MY THIRD COLLAPES OF WILL
by F. Richard Singer III edition date: 19/07/07
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This is a paper taken from my book entitled
Conceptual Papers In Conceptual
Philosophy
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By a net, I mean a network of concepts and conceptual distinctions and conceptual relationships. A concept is crucial for a person P if the net that P routinely uses would lack coherence without it. A conceptual philosophy for P is an organized net that centers on those concepts that P finds crucial along with those concepts that these crucial concepts most directly support. A conceptual philosophy has no theories. With few exceptions, it involves only conceptual claims. For instance, it does involve the non-conceptual claim of having some conceptual competence, because doing conceptual philosophy involves presenting-clarifying-refining concepts and relations between concepts. In presenting a paper in conceptual philosophy, P would normally provide perspective that illustrates the role the concepts might play in P’s thinking and actions. This is one reason for including considerable text that may not seem directly conceptual. Context should allow the reader to distinguish between text focusing directly on concepts and text that add perspective.
Conceptual Papers in Conceptual Philosophy augments some of the more basic concepts developed in my book A Personal Approach to Conceptual Philosophy. It is a collection of papers, which can be read in any order. Hopefully these papers are largely independent of any specialized understanding of the concepts developed in that other book. When a paper does use any of those concepts they are sketched in the appendix to the paper. Papers also use concepts from Descriptive Psychology, a net of theory neutral conceptual tools created by Peter Ossorio. Descriptive Psychology is used in similar ways by a notable number of people and is designed for use by a wider public. To stress this, I refer to the Public Net for Descriptive Psychology, using PNDP as an abbreviation. Since PNDP is not yet widely known, its concepts are not presupposed. Instead, they are introduced as needed or sketched in an appendix. Most of them, along with concepts developed in A Personal Approach to Conceptual Philosophy, are described in more detail in Concept Dictionary-Encyclopedia, which is also available on the above website.
Overview: This paper consists of reflections on my understanding of the longest period in my life during which I was in an extreme state of spiriyual pathology. I call this my third collapse of will., contasing it with two other periods of shorter or less intense spiritual pathology. It contains mostly information that helps me understand the role that conceptual philosophy has had in my life. It is a modified version of art of the last chapter in my book entitled A Personal Approach to Conceptual Philosophy. It does not develop any concepts, and thus is not a conceptual paper in the usual sense. However it focuses on my attitudes and on my understanding of some parts of the kind of conceptual nets I was conditioned to use, and I find this useful in understanding my current net for crucial concepts.
¶Prelude: I had to take a series of typhoid shots in the fourth grade. These were given in assembly line fashion. Kids talked about needles breaking off in your arm. I was so tense that I thought this shot was the worst thing that ever could happen to me. From that and other experiences, I developed a phobia in relation to medical procedures such as shots, blood tests, tubes in the nose, catheters, etc. I even passed out once when my teeth were being cleaned. The one thing that I would vividly imagine with dread was to be hospitalized and thus being dependent on the decision of others as to what painful procedures would be in my best interest. I wondered if instead I could just endure being plagued with physical pain and thus avoiding medical attention. I was about fifty years old when I finally begin to face this concern. I had a persistent pain, and while it was finally diagnosed as muscular and corrected by physical therapy, for a time I was suspected that the problem might be gallbladder or some other internal problem. I went thru several kinds of test. One of these was a blood test, something I had refused to take for thirty year because of my phobia for needles. With the help of the doctor who gave me this test, I took it in a way that ended my fear of blood tests and shots. I still wondered how I would face drastic medical procedures.
Confronting My Phobia: On March 10, 1989, I slid from my snowy roof and crushed a vertebra in my back. I landed on my feet and flipped over on my back. I awakened from the fall with the dogs licking my face. I tried to get up but could not. I called for help, but the radio in the front room was playing loudly and David did not here me. I rolled to the back door and pulled myself inside where he could here me. He helped me up into the kitchen and called 911. My reactions to this accident were positive for a while. This was the worst pain I had ever endured, but I had no difficulty with it and no fear. I was even glad that they could not give me anything to alleviate the pain. In the emergency room, my worst pain was in my legs, a pain so bad that for days the weight sheets on my toes was difficult to endure. I recall how upset my son was when I would wince with pain, as those who were working on me would accidentally brush against my feet. In the emergency room, my reaction was that this is just pain and I can merely adopt an attitude of passive endurance. I remember thinking that I had been unconsciously waiting for a challenge that I could use finally to put my phobia to rest. In a way things worked to this end, but not as soon as I expected. I thought I had succeeded, but I soon found that a deeper fear was about to be opened.
The Initial
Collapse: I was alone in a hallway just waiting, not knowing how long, but
my will to endure persisted. In the catscan, I had a feeling of isolation. A
mechanical sounding voice kept saying things that I no longer remember. I was
lying on a board, hands stretched above my head with no support. Holding them
in this position was exhausting and painful. Passive endurance would not
suffice. I needed the will to hold my arms in this position. I kept asking how
much longer. The answer was always the same, “Just a little while”. I hate this
kind of answer. Just tell me in minutes so I can watch the clock. I could have
endured had I known how long, but this open-ended feeling broke my will. I
needed to rest before going on. They let me out. Panic set in at the thought of
trying again. I refused. We finally agreed that I would continue if I could
have support for my arms. Charmayne was given a protective vest and she held my
arms while they completed the process. It was over and a shot obliterated the
pain. However the damage was done. I felt I had prepared for the crucial
battle, confronted my phobia, and lost. I remember telling a friend that my
origin quest was over. My reaction to my failure was severe, not because of
pride, but for much more pragmatic reasons. Without the support of a higher
power, there seemed to me to be only two ways I could endure existence. I could
be lucky enough to avoid overwhelming distress or I could cultivate the kind of
strength that
Coming Back: I woke about 4am. The nurse was not helpful. I decided that I could wait until 6am, and then I would call Charmayne. She came immediately, arranged a private room so she could stay with me every night. For three days, I felt helpless and hopeless, depending almost totally on others. My son took a vacation from work so he could be with me during the day. Brenda came to see me and said she would come every day. On the third night, I decided that however I felt, I would ask for no help during the night. I endured and felt a sense of peace. My will might break again, but I could learn to cultivate the courage rebuild it. I did not need to be prepared in advance for whatever might happen. I had confidence that my origin quest could be renewed, altho I also knew that the effort was just beginning. I did not realize that I was going to enter a four year state of extreme spiritual pathology, and that even after this was over the effect might last indefinitely.
The rest of the stay in the hospital was hard but my attitude was positive. I had more support from others than ever before in my life, but I also I did whatever I could to help myself. I learned to fold a cover, even though it would take 15 minutes to do this simple task, but I had no reason to hurry. I had to stay essentially immobilized, able only to log roll and move my arms. Brenda came to feed me. My bowels became blocked but Charmayne helped me free them. When they came to fit me for a body brace, I could not lift my face. John held my face up so I could breathe. The first day they got me up to walk in my body brace my legs refused to support me. Rick was there to help me learn to walk again. The best support was the amount of time I was able to interact with my friends. Much of the time, my room seemed like an extended seminar. I had in depth one-on-one discussions at other times.
Before my accident, I had been informally involved with Dick for several years discussing Descriptive Psychology. I went to his house once a week. I attended the advance motivation theory seminars he was teaching. When I returned home, he moved his seminar to my house so I could continue to participate. It was during one of these sessions that I experienced my first panic attack. These were to last for some time and were a prelude to a failure of will that took me by surprise. After my second collapse of will, I thought that I would always be able to cope with any non-physical distress. I was wrong.
Overview of My Third Collapse of Will: I was soon able to go back to teaching. Soon there was no apparent problem with my back, but I begin to have an enormous amount of physiological tension. This was accompanied by feeling of existential anxiety that at times seemed so overwhelming that at the beginning of the summer I renounced my origin quest and became obsessed with a desire for my existence to be terminated. I both lacked the will to commit suicide and the assurance that anything so simple as death would accomplish this desire. During 1991, my origin quest reemerged, but I did not have the strength to sustain it. I then spent most of 1992 in a state of extreme spiritual pathology. This pathological state became less severe in 1993. I returned to my origin quest in 1994, but only by focusing on my quest of acting as a resource for others. In 1995, I tried to expand this, but found that a portion of a pathological state remains, and still severely restricted my ability to engage in the kind of deliberate action that might help me become a more effective origin. Until early 1997, this was aggravated by a hip pain that made walking difficult. Then walking stopped being difficult but there are still aspects of existence that make biological existence seem less than desirable. I have at least maintained a limited version of my origin quest. The future of my origin quest remains uncertain, but perhaps this is inherent in such a quest.
I next turn to a more detailed account of my collapse of will and my recovery.
¶The First Stage: By May 1989, I had lost faith in my own will and placed myself in the hands of professionals. However, I knew that my competence at understanding had not diminished. I understood that my collapse of will was a deep spiritual problem. I knew that I must either find faith in my own will again or faith in a higher power. Altho my first collapse of will had convinced me that psychoanalysis was useless in dealing with such a problem, I knew that psychotherapist had adopted a number of alternative models. None of these seemed relevant to my problem, but being desperate, I went to a therapist who I had been told was outside the norm. While I liked him, his conceptual net and my experience with therapists in the next four years merely reinforced my previous attitudes about the irrelevance of psychotherapeutic models in relation to the type of collapse of will I had encountered.
Since my spiritual heritage was protestant, I decided to try psychotherapist who claimed to take such a perspective. Altho he prayed at the beginning and end of each session, during the session his focus was still on secular therapy. In spite of this, I continued with him for about five months when he finally decided he could not help me. He suggested medications and recommended a psychiatrist to prescribe them. However, I was doubted that medication could do more than mask my despair. I knew that whatever physiological concomitants there were to faith, that pharmacology was not advanced enough to have faith producing pills. Before finally deciding that professional help was useless, I had been placed on about 20 different medications. I also had a number of shock treatments.
Shortly after starting medication, things got much worse. I could not sleep. My anxiety and despair rose to a level so high that I wanted to be hospitalized. Since my psychiatrist did not hospitalize, I changed to a different one who also changed my medication. Except that I was now able to sleep, nothing got better. The open stress ward proved inadequate. I would leave and walk home and then return. Finally, I deliberately smashed a picture with a glass cover. I waved a piece of broken glass at the attendants who came and then walked out. They did not know that there was no danger. The next day I returned and they placed me in a small locked ward with straps on the bed. This place was the shock that initiated the confronting one of my most basic fears. I realized that I was afraid that I would never again function and that because of this I would have no alternative except to be locked up for the rest of my life. My will revived. In spite of the small space, I found a way to walk for exercise. I had Charmayne bring my go board. Within two weeks, I was home. It was near the end of July. I was hospitalized a number of times after that and the same theme had to be played out each time. Despair, hopelessness, revived will, helping others, finding activities, etc.
The rest of that summer was torture. I thought of each day as having 4 periods of 4 hours each. My goal in the first period was just to get thru it. I used part of this time for exercise, taking morning walks with Charmayne. For periods 2 and 3, I used physical activity to kill time. I thought of them as separate because eight hours was too long to imagine. One recurring goal was to see if I could go an hour without thinking about how much time was left. Triumph was to make it half way thru period 2, because then it was noon. I took down our plum tree and used my machete the chop it into mulch. There is a creek area about two blocks from our city home. I had obtained fireplace wood from there for years. I spent many hours in this area clearing weeds, working on the path etc. Summer ended.
The first day of the new semester Andrea and Ed walked and talked with me, helping me gain the confidence that I could function again. I did. That semester was a struggle, but I taught with great success. Morning tension was always high, but many nights I would walk across the bridge and go a secluded resting place I had built in the brush near the creek. I would lie there for hours, finding peace in the cold and solitude, warm in the cover of the brush and leaves, renewed to teach the next day. But all was not well. I would return home lie in bed looking out the window at patterns of the trees, still having difficulty in sleeping. The semester ended. I had a sense of success. We went to a movie with our family. I felt that the struggle was now over. I was not aware that I had exhausted rather than rebuilt my strength.
¶The Second Stage:
Early in the next semester, I knew that I was in trouble. This time I decided
to consult a psychiatrist connected to the
I went to the day hospital program at
Charmayne did not know what to do with me and I did not
see how I could be at home. Diana came to my rescue. I still felt that the
essence of my problem was spiritual. She found a clinic near
The doctor in charge the clinic took a special interest in me. He decided that until I was off the effects of Prozac, I should not take any medication. I soon began to sleep again. This was the best hospitalization program I have ever observed or encountered. There was group therapy several times a day and the facilities lent themselves to easy interaction. I quickly made friends. After a week, we found that my insurance would not pay. I was forced to leave. However, the program had served its purpose as far as I was concerned. The faith of the staff and all the other patients was calvinistic. This put me in touch with my own religious roots and helped me purge any hope that I could find support in that tradition.
When I was asked to leave the clinic, I got a ride to my
mother’s house, which was in the area. The next day Clifford came and took me
to his house in
My stay in
One major problem at this time was difficulty in sleeping. Often I would wake at several hours before anyone else and feel the need to moan and cry. Instead of going to the secluded park, I would go to the new secluded area. I would lie in my seclusion or sit on the rocks nearby and feel the depths of my despair. For a number of years passing close to it would trigger a deep pain and sadness. Now I walk past mostly without recalling those times, but when I do, it is with a kind of wonder that this pain is no longer triggered.
The Third Stage: In the summer of 1990, I started attending a self-help group sponsored by Recovery Inc. The methods and principles of this organization are based on the work of Abraham Low, and in particular on his book Mental Health Through Will Training. There are a number of Recovery groups in the area. Each meets weekly. A Recovery meeting is highly structured and the attitudes and beliefs are somewhat rigid. Each group has a leader. This leader is a group member who has learned Recovery practices by using them. The leader starts the meeting by having members read from one of Dr Low’s books. Neither the leader nor any other member is supposed to discuss our readings. We are not considered qualified to have opinions about his ideas and methods. I found this an amusing limitation. The reading is followed by an example period. Some member P, volunteers to give a brief account of some event that caused him distress. Members of the group then make brief comments using Recovery principles. Someone might remark that P showed a will to bear discomfort, or I might ask P if he spotted that the situation was distressing but not dangerous. The example period is followed by a mutual aid period, in which members talk in pairs or small groups. Finally, there is a socializing period.
I found these principles and practices easy to understand, but only of limited utility in helping me with my deeper anxiety. However, this group helped me cope that summer, at least well enough to return to teaching in the fall. Since the meeting that I was attending met at a time that I was scheduled to teach, I begin attending others. Without intending to, I soon became an assistant leader, which meant that I had to run the meeting if the leader was absent or handle the meeting when the leader needed to give an example involving her distress. I used this to help another person develop as an assistant leader, so I could invent a different role for myself. The leader was usually too busy to help new members understand what we were doing, and I enjoyed doing this more than leading a meeting. I also enjoyed being a sounding board for the leader and conferring with her. One leader in particular spent considerable time with me discussing principles and practices. This was enjoyable because she did not consider Dr. Low’s ideas beyond criticism, as did most members. Perhaps the main thing that these groups did for me was to get me involved, altho used with understanding and some flexibility, I think these practices and principles could be useful to almost anyone.
Joe was a therapist who had found Recovery principles so useful in dealing with his own problems that he used them in his practice. He was not a Recovery leader, but he played a major role in several groups and was involved in an effort to broaden the growth of the organization. I began to use him as my therapist. However while I was able to use Recovery principles to help others, they did not reach the core of my distress, so my therapy with Joe did not last. However working with him did help me in my struggle to teach that fall. Furthermore we developed a collegial relation that later got me involved with him in his goals for an institute for the spread of Recovery principles.
Near the semester’s end, I felt so depleted that I did not
see how I would be able to teach the next semester. With misgivings because of
my Prozac experience, I called the psychiatrist that had proscribed it. He
shocked me by saying he thought that he had diagnosed me as obsessive
compulsive and he recommended that I see Elliot Nelson, another psychiatrist
from
I met a young man who had also been hospitalized in relation to suicide. He had been on kidney dialysis since early childhood, and had long felt that his life was too bleak to endure. His case involved a serious suicide attempt. This was my first significant experiential encounter with the phenomena of suicide, and my discussions with this friend reinforced my ideal of having the choice to die be a personal right. Altho I made many friends during my various hospital stays, I lost touch with all of them after leaving. I do not even remember the name of this young man.
The
The first significant experience after I returned from the hospital took place on Christmas night. I was sitting at the table and felt a kiss on the back of my head. Diana was holding Angela behind me and Angela had leaned over and kissed me. She was 21 months old at the time. Before my accident, I had often kissed my grandchildren in that way, and perhaps I had kissed Angela that way. I do not remember, for she was born the day after my accident and I did not feel I would ever develop a relationship with her. I was wrong. I played with her for the rest of the evening. Henceforth, we have had a very significant relationship. In my periods of despair during the next two years, knowing that I would be going into the hospital, feeling I would never function again, I would hold her picture in my arms and cry. However even during these years, I was able do the things with her most of the time. In fact, during all the period of my collapse I retained the power to do things with my grandchildren when not in the hospital.
¶The next significant experience was a surge of creativity. During my second collapse of will and for some time thereafter I had begun writing conceptual philosophical, but after a few years I turned most of my creative efforts to developing materials for learning mathematics. In January 1991, I returned to a serious effort to revise and expand these writings. A deeper perspective emerged, so intense that I could hardly sleep for about a week. This intensity was accompanied by a state of wellbeing, but I was beginning to feel exhausted. Elliot thought I was in a manic phase and prescribed lithium. My sense of creativity and wellbeing lasted several more weeks. It then suddenly disappeared while attending a memorial service. At that point a feeling of deep distress occurred. The morning tension returned. For several weeks, I struggled just to be able to teach. I wanted to collapse. Elliot said I just had to try harder. Charmayne insisted that something was physiologically wrong. Elliot consented to a blood test. That evening I was rushed to the hospital because the blood test had revealed that my blood sugar was 800. It was at 997 in the emergency room. I was almost unconscious.
I awoke the next morning with insulin being dripped into
my arm. I had a renewed sense of wellbeing. For years, I had needed glasses to
read, but I could now read without them, altho that effect did not last. There
was no morning tension. The stay in the hospital was pleasant. It was also the
beginning of one of my most significant friendships. I knew
After leaving the hospital, I begin to think about my diabetic condition. I recalled my lifetime endurance patterns. I have now and always have had an above average ability for sustained physical activity such as hiking, climbing, chopping wood, spading, etc. Prior to the onset of diabetes, I could also play half court basketball or table tennis for extended periods. I could run faster than average for short distances. However, I was never able to run even an 8-minute mile without extreme fatigue, and playing full court basketball always quickly gave me a side pain that significantly inhibited my ability to play. Could all of this relate to a persistent difficulty in processing blood sugar? No doctor ever thought of this, altho both my father and grandmother had diabetes. At any rate, I felt my diabetes should have been diagnosed earlier, since an earlier report showed elevated blood sugar. I wondered if there was a relation between blood sugar problems and my morning tension. I even suspected that my accident might have been the event triggering my predisposition towards diabetes. However, this extreme elevation in blood sugar occurred after taking lithium. Was that a coincident? Because of these thoughts, because Elliot had to be en oblivious to my fatigue, and also because he had forced me to be hospitalized, I stopped seeing him.
What followed was a continued but less intense period of creativity. My teaching was better than it had ever been. I felt sure my collapse was over, but I overestimated my strength. Because of my enthusiasm for my new conceptual insights, I decided to organize a conference on conceptual study. Altho I had considerable support from others, it was support based on respect for me, rather than on any appreciation or understanding of my ideas. Suddenly the idea of being responsible for a conference seemed overwhelming and I collapsed again. That I even thought of being in charge of a conference is out of character for me. I have always been more interested in creating ideas and materials than in disseminating them. Furthermore when I was inclined to share my work, it has always been more my style to work in small groups or one on one. Working outside my style would have been stressful under any conditions. Dong so under the conditions at that time was beyond my capacity. I also conjecture that another factor in my collapse may have been that my doctor took me off insulin. As I recall, shortly after the morning tension returned, altho I felt no anxiety. I mentioned this at the time, but since my blood sugar was under control, my doctor did not believe there was a connection. In spite of this, my intuitive reflections on my experience kept suggesting that my tension was related to problems in processing blood sugar.
Due to this collapse, I lost my job. I was placed on disability and hospitalized. Since I no longer had a psychiatrist, and in spite of my objections, they assigned me to Elliot. My will soon revived, but he refused to dismiss me from the hospital unless I promised to take lithium. This is the only time in my life that I recall making a promise that I knew I would deliberately break. I decided to not to apply my usual ideals about promises to any I might make under conditions of extreme coercion.
I left the hospital and immediately stopped taking
lithium. I felt I would never be able to return home, that I must discover how
to survive without draining resources from my family. I found temporary places
to stay for the first several weeks, but I could think of no long-range
solution except to live on the street. I experimented with trying to find food
from dumpsters. I was determined to cut myself off from all long established
ties. However, I did not isolate myself. Altho I had only known
Realizing that I was neither prepared to live on the street,
and having no inclination to find a place of my own, I reluctantly returned
home. Morning tension was still a problem, so I consulted a neurologist.
Nothing abnormal was discovered. I found a new psychiatrist. I only remember
his last name,
I was an inpatient taking several treatments each week for about three weeks. This did relieve tension and I recall being inspired again by reading Is Life Worth Living by William James. The stay in the hospital was pleasant, and the treatments did not seem to interfere with my mental capacities. I did experience some mild short-term memory loss at the beginning, but nothing significant. When I left the hospital, I continued as an outpatient, taking one treatment a week. I begin to discover a growing sense of terror at the prospect of each treatment. I dealt with this as something to experience rather than to avoid. When I had one treatment left to go, I discussed this with Richardson, who decided that there was no point in taking the last one we had scheduled. This was fortunate because my insurance coverage had run out several treatments earlier and we were not informed of this fact until we owed several thousand dollars.
It was now fall of 1991, and I was feeling confident and strong, about as I had been before the shock treatment, but now I was no longer feeling tension. I felt that my ordeal was over. I was wrong. Near the end of the year, I begin to feel isolated and tension returned. The usual dosage of klonopin seemed to have no effect. I took more, got relief, but soon no amount seemed to help. The fear of helplessness returned. I had no insurance coverage. I experienced extreme anxiety and hopelessness. In desperation I took thirty sleeping pills. This did not even put me to sleep. Nevertheless, I was hospitalized and my stomach pumped. That was torture. They could not get the tube down my throat and had to go thru my nose. I was told that having tried suicide I had no right to complain or resist. The rights one has are of course irrelevant when one has no strength to assert them.
I was back again in the secure ward at Barnes. I quickly
renewed my friendships with some of the staff from my earlier stay. I adjusted
easily, and was soon helping others. My roommate had severe hallucinations. One
of the staff said he was okay in a world of his own. Not true, altho he never talked
coherently, I knew that some of his hallucinations were frightening. Out in the
main room he fell and could not get up. He refused help from the staff,
indicating he wanted me to help him. I was soon transferred to the open ward,
and after a short stay was released.
The Fifth and Last Stage: After my release, early in 1992, I had one major concern. I knew that my anxiety had not been conquered, that my collapse might persist indefinitely, that I no longer had insurance coverage for psychiatric hospitalization. We now owed the hospital $10000, and I was still afraid that I would always be in a state of spiritual pathology so severe that I would never be able to function effectively. I expected that ultimately my only option would be permanent hospitalization and that this would take all my families resources. During the year of 1992, and going briefly into 1993, I was able to work thru that concern. The first major breakthrough came early in the year. Barnes cut our debt in half because of our financial circumstances. I then discovered that I could be hospitalized at a rate we could easily afford in a state institution named Bliss. This soon removed my fear of financial ruin for my family, leaving only a fear of permanent hospitalization.
After a brief adjustment, my first stay at Bliss was pleasant and brief. As usual, I quickly made friends and was soon helping other people. I came out, but returned within a few days. For the next 12 months, I was in and out too many times to be easily remembered. Someday I may chronicle that year, but mainly it was a repetition of the same general pattern. I would go in a state of abject despair, and sit in a corner and cry for a day or so. Then I would start to figure out how to survive and even renew my will. I would play backgammon with myself, chess with others, etc. I would use the hall for exercise, walking in this limited space at the same rate and for the same distance, just as I would have done on the outside. I would interact with others. As before, they would talk with me more openly that they would talk to their doctors. I also developed a friendship with staff members. One of the aids had studied to engineering and some advanced calculus before dropping out. He would ask me questions, and I judged from these interchanges that his aptitude for mathematics was above average for engineering students. We also talked about many other things. Just before I was released, he told me that he was going to complete his engineering degree.
Often I was released earlier than I wanted, but finally early in 1993 I came out with a strong feeling that my collapse was over. I know that even if my will continued to collapse and I was hospitalized the rest of my life my will was very likely to reemerge. I simply could not hold onto despair long enough to destroy the will that seems to be at the core of what I am. At first, I was tentative about this, but by the end of 1993, I knew that my third collapse of will was over. My power of will was back and stronger than before the collapse. The knowledge that I could function effectively even if hospitalized removed the need to be hospitalized. I had transformed my floating anxiety into fear, faced this fear and decided that there was no danger involved. Can my will ever collapse again? Perhaps, but if so this would probably involve a new fear, and if it happens I will very likely bring that into focus and cultivate the resources I that I need should this occur.
Earlier in this account, I mentioned my association with Recovery self-help groups. My direct involvement with these groups continued until a short time after my third collapse was over. I only mentioned Recovery principles in relation to stage three, but I also practiced them during stage four and stage five. A more adequate account of my third collapse would illustrate this in detail. Furthermore, altho I no longer attend recovery meeting and my personal need for using recovery principles is not pressing, I still use them frequently, and I still help others use them. I said that I found their principles and practices easy to understand, but only of limited utility for my deeper spiritual pathology. This could be misleading. Understanding is complex, and what came easy was an intellectual understanding. It took me several years to expand this to an understanding that I could use effectively. However in a sense it was an understanding of their principles and practice that was central the reemergence of will. Why then did I just now indicate they were of limited utility? Perhaps this is because I needed substantial effort to integrate understanding and doing, but also because I had to use my creative ability to conceptualize them more adequately than they had been presented to me.
¶The Essence of My Third Collapse of Will Just prior to dawn on the morning after the 1989 accident, I experienced a sense of personal isolation so deep that it seemed as if it would not only persist thruout my life, but thruout eternity. It took eleven years before this emerged as an insight linking so many events. Perhaps this is because thru so much of that time feeling personally isolated manifested itself at first as extreme pathological anxiety and despair. It was not until early in 1993, when I was able to convert a major part of the anxiety into a fear, that I was able to lift myself from this pathology and regain some stable power of will. I could observe that at any time my pathological state would place me in situations where I was personally helpless and that nobody could give me the help I needed when this happened. I was also afraid that my ability to help myself would never return. Once this fear was recognized, I was able to see that my will had always reemerged and then my helplessness began to fade.
Once the power returned, a less severe pathological state of pain and sadness and tension remained. This state did not prevent origin activity, but it did slow it down, making life a grim struggle, sapping the joy from even the most positive experiences. What then was linking insight, and will I be able to build on it in my quest to become an effective radical origin? Before describing and discussing this insight and the events that it linked, I sketch some of the concepts being used. What follows now is purely a description of the conceptualization being used, and altho I have chosen terminology whose ordinary meaning is close to my usage, I am not attempting to be completely faithful to ordinary usage. These concepts are developed in CPCP Fearfulness Concepts. The word ‘state’ is an abbreviation for ‘state of affairs’.
· A distressing state for a person P is one that causes P to experience a high level of discomfort.
· Anguish for P is an emotional state in which P is automatically motivated to alleviate part or all of some state that is distressing for P.
· Harm for P is state which has a significant negative impact to P’s well-being.
· A danger for P is a state that may result in harm for P. A danger may be immediately present or it may be at least somewhat likely to occur in the future.
· A threat for P is a state that P feels is a danger for P. A threat may or may not actually be a danger.
· Fearfulness is an emotional state in which P feels as if there is some threat and is automatically motivated to escape from it. P’s awareness of the threat may vary from very vague to extremely clear.
Being destructive to P’s wellbeing means that this state inflicts
on P distress beyond that which P can tolerate and still function effectively.
An extreme threat is one that potentially could result in a pathological state
for P. A pathological state is one in which P is no longer able to engage in at
least one ordinary activity in a normal manner? A pathological state can be
emotional, such as extended grief. It can be spiritual as in being plagued by a
sense of sin. A pathological state may be temporary, such as a broken leg that
heals. However a state that briefly interferes with normal activity, such as
being unable to tolerate normal sunlight for a few hours after having ones eyes
dilated, is not pathological.
Fearfulness is of two main types, fear and anxiety. Both are related to feeling endangered but they differ in terms of how the threat is identified.
· Fear is an emotional state in which P feels like some specific state is a threat and P could describe the danger and potential harm if asked to do so.
· Anxiety is an emotional state in which P feels threatened, but is unable to bring the danger implicit in the threat into sharp focus, because the danger isn’t immediate or because no danger stands out.
¶Further General Discussion of the Concepts: Anxiety and fear can occur together or separately. Floating anxiety is anxiety without fear, i.e. no threat can be identified. Anxiety can occur in connection with fear, i.e. when a threat can be identified. However to have anxiety conceptually implies that the danger and potential harm is at most vaguely understood. Since fear and anxiety relate to feeling that there is danger, fearfulness may occur when there is a threat but there is no danger. Altho anxiety is akin to fear in feeling threatened, unlike fear, the implicit harm cannot be clearly identified. This can make anxiety much more difficult to manage, especially floating anxiety.
Example 1: Ray reacts fearfully when confronted with a harmless snake. Ray says that he is afraid of being bitten, thus identifying a threat. I say that being bitten may be unpleasant, but hardly dangerous, showing him that this snake has no teeth. A bite from a snake without teeth cannot even cause minor pain; much less an infection, and certainly you cannot be poisoned. Even if totally convinced, Ray may still be fearful, retaining a feeling of anxiety when trying to hold the snake but unable to identify any danger or describe what harm could possibly occur.
Dealing with Fearfulness: The direct way to deal with fear is to escape from the threat. This can also work with situational anxiety. Just take the snake away and do not ask Ray to hold it. Escape may not always be possible. Another alternative can be to see that the threat is not really a danger because no harm is likely. When this can be, done fear can be replaced by some other state such as dread or distaste or indifference or interest. A wasp flies close, I feel fear, recall being stung, classify this as a minor pain, my fear vanishes. Having replaced fear by distaste, I still avoid the wasp but feel no need to escape.
Another way to deal with fear is by acting with courage. Ray decides to hold the snake and risk whatever unknown harm might occur. When no harm is possible, he sees that the risk was only apparent. However, he still acted courageously, altho once a firm belief that no harm will occur is established, holding such a snake will no longer require courage.
When harm is possible and is so recognized, risk taking will involve courage. At one extreme harm can be a major disaster, but most harm is a state that can be reversed. Minor risk taking involves accepting the possibility of incurring a harm that one believes can be reversed. And one purpose of minor risk taking can be to cultivate the trait of being courageous. This can actually reduce the possibility of harm, since the ability to act with courage in the face of a threat can be the most effective way to deal with it.
The most extreme form of risk taking is by deliberately
taking an unnecessary risk when the possible harm would be a major disaster.
Doing this, but great care taken to make this unlikely, may be useful for some
purposes. For example jumping a motor cycle over the
Converting Anxiety into Fear: To convert anxiety into fear involves bringing the feeling of being threatened into clear enough focus so that all the danger and potential harm is in focus. This can be extremely difficult, especially when the anxiety exists along with other negative feelings and when the danger involved is in not in the present or near future and when intellectually a person knows that even then the danger is not likely to occur.
Example 2: Pat is feeling anxiety about an exam but cannot spot that the main harm implicit in this threat relates to never being able to find a good job or to losing confidence in herself rather than to getting a bad grade. Regardless of how unpleasant failing an exam might be, this in itself is not harmful. Never being able to get a good job or losing confidence in oneself could qualify as harmful. Pat tries to escape this threat without converting her anxiety into fear, by asking the instructor to allow a take-home exam. Since this does not work, Pat considers why the threat of failing the exam is a danger and spots that the harm is that a failure will undermine her self-esteem. She is almost convinced that this is the only real danger. Altho anxiety remains for Pat, it is at least lessened to some extent.
¶My Insight: One aspect of my insight into my pathological state of anxiety was a recognition that I was not aware that I had not converted the most significant component of my anxiety into fear, and thus some significant floating anxiety remained. The level of this anxiety was pervasive but low because the fearfulness, unlike the fear of helplessness, did not involve an impending sense of an immediate danger. Strange as it might seem, altho I knew that I could not endure unending personal isolation, it was only on the night of the accident that I explicitly spotted this as my deepest fear. There were at least two more reasons why it was so hard to spot this again.
(1) The anxiety was intertwined with a pathological state of pain and sadness and tension.
(2) Shortly after recognizing my fear of unending isolation, I intellectually decided that the likelihood of a state of unending isolation was nil.
Terminology: I am using the word ‘unending’ in a specialized sense. It is intended not as a synonym for ‘eternal’ but as ‘without any end that I feel that I can expect’. To think of something as unending is thus more emotional than intellectual, since intellectually I could always say that if only X would occur then this state would end. I may feel my struggle with diabetes is unending since I do not expect it to end anywhere in the foreseeable future. This does not mean that I believe it will continue after my bio-death. Nor does it mean that I must deny the possibility that a cure could be found at any time. With respect to my fear of unending personal isolation, the idea of unending extends for a period far beyond my ability clearly to imagine.
It is my attitude towards death that has played the most crucial role in relation to my basic sense of wellbeing. Before age 15, I was basically secure and happy, merely accepting that death was a transition to an even better life in heaven. Before I began to question my religious heritage, I do not recall having any concerns about dying. Even in situations that were threatening, any fearfulness seemed linked to dangers that might merely involve more discomfort than I felt I could tolerate. When I rejected my religious heritage, I spent considerable intellectual effort in trying to ground a belief in personal immortality in deistic beliefs that seemed more reasonable. Later as I tried to cultivate a deistic faith, the phenomena of death became extremely significant to me, both in relation to fear of damnation and because of my distaste for oblivion.
According to my religious heritage, my deistic beliefs and the attitudes in which they were rooted would condemn me to damnation. Intellectually this only helped to convince me that the beliefs I had acquired from my religious conditioning were wrong. However regardless of how implausible these beliefs might be, and no matter how well I can reason, I am fallible. The mere existence of a heritage that endorsed such infinite harm was a threat to my emotional wellbeing. I had a far better than average ability to relate to Pascal’s wager, and could easily see why extremely unlikely infinite consequences would obviously outweigh all finite considerations. I just never understood how it was possible to choose to believe.
While attempting to formulate a deistic ontology, I was majoring in philosophy at a secular university. I had considerable confidence in my conceptual ability to see the weakness and biases of the prevalent physicalistic cosmic versions I was expected to accept. Still the fact that the mainstream of contemporary philosophy did not even consider deism worth arguing against also had a negative emotional impact. On the one hand, there was a religious tradition that said my death would result in eternal torment, while on the other was a philosophical tradition that said it would result in oblivion. My early struggles with these traditions were at least partially instrumental in my first collapse of will. An account of this can be found in A Personal Approach to Conceptual Philosophy. The eventual failure of this struggle was the primary factor in my second collapse of will. The recovery from this second collapse was directly related to what at the time was a radically new attitude, also is presented in that book. This attitude was closely linked to the sense of power and joy that permeated my life for about 15 years, altho it was being eroded even before 1989 when it was shattered by my accident.
I think it was some time in early morning after my accident that I had the most disturbing explicit thought of my life. What if I had died and found that I was alone and helpless, there being no persons who had ever survived bio-death and no supernatural persons? This was the danger involved in my deepest anxiety. This would have been the kind of harm that I could not endure. It was not that the damnation my religious heritage had conditioned me to expect. Nor was it the oblivion that my physicalistic tradition conditioned me to find inevitable. A belief that this could happen would not have been a live option before had I so radically questioned everything I had read or been told about what might happen after bio‑death. I realized that my understanding of what I am is related to function rather than to substance. The uncertainty about death that this opened for me was staggering.
Both my religious and philosophical traditions were rooted in beliefs about what is, and it is such beliefs that imply what happens when a human dies. My religious heritage says that God is a spiritual being, and that man is made in his image, that my essence is a soul, which is an indivisible immortal spiritual substance. While I can state this belief, I no longer feel I understand it, mostly because I find the underlying concept of substance far too vague. My philosophical heritage says that a human is a highly organized complex physical system. I could interpret this as one perspective for thinking about many aspects of what a human does. The conclusion that is drawn is that when this system breaks down I will cease to exist. This conclusion seems to be linked to a very strong ontological belief, namely that everything is physical. I suspect that this involves a way of thinking that involves the somewhat sophisticated idea of physical taken from modern physics, rather than the older notion of a material substance, but still it seems that the thinking relates to what a human is rather than to what a human does.
My concept of a human is that taken from PNDP, namely a human is a person who is a member of the Homo sapiens species. To be a person is to have a history of deliberate action, and thus this concept has as a central focus what a person does. Moreover, the concept of a species is biological rather than physical, and while biology may utilize the notion of a physical system, it focuses on behavior. Having no preeminent cosmic version and lacking sufficient relevant information, I have no preferred conjecture about what might happen to a person after bio‑death. None or some or all may continue to exist. My perspective on this is developed in the last Chapter of the book mentioned earlier. For now, I merely reflect on the extent of my uncertainty and spot how it relates to the floating anxiety that still lingers from my third collapse of will.
The explicit insight that my most fundamental fear was of unending isolation disappeared shortly after its first explicit occurrence in 1989. It did not return until just before I began this paper, circa 2000. Unlike my fear of eternal damnation, it was not something I had been conditioned to believe. Thus, even its emotional plausibility faded easily. This was especially the case due to what soon followed. My accident occurred at the beginning of spring break. For a while, I had more intensive interesting human interaction than at any other time of my life. During that time, I did not seem to have any anxiety. About six weeks later the anxiety returned suddenly and with intensity, but I did not recall my insight. One of the trigger events was reading a book entitled Who Dies. While I cannot recall much about the content, I do recall being terrified of the possibility of reincarnation. It was not so much that reincarnation seemed plausible, it was just that even if barely plausible it seemed so onerous. For some reason this also seemed to trigger my most poignant childhood memories of isolation and helplessness. This further aggravated my anxiety.
As I understand it reincarnation seems linked to a belief in some spiritual essence, call it a soul, whose existence is independent of a particular embodiment. It is this soul, rather than the body, that is the person. Death is only a loss of the particular characteristic of its last reincarnation. The spiritual changes from the reincarnation are carried over into the next. Whatever those who believe in reincarnation might feel about its desirability, my reaction is highly negative. Having no ontological commitment to some underlying soul, it is these characteristics that I value as my spiritual achievements. To me spiritual characteristics relate to my will, and I conceptualize my will in terms of function rather than substance. Thus to talk of myself as a will is to talk about what I do, and this makes neither a positive nor a negative ontological commitment to some soul that may survive the death of my body. If there is such a soul, the thought of it returning without the characteristics acquired thru so much effort, and without even a memory linking to them, seems like a horrible kind of isolation. It feels like an isolation of the will that is now me, from the will that was me and the will that might latter be me.
In the sixth grade, my father was transferred to
Another childhood memory that I recall was in connection with a story about the last person on earth. On various occasions, I have imagined myself as that person. What would I do? As a child, I simply felt a kind of quiet hopelessness, but then I at least believed that after I died I would definitely be in heaven and no longer alone. The last time I imagined this theme, I thought about trying to learn how to clone myself or some other human cell if I could find one. However remote my chances, this would at least keep some minimal hope alive.
There are also some less intense childhood memories that
relate to feelings about potential isolation. It was only with my current
insight that I related these events to a threat of unending isolation. The
other factor I spotted as being related was a recurring type of dream whose
central theme involves isolation. One of my simplest such dreams is being on
In one recurring dream, I realize that I am dead. I find myself alone in an unending hallway. I walk forward, but no end or way out appears. This is my worst nightmare. The relation to my fear of isolation seems obvious. In another recurring dream, I am in a room with no window, but there is a door. I go thru the door into another room, also with no windows but with another door. This continues. Once I finally came out, but was at the mouth of a cave looking out over an abyss. I was no longer closed in, but I was still alone and with no place to go. I realized I was dreaming. I decide that I could jump without harm. This still took courage, but I jumped and landed without harm in a lovely forest.
¶Unending isolation is clearly the greatest harm that I fear. Keeping this in focus removes most of my floating anxiety. Realizing this, I can focus on the fear and even remove part of the feeling that unending isolation is a danger. Minor anxiety remains. The threat is too remote to keep in focus. Perhaps if I continue bringing it into focus I can transform even more of the anxiety into fear. The harm will then seem even less likely to occur. This worked in my return from my second collapse of will, and the threat there was eternal damnation. After all, my concept of unending relates to expectation rather than to some actual state that is permanent, and the very idea of there being a state that can never change is a conjecture that I find highly implausible.
My Wellbeing Pyramid: One result of my third collapse of will was a new heuristic way to visualize the state of my wellbeing, namely as a triangular pyramid.
Vertex A: I picture my spiritual power as the apex A of a pyramid with a triangular base. This point lies within the will that is the core of what I am. The base vertices of this pyramid are part of my person characteristics and my relationship to world beyond me. There is a biological vertex B, a cultural vertex C, a direct relationship vertex D. If apex A had enough power, it could energize all these other vertices regardless of external factors. This is not the case currently. Perhaps it never can be. My will needs to build power in concert with power being developed in the other vertices.
Vertex B: My personal observations suggest that most animal activity seems to focus on food and reproduction. This is reinforced by reading a book like The Selfish Gene and by TV nature programs. The main exception is the play and learning activities observed in some mammals, but even this can be easily accounted for as preparation for survival. My thoughts about this biological vertex primarily involve some reflections on the hedonic biological aspects of existence. A multitude of minor negatives include occasional bouts with a sore throat or with gum problems, chiggers and horseflies with which to contend, the mildly unpleasant sensation in the finger I sliced open several years ago, etc.
Since my accident, the pleasurable biological aspects have diminished significantly and the unpleasant ones increased. The exception is that I take more pleasure in muscular activity (now available because of having my country home Barbin Hollow) than I would have ever imagined. Contrasted to this is an extended list of states that have sapped power from this vertex. Most are probably a result of some combination of my accident and aging. My physical activity and my ability to walk for exercise were inhibited first by several years of hip pain and later by an injury to my Achilles tendon. However, during that time I found ways to continue muscular activity in ways that were still satisfying. While not currently a problem, the possibility of similar limitations cast some gloom about the future. The only noteworthy negative muscular phenomenon that I now encounter is that each morning it takes a while to become flexible and that by evening I often have some muscular discomfort.
One of my main aggravations was the physiological tension that emerged after my accident. For 4 years, I could not escape this tension and I felt that I could not live the rest of my life with it. I still had this tension each morning until about 6 years ago However while somewhat debilitating it did not produce anxiety. It became easy to manage because I knew I could choose to act productively in spite of it. I also know resources that when available will make the tension disappear.
I can still enjoy tactile pleasure (the sun on my face, the feel of the creek water running over me). I also enjoy having my feet rubbed, a body massage, etc. However, the most intense form of tactile pleasure is no longer available to me. After being diagnosed with diabetes, my ability to function sexually waned and disappeared. This may have been due to the medication that psychiatrists had given me or to some other factor. Whatever the reason this lack has even diminished some of the pleasure involved in other forms of touching and being touched, especially with anyone who might arouse my sexual feelings. ¶The effects of diabetes are my worst biological aggravation. Most of my life I merely cultivated reasonable tastes in food and drink, along with some general health guidelines. I stayed active, never smoked, never used alcohol, never drank coffee, avoided desserts except on special occasions, etc. Now food intake has become a concern in ways that interfere with just eating. Having to think about the details (how many carbohydrates in a glass of milk or in a banana) has considerably diminished my pleasure in eating and drinking. I do not want to have to think about whether I should I eat a peanut butter and honey sandwiches, have some fruit juices, etc.
Due to diabetes, there is the minor discomfort of blood sugar testing and insulin shots a day. There is the strange feeling in my feet. While I have considerable stamina, my capacity for sustained rapid use of energy has been considerably diminished. Not long ago I climbed a tree in order to retrieve a rope on a branch that was about 20 feet high. The trunk was too large to scale so I use a branch that was hanging down and begin climbing it like a rope. In the past, I would have held on from beneath and climbed without resting until I had almost reached the rope. This time I soon felt a weakness in my muscles and had to change to the more awkward tactic of climbing from the top side of the branch. I also had to rest about every 6 feet.
Vertex C: This vertex involves the impact that my culture has on me and the impact that I have on my culture. The impact that the traditions and institutions of my culture have had on me has been mixed, but overall I am grateful for my cultural heritage. The most negative aspect was the impact of cosmic versions on my own spiritual quest, and in particular, the impact of calvinism and physicalism that culminated in my second collapse of will. However, out of this collapse there emerged radical insights into my own net for crucial concepts. My greatest disappointment is that my culture has not provided allies in my deepest quest. My educational allies have never fully embraced my educational ideals and they have never felt the passion I have towards the purpose of creating alternatives to formal education. I discuss these ideals in My Net for Understanding Education. Likewise, I have no allies in working towards my community family ideal or in creating other alternative social institutions. Of course, as a radical explorer, I do not expect direct support from my culture in creative endeavors that challenge the conservative nature of social institutions. Perhaps I should be thankful that I live at a time that ignores rather than punishes me for my explorations. Perhaps not.
As to my impact on my culture, I have felt it locally. I know that because of my radical origin quest I have had a more positive impact on many people than I otherwise could have had. I have touched people in ways that has encouraged them to think and act more imaginatively. This has sown some seeds for the kind of comprehensive paradigm shift that I would like to see emerge and which I would like to help bring about. Have I been more than just locally effective? There is no way to tell, for even a clear indication that my ideal of a paradigm shift is emerging is not likely to occur anywhere in the foreseeable future. However since the core of my cultural ideal involves a radical shift towards the importance of personal institutions and away from the importance of hierarchical and impersonal ones, it is appropriate that the major task on which I should focus are highly personal ones.
Should I be more than locally effective? From an evolutionary perspective, the answer is probably not. I believe that a culture cannot be strong unless it is highly conservative, that its strength resides in traditions and institutions whose workings are so complex that conceptual analysis seldom provides any workable alternative. Social reformers seldom see that the mechanisms they think have evil consequences may be linked in a complex manner to others supportive of values essential to the existence of the society. Of course, there may be better ways to enhance social purposes than those which tradition has evolved. However most of the time deliberate change based on reasoning and idealistic projections probably will not produce the results intended. Fortunately, most attempted modifications produce almost no results. When they do so in a revolutionary manner, this is more likely to lead to social confusion than to utopia. A strong culture is like a massive gyroscope that is likely to maintain its stability and return close to its normal motion in spite of the shocks it receives. Only a few portions of the ideas of those who are trying to modify a culture in a radical manner are likely flourish.
Major comprehensive paradigm shifts are rare (see CPCP Comprehensive Paradigms). So I should remind myself that my conjecture that comprehensive paradigm shift is in its early stages may be wrong. Even if this conjecture is correct, my ideals for a paradigm shift are not likely to be the ones on its cutting edge. My awareness of this saps power from vertex C. I can partially counter this by focusing on the interaction of individuals as modifiers and the conservative function of culture. No person can expect to be on the cutting edge of any workable radical modification of a culture. However if a culture is to change radically, perhaps some must live as if they might be.
Vertex D: This vertex involves the impact that direct contact with other persons has on me and the impact that I have on them culture. There are some major weaknesses in this vertex. Most people do not have as much time for recreation as they have than for other matters. Nor is it easy to find allies for the types of recreation I enjoy the most. More important is that I have found no allies in my radical origin quest. I have found some interest and encouragement, but no one who shares my passion.
Central to this vertex is an observation about being human. It is a difficult task to be a human. To be human is to be born helpless, to remain highly dependent for years, to be always somewhat dependent. Whatever competence a human may achieve, outrageous fortune can intrude. Furthermore not only is this the condition of human existence, each person is always at least implicitly aware of this vulnerability. To be human is to have a nervous system capable of taking in a vast amount of information. This provides a capacity not only for joy but also for great suffering. The conjecture guiding me is that most relationship problems are rooted in the basic insecurity involved in being human.
The essence of my relationships strategy is to place the wellbeing of every other person on a par with my own wellbeing. This means to favor neither over the other, but given a natural tendency to automatically focus on my own interests, it is often best to place somewhat more emphasis on the wellbeing of others, at least as long as doing so is not pseudo-sacrificial. The best way to keep a balanced strategy is to find ways in which my wellbeing and that of others are mutually supportive. The tactics relating to my strategy depend on the type of relationship involved.
One way I think of direct personal relationships is in terms of classes such as enemies, friends, strangers, acquaintances, family, allies, etc. These classes are not intended as disjoint. In particular, all members of my family are either friends or acquaintances, as have been all my allies. The main parameter I use to think about such relationships is significance. A relationship is significant to me to the extent that it has an impact on my most basic values. A particular relationship can have such an impact for various reasons.
Allies are those who work together to implement a common purpose. Charmayne and I have always been warm and loving allies in relation to many common purposes such as raising our children, shaping our ideals, working on social service projects, getting exercise, sharing ideas, etc. Family and friends have been allies in the shared purpose of finding and engaging in recreational activities. I have had a number of educational alliances with colleagues and students. Judged from most perspectives, these were highly effective. However, I have never found an ally for whom the creation of radical educational alternatives has had the priority that is has for me.
¶Family and friends provide the main positive power for D.
They enrich my life because we do so many things together. They allow me to
give warmth, affection, love, and various forms of support. From them I have
always felt love, respect, acceptance, emotional support. A significant number
of them have let me know that I have had a major influence on their lives. Many
of the ideals that I hold for relationships involving family and friends are
continually being realized at a level I find extremely satisfying. However my
most important ideal of family and friendship is not shared. This is my family
community ideal. This ideal is somewhat vague because I do not have experience
in putting it into practice. Its essence involves thinking of all close friends
as family and living in close proximity with some portion of them. It also
involves a fuller sharing, much as is now practiced in a nuclear family.
The set of my recognized enemies is and has usually been the empty class. The significance of this is my deliberate decision to keep it this way. This decision is not hard to maintain. Conflict with others is not relevant to my life. I cannot imagine any possible gain I could achieve thru conflict. Moreover, except for the possibility of physical violence, no attack on me can be very effective. I simply have no fears about other person’s attitudes toward me. Most significant, I have never experienced any instance of a transcendent act that is an attack on me. I think that the extent to which persons have live options is highly overrated. Acts that others often interpret as freely chosen I often judge as being reactive. This applies even to deliberate attacks that persons make on others, since I have yet to know of such an act that did not to seem to be rooted largely in some type of insecurity.
Strangers include persons that I have encountered occasionally or not at all. Relationships with both strangers and acquaintances play only a minor role in my life. Still the composite of such relationships has some significance. The pleasant contact in casual relationships and the knowledge that I am easily liked add a mild positive power to D. My direct relationship strategy is simple. Just regard strangers as persons, be considerate, have minimal expectations. I see a person stuck in the snow. I offer to help. A man comes to check on the efficiency of our furnace.. He doesn’t seem to know his job very well. I am not judgmental and accept this as merely inconvenient. I write to a commentator with a suggestion about his television program. I expect only a polite reply, and probably no action. Some years ago, we had a secretary that our department shared with several other departments. I saw her often, but only in this context. She was somewhat slow and not always very accurate. Other faculty made negative remarks about this. I merely got work to her early enough so there was no rush. She appreciated the fact that I was patient and considerate.
Vertex Interactions: A powerful vertex A would clearly add power to itself and to all the other vertices of my wellbeing pyramid. However part of the power of A is in shaping the other vertices in an interaction of my will the world beyond me. Thus, part of the state of these other vertices is due to factors in that world, and the power they can supply to A depends on factors over which I have no control. The most I can do is to act in certain ways to understand and influence their impact on these vertices. To be an effective radical origin, my origin activity itself should be capable of supplying the power to sustain the wellbeing of A. This is still not the case. I need power to flow from these other vertices to A. The partially pathological state of these other vertices saps my spiritual wellbeing and thus my will to act. I wish this were not so. I wish my will could become sufficient to overcome the negatives from these other vertices.
¶A and D: I suspect that for most humans it is the state of their direct relations that have the greatest influence on their spiritual wellbeing. I know that for me, my wellbeing in D has the most impact on A.
That I have no enemies is an aspect of D that is supportive of A. The ability to transcend fear is one factor that gives power to the spiritual component of being a person. The direct relationship between strangers and friends and family also supports A. All these the positive aspect of D contrasts to my disappointment in not finding spiritual allies, and this contrast saps power from A. In general the interaction between D and A is extremely asymmetric. A empowers D, but for many years D has given almost no power to A. There is a crucial element missing in D. I have no allies who share the more radical aspects of my ideals. Closely related to this is the fact that I have no allies in the pursuit of the purposes rooted in my radical origin ideal. My origin ideal is the integrating ideal for all my other ideals. Of these ideals, it is my educational ideals for which I have expected and had my best allies. However, one of my greatest reasons for feeling isolated is the limited nature of the alliances I was able to find. It is this sense of isolation in vertex D that infiltrates an even deeper sense of isolation into A.
A and C: It appears that along with direct relationship, most humans need to feel that they have a sufficient social status to feel a sense of self worth. By a social status, I mean a place within or in relation to the human community or at least the part of this community with which they identify themselves. In this regard, I think of myself as primarily an explorer and secondarily as a teacher. This is a dual status from which I can draw some internal power. However I explore radical originship and other regions for which I have found no cultural support. I do not draw power from my cultural heritage for such explorations.
The main power that could possibly flow from C to A would
occur if I believed that I could have a major impact in shaping a comprehensive
paradigm shift. I should not expect to be more than locally effective in my
impact on my culture. C is unlikely to provide adequate support to my origin
quest unless I can have some hope that the work I am doing to bring about my
cultural ideals will at least sow some seeds that will help bring about some
type of paradigm shift . It need not be the one I currently idealize, since my
current ideal is limited by my limited vision. I would be delighted if any of
my efforts helped bring about a shift that I would endorse from a more expanded
perspective.
A and B: Among animals it is only in humans that we observe considerable activity that does not appear to be motivated directly by biological needs. Yet the biological aspect of existence interacts significantly with its spiritual aspects. I feel that unless I have sufficient biological wellbeing, my spiritual wellbeing is less likely to be pursued and will be much more difficult to obtain. I suspect that this may also be true for others. In the last 15 years my biological pleasures have diminished and my physiological aggravations increased. However it is not so much the impact of the biological states affecting me directly, but my awareness of those of others that makes me aware of just how unpleasant physiological discomfort can become. This began many years ago, visiting relatives in the hospital, watching the decline so many people suffer with old age, thinking about the use of biological vulnerability for torture, etc. This is what makes the conjecture that all personal existence may be ultimately dependent on biological existence at times seem so highly plausible. And it is the feeling that my personal existence may be a temporary phenomenon that is the main factor within my persona that saps power from A.
APPENDIX: SOME CONCEPTS
Origin Concepts: Transcendent action involves a performance that transcends all causal factors that could determine what the actor would do. Also the achievement is to bring about a state that differs from the state that would have emerged had if what had been done was a result of chance or the causal flow. In transcendent action the actor is acting as a center of first causality or as a causal origin. Transcendent acts can be called origin acts when we want to focus attention more on the person than on the act. An origin is a person who has a noteworthy history of origin activity. Originship is the art or skill involved in being or becoming a more effective origin. An origin quest involves the creation of more supportive environments for persons who are deliberately enhancing their characteristics in ways that enhance their competence and allow them more diverse behavior potential by increasing what William James calls their live options.
Versions: When a person P thinks about a state within some realm of interest that is not purely conceptual, a person P will use more than a net for that realm. P will also use believables about various matters related to the realm. A version of the realm is the collection of all such believables. A version may focus on some fairly manifest believables about a particular state. It will also usually include believables that P assumes work fairly well in describing principles about how things work and what can be or happen in the realm. A cosmic version is a unified way of looking at the nature of the universe and the way that persons fit into the general scheme of things. If P has a cosmic version, it will be considered as a substantive account of the way thing really are. A cosmic version for a community is one whose main believable are common to most members of that community.
Paradigms: The concept of a paradigm is the one given by Thomas Kuhn. He used the concept in relation to the endeavors a scientific community makes in regards to some realm of interest. His concept could be extended in an obvious manner to other types of communities having any other limited realm of interest. This concept can also be extended to the realm that includes the interests of a community that go beyond any limited realms, in which case the paradigm is a comprehensive paradigm. If a community has a cosmic version then it will be part of the comprehensive paradigm for that community.
Conceptual vs Paraceptual: The fact that a red bishop cannot take any piece on a black square is independent of any state of affairs in the world of chess. This is purely conceptual information within in our conceptual net for thinking about the world of chess. That a red bishop has placed your king in check uses this net to give information about a state of affairs this net is intended to help us understand. Such information is paraceptual in relation to this net. That first cousins share a pair of grandparents is conceptual information about the relationship between concepts used in our public net for ordinary family relationships, since it is independent of any state in the realm of families. Information such as ‘Bill and Jane are first cousins’ is paraceptual in relation to this net.
¨ Conceptual information is about concepts and relationships between concepts in some net. Such information is known by working within the net.
¨ Paraceptual information presupposes some net, but is about some particular state of affairs that the net is intended to help access. It includes any information that is not purely conceptual.