Maundering
Since I find it impossible to take much interest in our present politics (uncertainty, dread and distaste, is not interest), but since I want to post, I've decided to put down a note from my journal:
-------When I woke from my little nap I felt sad and thought that my life is pointless. Well, my life is pointless. But then it occurred to me that there doesn't have to be much of a point for there to be a point, there just has to be something. The more important thing is to avoid self-absorption, and most significantly, to avoid selfishness. The personality that avoids selfishness simply can't long remain deeply unhappy --or at least, in avoiding selfishness, will not be drawn further into unhappiness. I'm certain this is true, and in this respect my orientation and aspirations are wholesome.
But then it occurred to me: What if the personality is dominated by selfishness? Will it be further drawn into selfishness? the argument being that to satisfy a corruption the corruption must ever become greater? --Actually, why do I speculate about this? I know the answer: There's a force in corruption that ever moves toward greater corruption. The personality that has lost the specific countervailing moral aspiration is a personality doomed.
But note:
The countervailing moral structure must always be there, it's simply the way we're made; but in a personality given over to a deformity, the countervailing moral expression will be a hypocrisy, and a very self-satisfied one at that, proportionate in its assertion to its failure in fact. The great hypocrite is greatly sincere. The need to countervail against an evil impulse is universal, and it will succeed in one way or another; but the wholesome personality struggles against what is indeed an evil, while the deformational personality simply separates the evil impulse from the good and finds both very well satisfied indeed, thank you...
This strikes me as true. It would explain how a morally wretched personality can appear to be a quite happy one. Self-satisfaction is a moment of happiness, at least during the commission of either the selfishness or the hypocrisy. But it doesn't strike me that this can be a quiet personality. It seems to me there would have to be a constant struggle for some narrow advantage on the one hand, and fundamentally, simultaneously a boasting of compassion and fine feeling and personal sacrifice on the other.
And so much for tonight's wisdom.
Note: I'm arguing that hypocrisy is the fulfillment of an internal need, not merely a satisfaction of a social demand.
-------When I woke from my little nap I felt sad and thought that my life is pointless. Well, my life is pointless. But then it occurred to me that there doesn't have to be much of a point for there to be a point, there just has to be something. The more important thing is to avoid self-absorption, and most significantly, to avoid selfishness. The personality that avoids selfishness simply can't long remain deeply unhappy --or at least, in avoiding selfishness, will not be drawn further into unhappiness. I'm certain this is true, and in this respect my orientation and aspirations are wholesome.
But then it occurred to me: What if the personality is dominated by selfishness? Will it be further drawn into selfishness? the argument being that to satisfy a corruption the corruption must ever become greater? --Actually, why do I speculate about this? I know the answer: There's a force in corruption that ever moves toward greater corruption. The personality that has lost the specific countervailing moral aspiration is a personality doomed.
But note:
The countervailing moral structure must always be there, it's simply the way we're made; but in a personality given over to a deformity, the countervailing moral expression will be a hypocrisy, and a very self-satisfied one at that, proportionate in its assertion to its failure in fact. The great hypocrite is greatly sincere. The need to countervail against an evil impulse is universal, and it will succeed in one way or another; but the wholesome personality struggles against what is indeed an evil, while the deformational personality simply separates the evil impulse from the good and finds both very well satisfied indeed, thank you...
This strikes me as true. It would explain how a morally wretched personality can appear to be a quite happy one. Self-satisfaction is a moment of happiness, at least during the commission of either the selfishness or the hypocrisy. But it doesn't strike me that this can be a quiet personality. It seems to me there would have to be a constant struggle for some narrow advantage on the one hand, and fundamentally, simultaneously a boasting of compassion and fine feeling and personal sacrifice on the other.
And so much for tonight's wisdom.
Note: I'm arguing that hypocrisy is the fulfillment of an internal need, not merely a satisfaction of a social demand.
posted by mouse at 8:13 PM
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