In case I haven’t said, the raw material for this chapter–actually to become more than one chapter, I hope, are all my diary entries from 22 June 1990 to 2 February 1993 that have to do with my writing career. So my present work is a kind of nostalgia trip back to my life of twenty years ago. It’s just now starting to interest me after boring me for the first five entries. That’s because yesterday I suddenly became caught up in the drama of my hero’s pursuit of a goal: literary recognition. Or, vocational recognition. Or, evidence that he is of value to the world.
Such, in my theory of psychology, is one of a human being’s innate sagaceptual drives–”sagaceptual” because the sagaceptual awareness in where one’s recognition of innate goals and a desire to pursue them is located. It is where one experiences oneself as the heor of a saga.
One thing I hoped for–nay, believed certain of achievement–was my memoir’s causing others vicariously to experience my hero’s pursuit of his goal. I seem to have been unrealistic about this. Apparently, I have a much stronger sagaceptual awareness than others do. I sometimes wonder, in fact, if others have a sagaceptual awareness, or a significant one. I also think that many others are inflecibly sagaceptual. Someone who is athletic, for instance, may identify with others who are striving for athletic achievement, but not for anyone striving for any other kind of achievement. Certain athletes, or would-be athletes, may even be unable to identify with anyone else who is pursuing an athletic goal but someone in his sport!
I automatically respond to anyone pursuing any vocational goal, or any goal I can think of, for that matter. I doubt if there are many people in the world more against the world-view of Adolph Hitler than I, yet when I read a biography of him long ago, I rooted for him to conquer the world. This, I suppose, indicates most accurately the way I am sagaceptually: it’s not that I’m sagaceptual, others not, but that my sagaceptual drive in comparison with others of my drives is much stronger than most others sagaceptual drives are in comparison with their other drives. Obviously, if I can root for Hitler to achieve his vocational goal, it means that I am not inhibited from doing that, as others I imagine would be, by competing drives, whatever they might be.
A drive to avoid violence? Some kind of moral drive? It’s complicated. Now that I reflect on it, I do recall books I’ve read whose hero I rooted against because I didn’t like him. Or was it because his goal wasn’t that important to me. I do like the goal of conquering the world. Although it’s never been a personal goal of mine–military conquering of the world, that is. Or political conquering of it. I would somewhat enjoy a kind of cultural conquering of the world, but would sincerely not like everyone’s accepting my outlook on existence. I only want the majority of people to agree that it is a valuable outlook.