Mundane Ethical Dilemma

3.7.11 Early Afternoon

This morning when you went for a jog after your early class you notice a $20 bill lying in the gutter of a suburban homes driveway – there’s a newish van parked nearby. You look around. You pick it up. It’s wet from the water in the gutter so you wipe it off inside the pocket of your running shorts. There’s the thought that goes: ring the doorbell and ask if someone had dropped it. But you’re dull and jumbled. You stick it in your pocket, look around again and continue on your way.

While you jog you encounter a few thought-movements related to the banal moral dilemma. Could this be an experiment? – stick a twenty in the gutter and watch what happens from behind a fence? No, highly doubtful.

You are brought to an insight you had some few months ago while emailing Tom. Amongst the emotional resistance and arguments of the thought-movements you recall that ethical thinking comes about primarily when faced directly with a dilemma; it comes about secondly after the dilemmas themselves occur, when one begins to wonder if what one had done was ‘right’; and thirdly, ethical thinking springs up from the encounter and identification with stories, but at much weaker strength.

Your emotional movements stimulate the ethical dimension of the ‘lost’ bill. It goes: perhaps someone dropped it and will ‘need’ it. Or, you have not earned the money, and you also do not ‘need’ it. And, it will be growth-centered if you ring the doorbell.

You jog along listening to music and reacting to the narrative in your mind about what to do. You think about what you could do with the money. A haircut? You felt unattractive this morning and could use the twenty to get a haricut – smooth things out. And, as if to add support to this trajectory, you remember one time when you were younger that you’d lost the same amount of money while riding your bike – a lot of money to you then. This is reasonable, it says.

There’s a counter argument, though. It goes: you do not ‘need’ it, and it is not yours. There’s a recalling of what the ‘commissaris’ says in one of Janwillem van de Wetering’s Amsterdam detective mysteries – “I have not seen much of the Law, but what I have seen has effected me.” You think that returning it may be good. For instance, it would clarify some of your jumbledness this morning. Is this sufficient though? A negative aspect of yourself says it isn’t, that there’s a sort of childish stupidity about it. Yet it is not so. You are not doing it so as to be a ‘good boy’ or merely to feel better about yourself and the world. You feel that a voluntary action aimed at returning the money would help the ‘world’; that is, the quality of the movement would be noticed – perhaps not initially, but later – by the lost money’s owner, and that they would then be in a position to contact this ‘quality’ themselves in their further movements. Perhaps not use it just yet or ever, but they would feel it.

You think that the thinking is not necessary – all of those thought movements are confusing. At the moment of noticing the bill, the feeling was the guided argument. But then the thought came in and you reasoned about not feeling particularly up to ringing the bell because there was an anxiety about dealing with people. Perhaps the early feeling was the higher emotional center, the ‘thinking’ was mechanical.

And so you flip back and forth. There are some times your swayed by both impulses. Yet you finally side with the ‘qualitativenss’. You walk up the steps after jogging back to the house with the van. You ring the doorbell and wait. You ring it again and wait. You wonder if you might just put it under the doormat. The door opens up, suddenly. A girl about your age, attractive in a fleshy sort of way, blonde, but not uninteresting and dull. She’s sleepy looking, dressed in shorts and a baggy white shirt.

You tell here the story, leaving out that you jogged about with the money in you pocket before returning it. She opens the door the whole way and you hand it to her. You don’t ask it if it’s hers. You feel sweaty. She say’s: you’re nice to do that, have a nice night- I mean day.

Well, there we are.

Outline of Points for Work - from a few months ago

• The Public-Narrative/Expectational-Living is both ungrounded and, as it is, is incapable of being so.
• The Source of all issues may be seen directly in one’s subconscious, can be traced in one’s ‘thought’.
• There can be no flourishing if one can’t will what they are doing.
• Mechanicalness, that is, Expectational-Living, puts one to sleep, brings one into the sleep-forgetfulness-cycle.
• Mechanicalness: doing while one’s intention is foreign to one; doing when one doesn’t know why one is doing what one is doing; when there is a disconnect between will and action.
• All illusions, fears, conflicts, disturbing and destructive movements arise from this disconnect.
• There is no such thing as a morality when one is within Expectational-Living. Morality is impossible when one cannot go against one’s society.
• The institutions of the Public-Narrative once were grounded – that is, connected with the Source – but when the Source is not seen and the story is still passed on, people cannot act from the will, cannot practice the real values which the story arises from. The way then becomes dead, lulling people to sleep.
• Without the Source, there is no possibility of flourishing. Without, in other words, the ability to recognize trajectory in Self-Narrative and the Public-Narrative, there is only mechanical movement.

Why are you concerned with articulating what is 'self'?

You are concerned, for starters, because you are disorderly. You feel entrapped by the environment. You feel contrasting pulls. You sense that you often do not maintain control over your movements. You are confused about what project to go with, to engage in, to trust. You get the impression that you are not true to yourself, that you are not in-touch with yourself. Distractions seem to lull you into a queer sleep, a sleep that you awaken from lost and anxious sometimes hours later. Some of your projects, you feel, have no business being yours: you notice that persons in your small subculture do the same sort of thing and you feel both doubtful and comfortable in regard to its system. There appears to be a mixture of truth and falsehood in the expected-path, yet you are often not centered or vital enough to sift it out. The result is ‘abrupt complexity’, you are not sure what to do with yourself or you go about doing what’s expected in a resigned manner – you suddenly feel foreign. When you encounter this ‘abrupt complexity’ you lose your in-touchness with self. Self is a whispered trajectory. Self is to be cared for because ‘abrupt complexity’, the force that fosters reactivity and mechanicalness, such is in the air, has seeped into the life-force of the public-narrative. You indulge in reactive fostering activities, yet setting limits and goals seems to prevent spontaneity.

So, it is taken as a starting assumption – and we must begin even if we begin on uneven soil – that in order to care for self that we are able to notice what self is and what it is not, that we must do this if we are to sort through the ‘abrupt complexity’ of the public distinction pointer and the public suppose-to-do-with-one’s-life-narrative, and if we are to notice when indulgences lull us to sleep consuming our vitality and in-touchness of self.

Self-inquiry, then, begins with a notation of diffusion, and from this awareness of diffusion sprouts a seeking to find a way out. Gurdjieff’s metaphor is helpful: Man is asleep, that is, in prison. Man must realize first and foremost that he is in this sleep-prison. From this urgency, he will attend to possible escape routes, perhaps attuning to the personality of the guards, the rituals of the prison as a whole and so on. But the walls are thick and high, the guards are unforgiving. How could he possibly escape? His direct sense of hopelessness is felt by the other prisoners; those that have sensed what he has sensed gravitate to him (or he gravitates to them). They form a group of sorts and in their mutual aim they do what one could not, they experiment with digging tunnels, checking weak areas in the walls, and acquiring various goods that may help them. In this process, they may receive word from those that have escaped already, that is, from those on the outside. Not everyone may escape, but with such works in motion, the possibility of a few locating the path out becomes feasible.

Does one need help from the outside or may one develop in-touchness with self by oneself?

You have assumed that to cultivate in-touchness with self and to care for self that you are to practice slowing down and stilling. In practicing thus, you can cut out the noise and possessive qualities of ‘abrupt confusion’: you can stop the car and get off the Expectational-living highway. Practicing stillness is to unchain yourself and walk out of the illusiveness of the cave, drawing fresh air from the sunlight. It stops the spinning, sends warm blood through the veins, and cuts the shit. Meditation, jogging, various journaling methods, these are self-centering activities.

But lately it occurs to you that something more is needed. The public-social-vocabulary has dealt much ‘abrupt confusion’. Perhaps a morality is needed in order to be able to remain awake. This will consist of actions that one is to recourse to when reactivity is noticed, when we wake up out of our dream and see that we are lying on a slim cot in a cold cell. The source-value is in understanding self and fostering right-action, that is, movement in which one is not mechanical but in active engaged care. It is assumed that active engaged care is a prerequisite for flourishing, that if one cannot will what they are doing they cannot flourish. To will is to be able and willing to get behind what on is doing. It is akin to the gage of eternal recurrence: to get behind the action, not holding anything back. It is thought that if such will is present that ‘abrupt confusion’ and the variety of reactivity will have no effect. Problems arising from diffusion will not take root.

The reclusion of a seeker is always sought in order to eradicate the problems of diffusion. Diffusion may be defined as out of touchness with self; it is a circumstance in which one does not really know why one is doing what one is doing in leading their lives. There is no purposive care or trust. For instance, from diffusion other people are viewed as either vastly superior (in control) or automatons (weak sheep). Either way, the whole tumbling, whirring movement of society, the ‘government’, the game, is observed as destructive and untrustworthy. Diffused man is suspicious. He thinks in extremes and in escape routes. Often he’s a pessimist and an outsider; occasionally he resorts to the drug of romanticism, bohemianism, crime, and even to actual drugs. (Colin Wilson has written about the possibility that the criminal is seeking release from entrapment, and by say murdering or robbing that he glimpses the freedom sought, a world without the suppose-toes, pressures, expectations.) It can be seen, though, that the movements of all of these ‘types’ - the pessimist, the addict, and so on- are mechanical. Even the first steps of the seeker are so. But, again, there is always a starting point. Whoever has located the way has at some point been lost in the darkness of the forest. One notices that one does not know why one is doing what one is doing, is merely doing what is expected, and feels as if they do not have control. He may then feel betrayed by his parents. He may then desire to drown his troubles away. He may fantasize about utopias or good circumstances. He may distract away this impression by holding to the socially appropriate narrative tighter still. He may lash out at the ‘system’. He may actually lash out, rape, kill. He may blame himself and release the tension through psychological illness. He may and so on…

Cycles of imprisonment possess ‘thought’ and demand compulsive movement. We would do well to be in-touch with the cause of our search, to keep it ‘at-hand’ and near. For when we are asleep, possessed by thought, there cannot be care. And in not caring, we find that our circumstances or other people are deciding our movements. Naturally, then, there is the sense of diffusion, and when something or someone else controls our lives, we are neither happy nor productive - we do not experience inner piece.

Just The Day

A slow start in the morning. You’ve been getting the impression that if you do not get up before 9:30am you tend to have a hard time doing helpful things. You get out of bed today at around 10:30. You have written down that you will work on the time management project, to be able to start it by documenting Wednesday. When you go out to jog, you walk a ways and wonder about Nietzsche and Heidegger hiking.

After you shower you have to force yourself to do calisthenics. Actually the past two days you have forced yourself for all exercising. You justify it to yourself by the thinking that it’s a necessary thing to do if you want to do vital work. That later on in the day your energy level and focus will diminish much sooner if you don’t.

You debate going out to begin work or staying. You end up leaving around 2:30pm. You go to Café Noir and order green tea. The girl working there is very beautiful in the way that you most like. Graceful, soft, weightless in carriage. You work on reading Hyrum Smith. A question pops up from the reading: In order to do what is vital and important to oneself, does one’s situation need to be extreme? You think of asking the girl this. When you leave you wish to wave to her to establish some kind of relation but she is busy with something and does not see you.

You consider what to do next. You wish to eat so you drive to Nana’s and have a tuna sandwich and turkey soup. You wonder if the tv is kept on and so loud because Nana doesn’t hear it – it doesn’t bother her. You briefly watch ‘You’ve Got Mail’ to avoid the trifling small talk. Later, when you are about to leave, you ask her your question. She doesn’t really understand what you intend. She says that she lives for her family. That when she was young she had opportunities but that she never lived for her self, only for others, that this is one of her limitations. She then seeks to soothe you and says you’ll figure it out when you’re ready.

You drive to the public library and read a bit of the book you checked out yesterday, ‘Afterzen’. You leave after hoping to run into Nick to talk about the question but never end up seeing him.

When you arrive at home its about 6:45pm. You take a bath. You listen to Fratres on repeat. Then you shave. After you are cleaned up, you slip on the rug and twist your body weirdly trying to evaluate if you had shaved well. You kind of hurt and shake internally.

You dress and type up a journal entry from last week. You send Nick an email with it attached and write up your question from earlier to see what he has to say. In the email you try to show him why you’re asking the question. The context is important for emphasis. This ends up being taxing and you cut it short. You end up writing for a few hours.

You go on youtube and check subscriptions. You make tea to warm up and grab some cookies and sweets from the party that mom went to today. You type up a retrospective account of the day after masturbating.