I was writing in my diary a little while ago (it is now ten in the morning, 9Sep14) and thought (for the ten thousandth times, I suspect, if not more) of the distant others whom it was written for, whether or not anyone read it, and then about how important others were in my life. But I’m inner-directed! Having thought the last thought, I left my diary and came here to mull the subject over on paper (or its electronic equivalent) . . . for others.
I feel I’m almost always aware of others. Even when no one else is nearby, I’m aware of their representatives inside me, particularly Freud’s Super-Ego, which is approximately my urceptual father (or God or Authority-Figure, and maybe also Judge), a little man in one of my awarenesses–either the anthroceptual or the evaluceptual . . . no, both. No, again: he (yes, he–probably in female awarenesses a he, also) is in the socioceptual sub-awareness of the anthroceptual awareness, with links to some kind of assistant in the anthro-evaluceptual association area. Other others (and writing that, I think of the others who will find it amusing, I hope) within me are the urceptual mother, friend, sex-object, enemy (whose reaction to what I say and do is also important to me) and several others I’d make more of an effort to recall if writing some final exposition of mine thoughts on this subject–but would probably still fail to make a complete list, and possibly also name some who should not be on the list).
Having mentioned the Super-Ego, and not being well organized, I will mention that I think Freud’s Id a nice invention, too. In my psychology it (since it is a sexless child, for the most part, although it becomes highly gendered when caught by the sexual drive) is probably a combination of several ur-beings, but the most important is the fundaceptual ur-hedonist stuffing himself with chocolates or the like. But to a fairly large extent it’s an ur-advisor to the ur-friend seeking friendship. I find that I’m hazy about it. It has to enter into almost everything we do, even an objective verosophical investigation of, well, the Id itself. like I’m trying to carry out. The goal of everything is pleasure; the goal of the ur-hedonist is immediate pleasure.
I guess my equivalent of Freud’s Ego (which seems to me not really his but everybody’s idea of self since human beings were capable of conceiving themselves as having selves–prehumanly, I am in a minority as believing: every animal has an urceptual self, but not a linguiceptual awareness where it gets a name. Speciocentrists mistake an ability to discuss their selves as a sine qua non for having selves, which is stupid. My cat, it seems to me, must know the different between what is outside its body and its body. All this will become clear once neurophysiologists have the equipment to pin down the components of brains–and pre-brains. I don’t see why any living thing should not have a self. Or every thing have one.
Selves come in different sizes, though. An adult animal’s is probably at least as large in proportion to the contents of everything else in its brain, or equivalent thereof as our’s, but therefore smaller. And, because I can’t resist an opportunity to anger those against me on a particular political issue, a fetus’s, even a late-term fetus’s, is vastly smaller than any adult mammal’s, so those who can live with the euthanization of adult stray cats and dogs but not abortion are–I want to say “jackasses,” but have to say, very strongly under the influence of their urceptual-mother.
To digress, I suddenly think there are two urceptual mothers (and other urceptual beings may also be paired): the urceptual mother one becomes when she captures one’s attention; and the urceptual mother one becomes the urceptual child of when someone else has activated her and is soothing us, or lecturing us, etc.
An announcement just broke through to me from Thunderbird telling me that Yale has announced a cure for dementia. Not that that has anything to do with this entry. I was momentarily stymied by the idea of two urceptual mothers, which was new to me, so took the first excuse to leave it that came up. Now back to ti, I think maybe one urceptual mother is sufficient. One becomes the urceptual mother when a child is crying, as in this case; one calls up the urceptual mother but does not become her when it is oneself that is doing the crying, and doing it sufficiently to become one’s urceptual child.
I’m supposed to be working on my novel today. I have done a bit on it already but am trying my hardest to get an important passage five or more pages in length taken care of, a passage I’ve recently revised twice, and will definitely need one further revision after this one, which is mainly getting it reasonably well-organized where it belongs in the narrative. It’s been giving me a lot of trouble, but I think I’ll overcome it today if my energy-level holds up. Which it won’t if I keep getting into my blog or–for Pete’s sake–HLAS where I was earlier for twenty minutes or more re-arguing the idiotic Shakespeare Authorship Question. I’m going to stay here till I go over the thousand word mark. Only a little over a hundred words to go.
Make that less than a hundred. Doing that is for me, not others. Or not others to much of an extent. 95% pure inner-directedness. But so much of inner-directedness is free-wendry, too: those who make the most of their lives, as both free-wenders and the inner-directed try to do, must set goals for themselves and pursue them to the best of their ability. I’m not sure there’s anything as important that free-wenders share with the other-directed. I suppose the ability to temporarily not to pursue a goal is one, but it is only important to the free-wender; it’s something someone other-directed can’t help. The latter is innate other-directed; the free-wender chooses to be other-directed when appropriate. A rigidnik cannot make that choice, or, at least, not effectively; hence, he is quite different from someone inner-directed.
Well, I’m a thousand words now. The inner-drected question is whether I should count words typed about how many words I’ve typed. Probably not, but I’m going to count them now, anyway–because I can’t think of anything more to say–except that this entry only took me an hour and fifteen minutes to write this entry.
Hmm, in categorizing this entry, I noticed that I failed to include the MacArthur Foundation under “Enemies of Poetry.” After their recent bestowing of money on five or more poets of no particular cultural value, I thought them probably the worst of all the enemies of poetry. Poetry was until it gave token space to language and then visual poetry. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe other serious talented poets are not bothered by the recognition institutions like the MacArthur Foundation give competitors two or three orders of magnitude less good at their trade than they. Maybe they don’t recognize that such prizes indoctrinate all the other establishment sources of help for poets to give money and recognition to the same level of poets rather than to them. Many may have the good luck not not need financial aid as much as I do, too.
The MacArthur Foundation, I feel the need to add, is not merely an enemy of poetry, but of culture. Poetry is an enemy of culture, too, since it tends to confirm other institutions defending culture against innovation in other fields like it that they are doing right. But Poetry can’t be consider directly an enemy of all culture the way the MacArthur Foundation certainly can.
Heh heh, I’m over (with “over”) 1300 words now, thanks to the MacArthur brickbrains.
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