WelcomeMe, me, me!
| 1 | is solitary, lonely, solipsistic | + + + |
| 2 | can be a couple, dialog | + + + + + + |
| 3 | is a crowd | − − − |
| 4 | has an audience | − − − − − − |
| ≥ 5 | just keeps getting worse.... | − − − − − − − − ⇒ |
Yes I want to be the center of attention. I was childreared to be of no value by People who had no value and so had no value to bestow. Even if they praised me it mwant nothing because they meant nothing – well, they did mean things, like mowing the lawn and coercing me to get haircutted, so what?
I'm willing to make YOU the center of my attention, in which case I am still the center. You and I can be the centers of each other's attention Everybody else is an onlooker (or an intruder...).
What is intolerable for me is to be a member of the audience: a replaceable unit adjunctive to the protagonists. Being a member of the audience is being an object disposed over by the center(s) of attention. Three people are already one too many, no matter how good each is individually. A crowd is inimical even if it (also, nominally...) means well [The medium is the message!]. The packing density of human beings on this planet should be similar to that of lighthouses, often I'm (we're?) stuck with it being more like a bee hive: Buzzz!
Empirical and transcendental selfishnes
I am part of the world but also the world is part of me.
In the diagram above, apply the alternative in the outer ring to its positional match in the inner ring. The two alternatives are the same, just with different starting points. The diagram is an endless recursive loop. It is a representation of your act, my reader, in studying it.
We all know what empirical selfishness and empirical altruism are. Empircal selfishness is if you sit down at a table across to another person with a plate of food in the middle and the other persons eats all the food leaving you hungry. Empirical altruism is if ther is only enough food for one person and you are both hungry but you tell the other person to eat it even at the price of starving yourself empirically to die.
But that is only the direction of persons being parts of the world like bricks ar parts of he world. It does not consider that the whole schtick is also just part of your (my) experinecing. I can ask of the whole wituation of self and other: Are they real or are they Memorex? Or, granting they are real, what do I think of the whole thing. The wonle empirical selfishness-altruism situation is just part of a judgment in me. This is the other, "transcendental" sense. I cll this transcendental self[[ish]ness.
Anyone who does not take seriously both sides of the situation is failing to do justice to the situation. What to do about it? that is step 2. But first thing first: Let's acknowlege that ther is a problem. What does that mean? I propose it mens that when somebody tells somebody to sacrifice themself for whatever, that is strictly the self interpreting the othe as juat part of the world, not also as the world being part of them. Shift it slightly: You choose to sacrifice not somebody eles, but yourself. Are you just an object in your experience or are you the eperiencing event itself too? You are asking for something very different from eeciding to sacrifice a log to the fire in the fireplace to keep yourself warm on a cold winer's day. What are you asking for if you choose to sacrifice yourself. Can we agree that this as at least a big problem?
Here is apractical spinoff: Honoring dead heroes is just treating them like logs thrown in the fireplace: that was a very good log to burn. Instead, what is needed is to be deeply troubled by the fact that a perspectie on the wrold wa un-existed. So instead of celebrating the dear hero, we should feel it wars wrong that the perosn had to die, ad resolve to prevent any more such deeply disturbing thing sfrom every happening again. No more heroes is the proper response ot a deaed hero, not to honor the dead hero, which doe not affect the un-existing of a perspectie upon the world. People die anyway, right? Well, shouldn't that be deeply troubling? Again: I'm not giving the answer here bu aI am saying it's a big problem, not just social rituals within the world. I am saying: Face up to a ver big uestion, nd don't sleep well about it tonite if yo ure rying to make any person sacrifice more than the whole world, i.e., be altruistic (and yes, you are also asking for an object in your perspetive on the world to change its atatus; that's what undertakesra are for, isn't it? Both/and, not just ent easy one.).
Whenever one is aced with the possibility of aproblme for which one id=odes not have be=good solution, what it the for=irst thing to try to do? Prevent the peoblem from occuring in the first plvce. Then you don't hve to even try to solve it. whenever possible, evn if yo uwant to scriv=vfice sometebody for your iddead of what you would n=like to have thing sbe for you, if at all possible avoid creating situations in which perosns hav to be altruitic. then we can all discuss the matter, right?
