February 24, 2015
February 23, 2015
qualtrics.com: Hegel & Marx
Thesis -> Antithesis -> Synthesis
Hegel described the process of progress as beginning with a thesis, an antithesis emerging, and then a synthesis coming from the two. This process continues to repeat itself in all growth. qualtrics.com doesn't necessarily provide this experience for visitors. If there were areas for debate and conflict, users would be able to be a part of this progress and growth. I recommend an area where site visitors can critique or debate about Qualtrics as well as how to properly perform research.
Meaningful Work
Marx supported Hegel's ideas and added on the importance of labor fostering development and growth of the group. As individuals visit qualtrics.com, they should be able to grasp the vision for the entire company, not just the specific aspect they are interested in. The landing page has the phrase
Ask Questions.
Viewers can probably get the idea that Qualtrics is all about collecting actionable insights but might not catch the vision that Qualtrics is trying to change the way people do research. If Qualtrics is truly trying to change the world in this regard, there should be a place that makes this clear to the visitor. This way they can see that though they are working on a specific aspect of research (customer satisfaction, market research, employee feedback, etc.), they are part of a movement to change the way everyone is collecting insights.
Hegel described the process of progress as beginning with a thesis, an antithesis emerging, and then a synthesis coming from the two. This process continues to repeat itself in all growth. qualtrics.com doesn't necessarily provide this experience for visitors. If there were areas for debate and conflict, users would be able to be a part of this progress and growth. I recommend an area where site visitors can critique or debate about Qualtrics as well as how to properly perform research.
Meaningful Work
Marx supported Hegel's ideas and added on the importance of labor fostering development and growth of the group. As individuals visit qualtrics.com, they should be able to grasp the vision for the entire company, not just the specific aspect they are interested in. The landing page has the phrase
Ask Questions.
Get Answers. Act Fast.
Viewers can probably get the idea that Qualtrics is all about collecting actionable insights but might not catch the vision that Qualtrics is trying to change the way people do research. If Qualtrics is truly trying to change the world in this regard, there should be a place that makes this clear to the visitor. This way they can see that though they are working on a specific aspect of research (customer satisfaction, market research, employee feedback, etc.), they are part of a movement to change the way everyone is collecting insights.
Hegel and Marx
Early Postmodern Period
Hegel is sometimes called the beginning of postmodernism. Marx was also a postmodern philosopher. A really, quick, messy way to talk about modernism vs. postmodernism would be to say that the moderns believed in a fixed reality or laws of perfection, while the postmoderns believed in unfixed reality with changing laws of perfection.
Modernism =
(Standard of perfection to measure worm against!)
Postmodernism =
(This worm is free for interpretation!)
Hegel
Georg Hegel
Philosopher
Born: August 27, 1770
Died: November 14, 1831
Education: Tubinger Stift
Teachings
Hegel believed that the entire world moved and changed in the following manner:
This process repeats itself and demonstrates the importance of conflict or opposition in order to progress. Instead of things moving toward a perfect form, the idea of perfection is always changing here, and it is always embedded in the newly formed synthesis.
Applications
Unified: Your website should strive to allow for the unification of opposing ideas so that it continue to grow and develop and change.
Accessible: People should not feel feel welcome to contribute to the site as well as the standards for the site, even if it is to provide an antithesis to everything going on.
Ongoing: Site should be continually growing and changing to something new, or beyond what it has been so as to always be combining the current antithesis, thesis and synthesis.
For Hegel, ideas are shared, refuted, and synthesized through all forms of posting, commenting, liking, sharing, etc. You could say that social media accelerates the process of history (Thesis-->Antithesis-->Synthesis) by making it easy for everyone to be involved in the collective conversation. It could even be that daily the site moves through a different antithesis, thesis and synthesis for each user.
Another way to look at this is that the sites purpose in general for all the users collectively can change and adapt in this way. This is where the makers come in. They need to be paying attention to the constant antithesis and thesis and synthesizing the two.
Marx
Karl Marx
Philosopher, Economist, Sociologist, Journalist and Revolutionary Socialist
Born: May 5, 1818
Died: March 14, 1883
Education: Universities of Bonn and Berlin
Teachings
Marx agreed with most of Hegel's ideas and added on applications to labor. He believed that the worker should never be alienated from their work. They should understand the larger picture of why their work matters and how it is part of the larger goal of their company, culture, etc. This will allow them to connect with it, be passionate about it, and because of this, have their values and even themselves reflected in it.
Applications
Unified: Your site should allow your users to connect with it and become one with it in a sense, seeing themselves reflected in the actions they take and things they create or write on the site.
Accessible: Your site's greater vision or purpose should be accessible to any user. This will help them engage meaningfully.
Ongoing: People and the site are never set against a standard other than that all voices are equal on the site. This should allow for ongoing use of the site.
A good social website will allow each individual to really connect with it, and see their values and themselves to be fully expressed and flourish in and through the site.
Hegel is sometimes called the beginning of postmodernism. Marx was also a postmodern philosopher. A really, quick, messy way to talk about modernism vs. postmodernism would be to say that the moderns believed in a fixed reality or laws of perfection, while the postmoderns believed in unfixed reality with changing laws of perfection.
Modernism =
(Standard of perfection to measure worm against!)
Postmodernism =
(This worm is free for interpretation!)
Hegel
Philosopher
Born: August 27, 1770
Died: November 14, 1831
Education: Tubinger Stift
Teachings
Hegel believed that the entire world moved and changed in the following manner:
Thesis -> Antithesis Emerges -> Synthesis
This process repeats itself and demonstrates the importance of conflict or opposition in order to progress. Instead of things moving toward a perfect form, the idea of perfection is always changing here, and it is always embedded in the newly formed synthesis.
Applications
Unified: Your website should strive to allow for the unification of opposing ideas so that it continue to grow and develop and change.
Accessible: People should not feel feel welcome to contribute to the site as well as the standards for the site, even if it is to provide an antithesis to everything going on.
Ongoing: Site should be continually growing and changing to something new, or beyond what it has been so as to always be combining the current antithesis, thesis and synthesis.
For Hegel, ideas are shared, refuted, and synthesized through all forms of posting, commenting, liking, sharing, etc. You could say that social media accelerates the process of history (Thesis-->Antithesis-->Synthesis) by making it easy for everyone to be involved in the collective conversation. It could even be that daily the site moves through a different antithesis, thesis and synthesis for each user.
Another way to look at this is that the sites purpose in general for all the users collectively can change and adapt in this way. This is where the makers come in. They need to be paying attention to the constant antithesis and thesis and synthesizing the two.
Marx
Philosopher, Economist, Sociologist, Journalist and Revolutionary Socialist
Born: May 5, 1818
Died: March 14, 1883
Education: Universities of Bonn and Berlin
Teachings
Marx agreed with most of Hegel's ideas and added on applications to labor. He believed that the worker should never be alienated from their work. They should understand the larger picture of why their work matters and how it is part of the larger goal of their company, culture, etc. This will allow them to connect with it, be passionate about it, and because of this, have their values and even themselves reflected in it.
Applications
Unified: Your site should allow your users to connect with it and become one with it in a sense, seeing themselves reflected in the actions they take and things they create or write on the site.
Accessible: Your site's greater vision or purpose should be accessible to any user. This will help them engage meaningfully.
Ongoing: People and the site are never set against a standard other than that all voices are equal on the site. This should allow for ongoing use of the site.
A good social website will allow each individual to really connect with it, and see their values and themselves to be fully expressed and flourish in and through the site.
The Early Postmoderns on Art and Social Media
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel lived from 1770 to 1831. He was a
German philosopher who used a historical perspective, coupled with idealism, to
bring about paradigms that would help shape the world. His thought would lead
to most of the great philosophical ideas of the last century: Marx and
Nietzsche, phenomenology, German existentialism, and psychoanalysis, to name a
few. One of his best known concepts is his idea that mind or spirit manifests
itself in a set of contradictions or polar opposites that are ultimately
integrated without losing the core concepts of either side. This can be
summarized as a process that goes from a thesis and an antithesis to a
synthesis.
With
Descartes, there was a split between mind and body. Hegel tried to integrate
those two back together. He was interested in the spirit, which we can think of
as God, as embodied in the world, in all matter. But this spirit can evolve; it
doesn’t stay at the lowest form of matter. Gradually, spirit can become more
conscious, more aware, more articulate. For example, consider a rock. That’s
physical matter, but there’s not really spirit in there. Spirit is conscious,
aware, free, rational; pretty much everything a rock isn’t. Hegel says that the
ultimate embodiment of this spirit is human consciousness. Human beings, for
Hegel, are not just accidents of nature; they are reason itself—the reason
inherent in nature—that has come to life and self-consciousness. Beyond human
beings – or the hypothetical idea of other finite rational beings that might
exist on other planets – there is no self-conscious reason in Hegel's universe.
And he thought of the overall spirit, which is moving along and evolving, as
being like God. God, to Hegel, is not completely separate from the human
spirit. God develops through the creation of a thesis, which has an antithesis
inherent within it, and the two form a synthesis, which becomes a new thesis.
And spirit, or God, has to be embodied in the world. It’s not separate from it,
as Descartes thought.
Hegel’s
philosophy of aesthetics portrayed art as having one particular purpose: to
allow us to contemplate and enjoy images of our own spiritual freedom—which
images are beautiful precisely because they give expression to
our freedom. In other words, art’s purpose is to enable us to bring to
mind the truth about ourselves, to enable us to become aware of who we truly
are as free human beings. Art is there not just for art's sake, but for
beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a distinctively sensuous form of free
human self-expression and self-understanding. Furthermore, art is not only just
a matter of form, but of content. Art must contain within itself the freedom
and richness of spirit embodied and living in the world. Since the spirit is understood
as “God,” the content of truly beautiful art is in one respect the divine. Yet, it's not separate from
human life. As we have just seen, Hegel argues that the Idea – or “God” –
comes to consciousness of itself only in and through finite human beings. The
content of beautiful art must thus be the divine in human form or the divine
within humanity itself
– as purely human freedom.
So
what does this mean for social media? Well, it presents a surprisingly
optimistic viewpoint. Due to the theme of progression through the thesis, antithesis,
and synthesis, the only way for a website - or any work that is to be judged – to
be considered “bad” is if it fails to be inspired and to, in turn, inspire. And
the best social media websites should somehow allow us to contemplate our own
spiritual freedom, and inspire us to discuss that freedom with each other.
Perhaps the idea of a social media website devoted solely to discussing human
freedom sounds a bit pretentious. And it is. This isn’t an explicit goal, but
rather, a by-product of a marriage of form and content into beauty. That beauty
will, in turn, inspire each viewer to privately ponder their own freedom and
their place in the divine.
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