This quality of motion is missing from so many moral discourses. So often they are conducted as if moral laws could somehow be as unvarying as the Pythagorean Theorem. I have always loved the idea of geometric proof, but it is obvious to me that you must add motion. In all thing, there is a pendulum moving back and forth, which is visible proof of life. Your heartbeat itself is an example. It is constantly expanding and contracting. So are your lungs. Perceptual Movement, as I have termed it, is coeval with life itself.
There is a Way to life, as the Chinese put it: this is a useful concept. But the Way is something we walk as we go. It does not come with a road map, and sometimes it will turn in interesting, fun, surprising ways, if we can only have the flexibility to see it. Most of us keep walking straight, and only find the Way again later, after unnecessary difficulties caused by our perceptual failure on a subtle–or not-so-subtle–level.
Enough banter: let’s talk about me. I’m mostly joking, but there is a sort of solipsistic quality to internet blogging. I would likely be embarrassed to meet anyone reading all this, but I really do think, in an abstract way, that even my personal musings and struggles may be useful to someone, which is why I put roughly half of my truly personal stuff out there. As I have said before, my personal metaphysics is that when we die all the scales fall away, and we are exposed in totality for who we truly are. There is no hiding. We may as well practice that idea, and the following idea that we should live in a way which is not shameful.
I had an enormously important insight last week, a life-changing insight. I realized that my entire life has been characterized by setting very ambitious goals, then self sabotaging them, and that both have had as their intent winning either love or hate. I spoke a bit about this last week, but will speak more now.
I have spoken about saving the world. In point of fact, I have developed an ethical program; metaphysics based on science; reinforced the importance of hewing to the actual political principles of our Constitution, which in important respects is the most important, most beautiful political document ever created; and developed an economics program which will enable global economic development and the eradication of poverty.
I have done this because saving the world is really about the highest goal you can set. And this will not get me love either. Nothing I do or can do will make my parents capable of love. Nothing I do or can do will allow me to accept love, if I can’t first learn to love myself.
Increasingly, it seems to me that the very first task, the sine qua non of personal growth, is truly believing that you deserve it, and truly believing that you can enjoy, emotionally, the benefits of success. If you don’t think you deserve a good job, a nice house, a beautiful, intelligent, loving spouse, good kids, or happiness anchored in nothing, then you will have a hard time getting it.
There are countless self help books out there, lots of really good advice. But if you don’t, in the end, believe that you deserve success, none of them will help you. And that “deserving success” comes from feeling loved, which is an experience that many people have lacked in their lives. There is so much unhealthy emotion out there, so many people who are poorly developed.
I cannot speak generally, but in my own case my self sabotage seems to relate to a game, a tactic, evolved in my very early life. If I cannot get love, I can at least get attention through hate, through punishment. In my own life, this takes the form of not taking my own goals seriously. You would not mock someone else trying to achieve something, but many of us mock ourselves, we denigrate ourselves, we start on a path we know on some level we never intend to complete.
Hate–or perhaps more accurately the sense of emotional helplessness and discouragement that we often felt as small children–is a familiar feeling. It feels like the home we grew up in. And it is easily achieved, and achieved again. I see some of these really fat kids with horrible self esteem, and feel there must be a parent who secretly wanted them to fail, perhaps because they themselves cannot conceive of any higher aim than helplessness and the drug-like affects of overeating. The kid is just a reflection, a symbol, of a larger sick system.
To return to Me (on My blog, me, me, me: you know, self obsession is the emotional equivalent of eating styrofoam; in my own world view I don’t exist, per se, outside of my relationship with the world), my motivational system is completely out of whack. If I am not in emotional or physical pain, I feel guilt. I feel like I am failing. My pain tolerance is enormous, but my potential tasks are infinite. I ask myself daily if I am a failure because I have not done everything within my power to save the world. But obviously countless things are possible in saving the world. Too much is never enough. And my circuit breaker trips, and I wind down to drink again. This is neurotic, unhelpful.
My troubles are uninteresting. Here is the point I wanted to make: if this life is walking, our task is to walk with a goal in mind, but to walk with enjoyment. Healthy guilt is what keeps us on the path, and having an appropriate goal is what makes it enjoyable. I really think this is the essence of mental health.