, right, they dovetail.
Dr. Rubenstein: For you, I caught that. Zero becomes a world, my way of putting. You know while you were talking I couldn’t help but recite to myself again from the classical German philosophy [inaudible 0:15:26.4] why is this something rather than nothing.
Interviewer: Nothing, right, that’s the question. Why is there anything at all? That’s the real brick wall that most people hit, most philosophers hit and I would suggest that when you analyze philosopher, first ask how he/she address that particular question. If they’re avoiding that question, you know, we’ve got a problem here.
Dr. Rubenstein: Well I can tell you that [inaudible 0:15:57.7] does not avoid it. My advice to you, I’m giving you unsolicited advice, I think you’ll find much in Hagle that will be Sympatico to where you’re coming from. You know, I also wrote an autobiography and the autobiography is called Power Struggle, yeah it came out in the 1970’s, I’m doing a revised, updated edition and my chapter on Harvard is called, Tillicum Harvard because a course that I took on DePaul Johannes Tilley was on classical German philosophy more than any other course I took at Harvard gave me the intellectual background to talk to you the way I am now. Now I can tell you also that I had already read Willria and I already, but what German philosophy did and there’s some bad actors in German philosophy, but they reached a pinnacle in this stuff.
Interviewer: Well I might say they reached a plateau, but you might not disagree with that either.
Dr. Rubenstein: Well?
Interviewer: No, well we’re saying the same thing. At this point I would suggest we take a little break and we just reboot a little bit. We’ll be back in about five minutes.
Dr. Rubenstein: Okay.
For David Birnbaum philosophy, metaphysics, see also Kaku1000