Epilogue
I do have constant frustration of not having anyone to work with on this. If it is so obvious to me, why not to other people. Kristin suggests that most people don't have much time to think about it. If I do produce a book that is useful and elucidating, I will have shot the hell out of the man whose world I have just poked holes in.
Why aren't these questions asked? Should they get asked? Why did I feel obliged to write this?
I worry that these things are not of interest to other people. They might not see the usefulness – the necessity – of knowing it. Philosophy is now incomprehensible to the whole man.
All I want to do is paint a picture. I leave it to others to develop the precision required and the skill to make a map. Most people may not need a map.
I will get to a particular point in a tangled loop that happens to be the unhappy point. I won't know how I got there. And I won't know how to get out. I remain at that particular level. And yet, when I am out of it, I can see that it was a tangled loop; that it was a level. When I can see things as they are, I am happy about it. When I cannot, I lose that happiness. that bothers me greatly. I mean, not that I lose it, but that, when I have lost it it is gone – unseeable. Then I am very, very unhappy.
Is this purely a means to deal with my own unhappiness and therefore merely an unnecessary and useless escapade? Or, in spite of the fact that what I just said might be true, is it of value to other people. It might be true and useful or false and useful, but I would hate to see it true and useless or false and useless.
Laing.’s Knots
Is this useful? I am tired of asking this question. It is really not the best question to ask. What may be better is, Is this difficult to understand? How can I make this more comprehensible to other people?
Energy Crisis
We disregard or underestimate the future impact of our style of consumption. We have an obligation to our children's children. We have to watch the ramifications of what we do.
Stifling Productivity
Most unions will try to preserve jobs rather than improve working conditions for those who have jobs. They do not emphasize retraining and transitional care.
People should do their own thinking
If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril.1
The temptation is to succumb to the undercurrent and to "let someone else do it". Succumb to that narcotic feeling and we are all lost. I may do more than my share now. I feel almost obliged to do the thinking that other people should have done and have not. This extra effort I am exerting is merely to get everybody to do their own share of thinking. That is all I want. Then I can simply do my own share.
An individualist is, first and foremost a man of reason. It is upon the ability to think, upon his rational faculty, that man's life depends; rationality is a precondition of independence and self-reliance.2
. . . .men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason, can exist only as parasites on the thinking of others.3
When they malinger, it adds to my burden unfairly.4
If some men do not choose to think, but survive by imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, never making an effort to understand their own work, it still remains true that their survival is made possible by those who did choose to think and to discover the motions they are repeating. The survival of such mental parasites depends on blind chance; their unfocused minds are unable to know whom to imitate, whose motions it is safe to follow. They are the men who march into the abyss, trailing after any destroyer who promises them to assume the responsibility they evade: the responsibility of being conscious.5
Significance of Jaynes and Hofstadter
We may be approaching a new watershed in societal thought. Previous major watersheds have included:6
Nomadic to agrarian transition
Invention of the plow
Invention of numbers, geometry, trigonometry
Development of writing
Invention of moveable type
First industrial revolution – specialization of function; harnessing power
Second industrial revolution – roboticsThe newest watershed is the development of symbolism to help recognize and deal with a better understanding of consciousness.
What is the value of this study?
There is joy in watching life work. Like pain, when you understand it – when you see it from all sides – it ceases to be pain. Comparably, mathematics, when understood, is fascinating to watch work.
Understanding the way things are and why – whether good or bad – brings certain peace.
Confucius found the most important thing in living was the joy that he found. He particularly enjoyed music. That was when he most often remembered to look for the joy.
The self interest by which an individual approaches his own circumstance can work to the benefit of others in misery. The most positive steps one can take to protect oneself are reciprocal. Opportunity for others preserves opportunity for ourselves. When one is in a position to recognize and deal with personal problems, economic theory will follow of its own accord. Put a penniless thoughtful person in any corner of the world in a society that allows upward mobility and that person will cope.
Value of simple wisdoms
Each person's fundamental interest is to negotiate life in a manner that has the least amount of hassle. (Each person's fundamental purpose is to breathe.?) Beyond that, it is to help others to do the same.
****prove it.
Is part of that purpose also not to breathe on someone else? Nonsense. You we it to others to offer clearly stated suggestions – refusably.
Stilted conversation
Their might have been value in the oblique conversation of the late 1700's – the period of Samuel Jonson – that allowed people to criticize couched in palatable terms. "I think, sir, that you may be mistaken in this." Then intelligence was a virtue. Conversation was a virtue. These people of whom we speak were select and advantaged. They were educated on the classics.
I am not suggesting we should run off to learn Greek and Latin, but certainly we should consider sifting through their ideas. Where are they found in our schools today?
Time
For me time roars by. Time is a raucous, raging torrent, clawing at clothes and kicking up dust as it passes.
Conversation
Great conversation sounds peculiar to us because we never hear it. We don't see half a dozen people patiently listening or shrewdly commenting. Kristin notes that we take no pride in our conversation today. In certain circles previously, that used to be what life was worth living for. Now the public is confusing rationality and intellectualism. I agree we ought to oppose intellectualism and its concern for one-upmanship.
Music and Ritual
Confucius thought that music and ritual were important. Music for reasons hard to lay hands on: it's uplifting, thoughtful, calming, unifying. It puts distance between you and your words. It gives perspective. It exposes the tyranny of words.
Ritual was important because he thought it helped the common people.
Death of Religion
Elaine Pagel's Gnostic Gospels has fostered a healthier skepticism about some of the writings in Christianity.
No more expansion markets
We have run out of expansion markets. Therefore, it is time for people to slow down and begin to enrich themselves as individuals rather than to get rid of the work ethic. But one problem is that you can't do that while the rest of the world is not doing so well. Secondly, the problems we have had are spreading to the rest of the world because they are following our model. Or lots of other models, all of them wrong.
Business
Everybody has a business. Mine is to find out what my proper business should be. And my proper business should be forgetting that.
Schools and goodness
Are these concepts comprehensible to students in high school? Are they things that would be useful for them in high school?
Why should you be good? Why should you not set off smoke bombs in the Ladies Room at school? Why should you spend time in school? What should you do with your time in school? School is a drag. It was a drag for me.
Duplicity
The best way to stop duplicity is to recognize it and to help others do the same.
****move to mean or otherness
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1 Confucius. The Analects. Translation and introduction by D. C. Lau. Harmondsworth,. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1979. Pg. 65.
2 Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library, 1961, 1964. Pg. 136.
3 Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library, 1961, 1964. Pg. 136.
4 Rand (?) Quote Conrad's Nigger of Narcissus.
5 Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library, 1961, 1964. Pg. 23.
6 ++++Explain.
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