I re-read something I wrote 26 years ago and realized I’d hardly learned a damn thing since then. At any rate, it puts me in the awkward position of being slightly jealous of my younger self, even though I’m still convinced that this older self could show that whipper-snapper a thing or two if he had the decency to listen to me. Nevertheless, the mild and somewhat astonished envy remains, although it burns low because it’s too absurd.

But I was mildly surprised that this younger fellow’s remarks made sense, This goes to show how quickly my opinions of myself depreciate the instant they land in the past, even the immediate past. Either that or it measures the ever-blossoming conceit of someone who thinks he’s always smarter than he was a moment ago.

But the past self doesn’t even exist anymore. So, the courtroom is mine (for the moment). And I confess under oath that a moment ago I actually tripped over my own shoelace on the way upstairs. And now I’m writing about it with calm clarity. Hence, I’m always improving (but never actually getting anywhere, resulting in a hung jury).

Nevertheless, the thing displays something I might have lost a little. And because I’ve returned to the topic of the inner voice over the last few essays, it feels relevant again.

And because otherwise the thing will just languish in the bottom drawer of a desk until the new owners upon my death throw it in the dumpster, I’m giving the thing an airing. (And leaving as it was written, no edits. Not even replacing the generic “he” with a “they”. It’s what it was.

And remember that this is a humor thing, but that’s not the same as being frivolous. Non-frivolous humor. Seriousness without any need for furrowed brows.

[There were five parts, but I think these were the two better parts.]

———————

NEGATIVE GEOGRAPHY:  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ERROR

                “And I said, with rapture, Here is something I can study all my life and never understand.”

                                                                                                            — Molloy (S. Beckett)

             The Three Oddest Words

 When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

 When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold

                    — Wislawa Szymborska

“Would it not be better if I were simply to keep on saying babababa, for example, while waiting to ascertain the true function of this venerable organ?” (UNNAMEABLE by Samuel Beckett)

“But now, is it I now, I on me? Sometimes I think it is. And then I realize it is not. I am doing my best, and failing again, yet again. I don’t mind failing, it’s a pleasure, but I want to go silent. Not as just now, the better to listen, but peacefully, victorious, without ulterior object” (UNNAMEABLE)

“What prevents the miracle is the spirit of method to which I have perhaps been a little too addicted. The fact that Prometheus was delivered twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and seventy years after having purged his offence leaves me naturally as cold as camphor” (UNNAMEABLE)

—

Introduction (A Failure to Find a Good Reason for Starting)

You are confronted with a long monologue on the mind. It’s only natural to recoil from this object in anticipation of my arrogance. It’s only reasonable to suppose that I’m under the delusion of knowing more than you; and that I expect you to come to the end of this letter at least a little less stupid than you are now.

Contrary to nature and reason, however, I don’t intend to show how right I am but how wrong. That’s my objective, for what it’s worth. So given such an idiotic objective, it’s more likely that reading this will cause you to become even stupider.

 However, I don’t wish to imply that I’m being humble in admitting all this. In fact, what interests me is that I remain a know-it-all even though I do nothing but sort through overwhelming evidence of my own stupidity.

What happens is I always eject into the abstract at the last minute — landing in some outside perspective, gazing back at my failures like the lab-coated know-it-all, not like the dummy in the wreck.

The unreasonable purpose of this letter is to direct attention to that unwarranted conceit; to weigh on the one hand the facts of my stupidity and on the other my nagging delusion of intelligence.

Intelligence requires honesty. I’m merely trying to be honest about myself. And what I’ve noticed is that I’m not entirely honest. I’ll gladly admit I’m wrong at the drop of a hat. But there’s something odd about my honesty.

For instance, I have no problem saying “I’m wrong,” but I say this as an expert on my condition. You will never catch me speaking from a position that is completely without claim to some position of correctness, no matter how abject my language might sound. Were I to say “I’m an utter idiot with no saving graces” I would speak these words as someone who believes he knows what he’s talking about, and would defend these assertions against those who dare to disagree!

But I’m TRYING to be honest, or at least I think I am. That is, don’t blame me. It’s not a moral failing I’m describing. And I don’t think I’m the only moronic liar in the room. Cough Cough. Now I’m beginning to take out my frustration on the reader. The poor, innocent reader who, if he’s managed to read this far, should be given a gold star and recognized for his unbelievable generosity in wasting at least 5 minutes of his life to get to this part of the page. But I fear I must drag the reader into the fray.

I believe the inability to be truly honest is a fault embedded in the very structure of knowledge itself (therefore shared by the reader). It’s not our fault. To acknowledge error is to point at it. But how can anyone point at an error embedded in the very act of pointing itself? I mean, it’s easy to identify faults that have already happened. But how the hell do we point at pointing?

But that’s why we still can’t get the beam out of our eyes, no matter how viciously we poke and prod. Picture a dog who farts and looks around to see where the sound came from. Thought (the act of acknowledgment) blames its own backside, thereby dividing into two “front” and “back” halves: scoundrel and righteous accuser. The thinker or speaker who criticizes himself never feels that what he is saying NOW is wrong; even when he criticizes himself, it’s his past he blames.

And what of my knowledge (just now stated) of this rigamarole? Doesn’t this also amount to more blame? Doesn’t the voice still sound like a know-it-all even as it points out its “own” faults?

In other words, can a person argue that he’s stupid, and not think all the while “how clever!”? So how can I concentrate on my errors if I always think I’m right?

It’s precisely this unanticipated failure to remain focused on error that interests me:  

I pursue error and make a balls of it!

Part I  (A Failure to Understand Error as the Agent which Shapes So-Called Human Nature)

Is self-criticism a practical and effective method of change?  Do my acknowledgements CAUSE me to change, or do they indicate a change that has already occurred? The moment I calm myself down or control my emotions I notice I’m already looking at the situation from a slightly calmer, more assertive perspective. I seem to be playing a trick on myself. The rejected, criticized perspective doesn’t appear to be out there somewhere listening to my speech; one perspective is simply gone and a new one appears. But it’s my unconscious belief in this divided mind, the belief that I’m actively engaged in restraining or teaching some idiotic persona “within me” that gives me the confidence to speak confidently (in a relatively new mind). The belief acts like a placebo.

It’s effective, but it’s also too strange not to wonder about. All that wasted energy engaging a phantom. And it’s taken for granted.

It’s taken for granted, I think, because of a pervasive belief in “Human Nature”. How can anything as plastic as life itself be said to have natural limits? Anything which morphs from primordial soup to Katherine Zeta Jones in a mere 2.5 billion years clearly isn’t limited in that sense. The human nature argument is nothing but a way of avoiding the discomfort of confronting (as opposed to merely “acknowledging”) our own bizarre reactions.

It’s obvious that we can’t control the impulse to control ourselves. This minor, initial obstacle to changing our natures is enough to put us in despair for eternity apparently. The situation is simply too humorous to not examine more closely. But how DO we examine it? By acknowledging it (as I’m STILL doing)?

The critics in my family are correct. Attending to error in and of itself is not very productive (not that I’m necessarily trying to be productive, but it’s a good point). However, the critics have not understood what I’m asking them to try. I’m not asking them to improve themselves or learn how to change or how to feel better about themselves. That’s too much work and leads to despair. They’re right. But I’m only asking them to join me in feeling utterly Horrible about ourselves. That’s all I’m asking. I want to invite my family to fail UTTERLY without trying to control it or amend it or get around it or feel better about their stupidities. I want what Beckett said: “to fail, fail again, fail better.”

Inevitably the brain (our shared brain if you don’t erupt in protest) demands “why?” Why should I want to fail? And then I’m stuck. Because I can’t say “because it will make you and me feel better.” If I say that we guarantee not confronting failure. I also can’t say “because it’s going to be educational”. These intentions all help us avoid confronting error. These methods turn our brains into white-coated know-it-alls coaxing their dimwitted shadows along the road to hell that is self improvement. In hell you do not confront error, regardless of what you read on their brochures.

I admit, there is no reason on earth to confront error. No argument can be made, because it’s not possible to do such a thing for any ulterior motive. The confrontation is an act of joy, erupting out of genuine interest in the error itself. It sounds unbelievable. However, I believe that genuine interest in what’s actually happening (in what some people used to dare call truth) is the default position of the human brain. My feeling is that we have to do something to NOT be interested in what we discover in ourselves. It’s our distractions, our fighting and flying what’s happening, that cause boredom. Either you see this as true or you will have to stop reading. I will presume it’s seen as self evident so that I can keep writing.

I think the reason utter failure can seem so educational at times (yes, yes, I said it’s not the reason to fail, but it’s an observation I make) is due to the nature of the problem. Unlike a technical problem, which requires a projected solution, a psychological problem usually contains its own resolution. It’s like a Chinese finger trap, where the harder you pull, the more trapped you become. If violence is the problem, then we can’t force ourselves to adopt non-violence (except in appearance) because force is the root of violence. If selfishness is the problem, we can’t merely try to be unselfish, because the motivation alone is egocentric. If division is the problem then we can’t try to attain wholeness because effort itself is the dividing impulse. But the moment we realize these mistakes — not merely think about them, but confront the absurd futility of a particular ambition — then that ambition ceases naturally (I suggest). It’s error, not intelligence or effort, that changes our “nature.” Not that we’re trying to change, but it’s an observation.

Whenever I realize that I can’t get around selfish motivation, for instance, then the motivation to get around it ceases, if only momentarily. An immovable fact seems to thrust change upon me. I stop trying to do the impossible and in that observant silence an un-self-flattering attitude reveals itself.

But to really discover whether division is human nature or merely the result of an unknown, ongoing mistake, we might consider the internal voice.

Clearly it’s unstoppable. Is it human nature? Well, it seems to be a recording of my own promptings, demands, desires, ambitions, urges and struggles. In other words, impulses that are typically regarded as voluntary. Doesn’t it follow, then, that this feature of human nature is really nothing more than the sum of an endless sequence of what I generally regard as personal acts of will and want? That is, the voice seems less inevitable from this angle.

In other words, I think that the voice usually expresses the effort to become someone slightly better than opinion or evidence dictates. I think that this is the reason for our stream of consciousness.

When I get mad or frustrated with myself I notice that the voice (the “I”) feels distinctly superior to the lout I call myself. It’s a kind of  voice-throwing trick, placing “me” perpetually outside the scene of my own error, gazing back at it as if I were an independent (and less blameworthy) observer.

Hear me complain about my gaffs with the sternness of an English school-master, condemning what I’ve done from a morally superior third person’s perch (disguised under first person pronouns): “I’ll never forgive myself for what I’ve done!” Or listen as I express the frustrations of an injured party — “there I go again, spilling milk all over myself!” — in this way sidling over to gaze at my wrong-doing as the victim instead of the perpetrator.

Of course, I don’t always speak absurdly to myself. Sometimes I rage against the other idiots in the world as well; those who’ve trespassed, or threatened to do so. I notice how the voice sustains anger by dwelling on an act of disrespect. If I’m fairly objective about it I can see that there’s something downright odd about anger. If I watch the matter of my angriest daydreams, they’re basically efforts to refute someone else’s opinions of me, to replay the scenarios differently. I don’t want to be seen in the way they see me. And this implies that my “self” is like an objective thing that I carry around in my arms, trying to keep smudge free.

What the voice does is shoo the mice of self-consciousness to the higher end of any sinking ship; well, to the better side of any sense of self that’s been torpedoed by circumstance. By that I mean, the voice tends to its self perpetually, either by cleaning its sullied character with righteous tongue-lashings, or by raising its hackles in defense of a position taken by its self.

Of course, the reactions of the mental voice are usually tamer and more difficult to recognize as the defensive or righteous reactions of an unconsciously divided mind. For example, on the way to work this morning I verbalized the following sentence:  “I forgot my credit card bill.” I wanted to pay my credit card balance but I forgot to bring the bill along with me to work. I know that it’s possible to go directly to the bank and, by filling out a series of little slips of paper, make a payment without the need for showing the original bill. However, I think I might need my credit card account number in order to do this. Probably not, I’m sure, what with computers, but I have an insensible fear of appearing at the teller’s window without all my forms filled out correctly, knowing that people are waiting behind me; and also, being basically miserly, I fear the possibility that without the original bill showing my name and number, I might someday inadvertently make a payment on someone else’s credit card. Therefore I said to myself on the bus this morning: “I forgot my credit card bill.” 

It’s a factual enough statement of course, a rather common kind of thing to say. But I can delve down into it a bit more. First, obviously, this wasn’t information that needed saying since I was already aware of this fact. That’s important to keep in mind, because it implies that the statement is made for ulterior purposes than mere communication of information. I mean, there was no ignorant backwater of the brain that was enlightened by this statement. And yet I voiced the statement anyway, and with a distinctive tone, and even feeling, of surprise. It was as if I’d just now discovered that I’d forgotten my bill, whereas, in fact, I’d been stewing about it for a minute or so already. But you see, I enacted the surprise, and then felt the surprise that I enacted, which made it feel authentic, and distracted me from the fact that it was basically an act. The surprise allowed me to guiltlessly play the role of someone upended by an atypical occurrence of absent-mindedness.

But also, the surprise implies that I was regarding myself as overcome by circumstances beyond my control — some small tear in the fabric of my daily life. This, then, allowed me to appear to myself more innocent of this error in the eyes of the stern-faced bank teller that I was picturing; and who could then be reconfigured more to my liking; with sympathy for my now suddenly laughable little departure from perfect memory and form-filling know-how. I needed this patient teller not only to soothe those fears but to shield me from the impatient customers in line behind me who had their forms filled out perfectly and would make quicker work of the matter than I was doing. And with the teller’s sympathy and patience I was reassured that she’d favor my transaction with greater attention, reducing the risk that a careless keystroke would send fortunes into someone else’s account.

In short, I was doing what is very typical of the internal voice: rehearsing a vaguely worrisome interaction, although your particular styles of daydream might differ from mine. Nevertheless, the principle is the same. Daydreamed statements seem intended to flood the brain with reassuring emotions by enacting innocent or less imbecilic images of oneself. It’s an enactment but also a subtle push; an effort to manipulate the image into a better or more deserving position. Higher on the sinking ship.

But perhaps the most common variety of verbalization, and the one that seems least like a defensive reaction resulting in a divided mind, is daydreaming pleasant imagery. Nevertheless, even here it’s usually the case that the moment I seek this type of diversion there was something I wished to be diverted from. When I locate the moment just prior to a verbalization I’ll often find boredom crouched in there, shoving the proceedings along. And boredom is not simply the desire for something to do. It’s the desire to be distracted from what’s already happening. In other words, when I’m bored there’s nothing to distract me from the internal voice and its ineffective obsession with various minor issues and problems. Thoughts go ’round and round’ I say. So I look for an escape from those tired efforts to resolve old issues by turning to pleasurable reminiscences or activities that distract me from the endless wriggling of that internal voice. In other words, boredom is when the voice itself becomes a problem; and so I adopt the pose that the voice is bothering me, as if I’m an innocent victim of my own disturbing thoughts; and in that way I avoid any direct responsibility for the boredom that emanates from my own voice.

I must be clear about all this: I can accept being wrong in the past with great humility, requiring at most a day or two to distance myself from the event. And likewise, I’m heroic in my capacity to acknowledge my own potential for error. But what’s evidently rare is confronting error without some form of phony internal acknowledgement.

So if I’m trying to figure out why I’m such a blunderbuss then this natural inability to acknowledge error stands out. Not only that, but if I fail to grasp this basic limitation of thought (the inability to acknowledge errors), then effectively, if unconsciously, I’m always saying “I’m right and the world’s wrong.” That is, problems will always seem to be “out there.” Because even if I did admit that some errors are mine, I’d continue failing to understand what is actually meant by the word “mine.”

This little error is so easily overlooked. But in my opinion, it’s like a single bolt that holds together the entire Ferris wheel of inanity known falsely as “human nature”. So I take this little error and attempt to trace some of the complex patterns of stupidity that result from it.

All this talk has convinced ME (at least) that the voice is not an appendage that I have to get used to in the same way that I have to accept the basic design of my body. You might say the voice is a voluntary appendage, unlike the arm or the leg. They seem to be my own discreet motivations, that’s all.

However, these “voluntary” motivations appear to erupt involuntarily from an assumption of separation. This assumption acts as the primary feature of an underlying geography of assumptions about the world which determine the direction and flow of the streams of thought descending from them. We may “choose” one or another stream of thinking and action, but the direction and flow of these various streams of thinking and behavior already conform to an underlying geography of assumptions about the world.

My (admittedly mostly unconscious) belief in division allows me to “voluntarily” enact (via the voice) an improved persona. The voice is the stream that flows from the assumption of separation. People then treat this persona as if it were real, thus reinforcing an underlying sense of division.

As David Bohm puts it in WHOLENESS AND THE IMPLICATE ORDER:

            “Being guided by a fragmentary self-world-view, man then acts in such a way as to try to break himself and the world up, so that all seems to correspond to his way of thinking. Man thus obtains an apparent proof of the correctness of his fragmentary self-world view though, of course, he overlooks the fact that it is he himself, acting according to his mode of thought, who has brought about the fragmentation that now seems to have an autonomous existence,     independent of his will and of his desire” (p. 2-3).

So do we 1) accept this division and live with it (flight); or 2) try to eliminate the errors underlying it (fight).

Both of these reactions can only end in a reinforcement of the status quo. The typical response at that point is to throw up the hands and say “then why bother with all this? What’s on TV?” But I can only respond that way if I think there’s nothing more to be learned in this vein. We’ve bled it dry and it did us no good. It’s this certainty that I already know all that can be known about this condition which leads me to think that my days as an ignoramus should have ended by now.

But that would contradict what I actually discovered. The facts were only these: that I haven’t perceived the error underlying my actions, not that I have. So the fact that I remain an ignoramus should only make sense. If I regard confirmation of ignoramus-ness as a disappointment, that’s only because I haven’t recognized the nature of the error, even yet. And that’s interesting, because it begins to explain why things have stayed stuck for so long.

There’s a third potential response, which is to Either fight or fly (not try to do Neither), and witness what happens; to suddenly confront the errors in those strategies that incarnate the division in the first place. That’s what it means to discover error: To NOT try to improve but to witness what goes wrong. After all, the idea of trying to eliminate division is so preposterous that sometimes it’s bound to stop us in our tracks, and then, unexpectedly, where’s the division?

Changes like that are not the result of knowledge, but of simply seeing the error in the knowledge we already have. Whenever I see that my efforts divide the mind, then I no longer believe in a mind that’s divided by nature (if only for a moment). So this false knowledge of division is removed, and with it, the so-called voluntary responses of effort (fight/flight).

So it should be clear by now that the vein of error is thick. And my impatience at not finding the vein after two or three quick stabs (using the very technique of effort, mind you, that has been called into question) should give you some idea of how unfamiliar I still am with my predicament, and how superficially I’ve attended to these matters. But also how much room there is for enquiry.