Self-Revere

Self-Revere

Samuel Bird

I couldn’t start feeling my body, or else I would realize how cold it was. If I did that, I would likely begin to hate why I was here, and I was already doing that more than I could bear. A step, and then another, followed by one more into the dark. Briskly and ferociously, I walked to nowhere in particular and from all that I had been. This was pathetic. It is a weekend night. I am a fifteen-year-old boy. I should be off galavanting with friends, but I never learned how to make those. I should be at home safe, warm, and fed, but I knew what my plight would be if I were there. Perhaps I could sneak in through the same window I climbed from. And then what? Risk the brutality all for a room just a few degrees warmer than the night? No, even if it was a better deal, I don’t want it. Make someone go without for long enough, and then even when they could obtain, they resent it. Here was the truth: I could be kept warm by all the warm thoughts of hopeful futures, but I would be back to wondering why yesterday's futures are so cold. Why am I lost in a field late into the night? What circumstances allowed or necessitated this? Furthermore, assuming value experienced and personified, what warranted me to be here? I couldn’t bring myself to believe in a God, but like many modern fools, I supposed no God and yet His justice. I deserved to be here. I did not deserve to be warm. Something about my ontology made me worthy of what was happening. To want something better would be to try to escape relegation to the verdict done on my soul by the world around me. The cuffs of my pants were moist from breaking the frost free on the thick grass and allowing it to melt against my skin. A shiver and pulling in of my laborer's jacket attempted to stay off the inevitable cold. The field ended in a dry ditch, I jumped across before finding myself in a bundle of houses in the middle of the country. Within, all the lights were off to each of the houses except one. Hiding behind a bush, I crept closer to their house, curious what this human experience I was missing out on was like. Within was a family gathered around a dinner table. In the midst of them was food, drink, and portions of some game. Here they were, enjoying themselves as if their lives were about the enjoying of rather than the serving out. Within was a young man, somewhere close to my age. His hearty nutrition left him much taller. His running water left him with clear skin. When he smiled, his teeth were straight and white. His frame was full. I imagined what it would be like to be a person. I thought of all the people who looked forward to talking with him. I thought of all the pretty girls he would talk to. I thought about the late nights under the stars when he looked up to see his bright future under the bars of what was my cage. He was close enough that I was doomed to see that sparkle in his eye, I was never permitted, but far enough away that we didn’t seem to occupy the same world. Within the mind is a powerful system that evaluates the situation of others and asks how we can avoid or obtain that situation. How could I have this life he had? Within my mind, I went through every option. I could one day be wealthy and have my own house, but I could barely read and wouldn’t graduate from high school, so it was unlikely. Perhaps I could have that closeness, but who would I trick to love me? I went through the options until I came to the conclusion that I not only could never be like this young man, but I could never receive a consolatory gift. I had to then ask why. What made this young man such that he received this and I did not? What look did his father have in his eye when he held him that promoted care and safety? I knew if I were to talk to this young man, he would talk down on me as if my poorer fortune made me lesser. However, I would have to wonder if he was right, and my being lesser is why I warranted being lesser. I came to myself to realize I was staring into a family’s home while hiding. When we see something, we can never forget that our seeing it is a claim in the world, and in this instance, it may seem creepy. I turned to my left to see the most marvelously bright and full moon I had ever seen. I was pulled from my thoughts all at once and just there, basking in its splendor. This was my beauty to perceive and revel in it. I came back to myself once again to find that the thoughts remained, but they had cooled down since I handled them last. With less bitterness, I employed the thought experiment of the other boy. I came to the conclusion that, despite my worries, I could never know if I was essentially good and, from that, if my life was warranted, too good, or too evil. Still, why did all these humans I could never fully understand always choose someone else’s side? Why did my parents, society, and even myself choose people like this young man over me? I got it! They could still choose to reject me, but it was foolish to reject myself. If no one would be on my side, I would attempt to do so as much as I could without completely abandoning others’ needs. My pant legs were now beginning to freeze as my mind went from solving my life to my day. I thought of some sleeping bags I had in my parents' barn. I wanted more for myself, but of this little thing I desired, I found myself sufficient. 

Another day, I will talk about the notion of worthiness as the value of self-sufficiency for reception. However, today I want to talk about the idea of self-betrayal. I see three steps to this: First, we lie to ourselves, then we betray ourselves, then we punish ourselves. The answer is not always that we are or greater personified value or worth always. Sometimes, we find ourselves needing to make large changes to earn our own respect and put ourselves in line with those values we can’t lie and say we don’t have. I see this pattern in my day, of everyone always reducing the issue to them being of greater worth and deserving more. They repeat a list of things that are not true about themselves simply because they wish they were. Our society is then surprised by rampant narcissism. This is the opposite of being effective toward our ends. This is simply a lie, the opposite direction. Do we hate, abase, and despise ourselves? Do we aggrandize, privilege, and worship ourselves? As we will discuss in a minute, having answers to situations that have not occurred yet is an issue. The answer is, it depends. In the question of hubris or humility, I recommend honesty. This honesty is the attempt to deeply comprehend the facts as you have them available. We can attempt to write ourselves as characters, as I will talk about later, but no doubt some facts don’t fit in our mythos. As we live our lives, we carry the mythos. As we reflect on them, we set them down to identify their qualities. How can a skeptic believe we can lie to ourselves? We can be inauthentic to those external and internal facts as they seem. To look at lies, let us look at propaganda. The human psyche is permeable, and powerful institutions know this. In my day, each party was given different facts and different notions of what was just, and then they were surprised when they couldn’t reconcile the justice of the facts. We can do this to ourselves. We can get so turned around in the layers of objectives, we lose sight of the world we first identified and our goal in it. How many men gave their lives for gold that doesn’t carry their name or procure the life they laid down? This self lie can be in terms of facts of mind and world, as well as their relationship. It would then be the most deadly of soils for Esse Maxim. This is why Esse Maxim can’t be any given thing and is instead a series of options available for one choice. I have spoken of the will being at the core, but it is not the will for desire, but the will to be. Esse Maxim is not what gives you what you want, but what becomes what we want. Otherwise, we can dilute to be another means to obtain our desires. For this reason, Esse Maxim needs to be internal, and I was troubled to make it social. We can self-report that we came to the honest conclusion of a given Esse Maxim, but within our minds, we choose convenience. The victim here is the one who must live out a lie and be crushed between the world and his mind as he tries to make it not. As we move from privileging how the world is to privileging how it seems, we will need to build this skill for truly witnessing the seemingness and not trying to represent it as easily. Let us suffer, bleed, and die for those ideas that we find in our minds. Let us now look at this idea of lying to and about ourselves. Did I know I was evil? Not passed doubt, certainly. I had some data points for and against such a claim. Part of the lie in this case was overestimating the judgment of the circumstances and people around me. I have more and more realized in my instance, the world is more ill than I am. Too many people try to cure themselves of psychic disease given by the institutions that allege to treat them. Examine yourself with every fact you can and hesitate to lazily make one moment paint your whole life. 

Once we have lied to ourselves, with that assumption, we are prepared to betray ourselves. Let us look at one of the most common examples of self-betrayal: social interactions. As we coexist and communicate with other persons, we find ourselves at odds with them. Our values and their values don’t intersect, or at least the instances in the world for them don’t. Even if you and I both agree that we each deserve an outcome, we are the other person’s other person, and we would not be evaluated to receive that outcome from the other person. This is not even to mention the variance in epistemic access we have to given facts. They need at our expense, and we need at theirs. How can we reconcile this? We can ignore their values to obtain ours, but they will do the same, and we will be all the worse off, plus the foregone gain of non-cooperation. We can’t just never provide, or else we can’t make a basis for them ever doing the same. When we are young, we are taught manners and morality just sufficient enough for us to grow up so we can realize both were just a means to socially survive until we could find a more complete system. Now that we know we can’t always absolutely win a transaction, we may ask if we do so by always absolutely losing. This would make it so no one is ever at odds with us, as the moment they were, we gave in. Engaging with our existence is not to have lazy rules that say to always this or that, but to take each moment to the greatest degree we can and judge it for ourselves. Now, let us look at whether we gave in to their demands each time. Here, we self-betray. We are not advocating for that one person who would have no one if we did not. I am cautious of the idea of using language that “others” ourselves. However, we must be on our side to a sufficient degree. No empty well has anything to offer, and perhaps the well will mind its emptiness. 

Once we have lied about the circumstance at hand, we have chosen to betray ourselves by a given means, we are now ready to punish ourselves. Aesthetics, as the bringing of suffering to love it, is wisdom. Punishment to bring suffering and keep you hating it is foolishness. Could you be worthy of punishment? Given a value, a system, and a repercussion that is possible. However, we have to be wary that we may not have the right to administer that punishment. Efforts should be expended on reconciliation and betterment first, and then perhaps some inflicting is in order. If we must punish, let us determine a burden. Once that burden or sentence is met, the punishment is over. I have spent many years punishing myself for this evil essence I was worried I was. However, I know nothing of my essence, passed my energies. What have I done? Well, it is messy. We are suspect in our ability to be aware of ourselves and can discount or over-emphasize our or others’ contributions. However, at large, I have done that which brought my respect and that which did not. In the talk of values and evaluation, some will point out there is a negated or posited value and act as if that is the question. The real question is the net value. How do I net-value my actions? They are valuable on the whole, however, this is contingent and could change if I am not careful. I can now either be informed that my trajectory is one to convict myself more or to redirect. Otherwise, I am left with this poorly thought-out notion of someone worthy and ever available for punishment. We can punish ourselves by rejecting opportunities, not taking care of ourselves, or even committing self-violence. Perhaps there is some grounding to this, but I have said that we are at least sufficient to embark on what we desire to change. A deep “no” to life won’t help us in our case that our life is of valuable. The way I instigate my self-punishment best is by my horror of asking for anything. Omission of a value can be a punishment as well. You can carefully identify where and how you punish yourself with your own meditation. My point is that redirecting what you found yourself worthy of being punished for is a better use of energy than taking away your power to act in the world. 

There is a nexus where the ability to play an instrument beautifully is crossed by the ability to do so with little thought. What this results in is the skill to make beautiful music and the ease to enjoy it. Each of these possible solutions I will prescribe will be like so. At first, the effort expended will make it less enjoyable than otherwise. However, as you instigate and hone these solutions, you will likely find yourself able to enjoy their application. Firstly, lying won’t help you be more effective or bring about value. Betrayal won’t help you help others on the whole. Punishment won’t change the actions that you thought were worth punishment. We need to first do the labor to earn our respect, and then maintain it as we experience it. Some will assume they are passed this, but you are only so if you say you are. You may have noted by now that these books are poorly edited. This is not by accident, though I make attempts to make the writing readable. I want to write in a way that is emblematic of how I find myself. I do this so there is more of a character for you to become friends with as you see his flaws, but I do it to demonstrate my lack of shyness in being myself. It has cost me a lot to be me, and I have some honor in doing so. No doubt you will have some degree of that claim for yourself. What recesses of your soul are worthy candidates for your authenticity? By this bold being what one is, we are deeply present and engaged with our experience and existence. We deeply look within ourselves, and while not wanting everything to be as it is, we don’t look away. No one else can make sense of ourselves like this before we die. You may have noticed this theme, but I spent some years being scared of myself. Partially because I was worried if I could stay in the strict and inconsistent laws of others. The other reason was, what was I doing for myself? I now have less reason to be scared of myself, though I am still sometimes surprised. When we wish ill for our life, we do so for the following reasons: We find ourselves worthy of suffering, not worth the good, and finally, that our existence isn’t worth the cost. Each of these has a response found in my writing. Of values, there are those that are intrinsic and matter for their own sake, and those of utility that matter for how they benefit other values. I have found that this is a gradient. What I will ask of your life is what degree of “intrinsicness” have you found in yourself and your being? To the degree we find intrinsic value, we can’t betray our lives for something more tertiary. Going back to the lie, all of these issues come from an issue between the self and the world. In my age, the average issue is privileging fact over seemingness. However, something of our values and views has to be of worth compared to the world. No one else will see our lives this deeply. If we give in to others always, we sell out the private experiences that existence is made up of for public experiences, and we can never know what became of them. I am skeptical of self-love as I am skeptical of othering ourselves. However, in the way I define love, it is eligible for application. We exist no place more than in our minds. We can then adopt our values on our own behalf. This is love. In a world where action is needed and yet undirected, I choose to honor being myself and value it sufficient for its perpetuance. Finally, these thoughts I share today are for the occasion; this aspect of us needs addressing. Being oneself can often be most engaged with when we forget we are doing it. Are you any good? In between answering the question, forget it. 

I went on a cold walk this evening because I again thought I deserved it. However, this time the thing I deserved was something I enjoyed, demonstrating my current self-evaluation. I wish I could tell that young man I was that I can think of qualities he has that he can’t. You and I may always struggle to fall into the mental models we were brought up with. However, we can make some adaptations that are powerful to sufficiently reverence the self. Revel in what seems to be true, be on your side, and do that which you find just to yourself. Some may be worthy, such that if we are on our side, we would be at odds with people. Firstly, if it is so, but our being works in unison, I think it is a worthy exchange. However, a world made up of people who are honoring themselves makes a world stable for responding to the supposed action of a person. Finally, something of you is brought into me via love, and with that, I value on your behalf. Being on my side is the defense of those people I love. But wouldn’t this make a world where we had to build up love from people to receive? Yes, and I think that is better than the model of everyone trying to find enough energy in our souls to do well by people when there is nothing that returns that energy to us. Your expectations should have commiserate returns, even if it is just your gratitude and adoration. When it comes to making sense of the self, we are still left to navigate the enigma as that enigma. However, we can identify and contrast facts. You will never be able to sneak a glimpse of your essence and value. You will never know everything about yourself. However, we can at least come to the conclusion that you are sufficient for the existence that you have before you. You may not warrant diamonds, palaces, and social power, however, you can excuse a mitigated degree of self-punishment and perhaps even some objectives. Every person is at least good enough to start to engage with your existence. If you are not on your side, who will be convinced to be? Now that I have gathered the thoughts as I think them, let me share my heart as I feel it. Please don’t convince yourself that you are better than needing reflection and effort. However, please be easy with yourself. As I loved you, a portion has come into my mind. As a result, you are not just belonging to yourself. Please, take care of my dear friend. Be on their side. Fight their battles. Critique them when they need it, because they are worth the adaptation to me. Finally, when possible and actual, take a moment to look at yourself. When you get to a quality worthy of such, don’t be hesitant to self-revere.