Dream Twenty-One: Aftermath.

Dream Twenty-One: Aftermath.

I was at a bar downtown that had a mural beside its patio entrance in Actuality. I was arranging to meet with my girlfriend, who had painted that mural. James Joyce was pouring drinks, doing a poor job mediating a drinking contest betwixt J.D. Salinger and (what’s his name?) Hunter S. Thompson, which was beginning to turn brutal. Fats Domino was playing cards with Chester Bennington and Chuck Berry; David Bowie, who had hair like Michelangelo’s David, but thankfully was clothed in glam attire, was dealing.

Across from me, and at a distant table, sat Franz Kafka. We just finished his sixth hard cidre; he’d been buying, and I poured us shots from each bottle. Franz told me that no matter what he did, no matter how cruel the world was to him, he could never escape the feeling of persecution. I told him that it was probably either a Cancer thing or a Jewish thing. At this point, we were approached by a portly, clean-shaven man with a classic combed-over haircut. He spoke in an English accent, somewhere betwixt cockney and the Queen, with but a tinge of Nordic or German, and he offered each of us our next round. I agreed to a Whiskey Sour, minus the aborted chicken fetus. Kafka got a Moscow Mule.

When our patron returned, asking for a seat which Kafka reflexively extended even prior to the question, he introduced himself as Richard (pron. Re-Card) Wilhelm (Will Helm, not unlike Ed Helms). He warned us that he had to show us a little trinket from the Far East, that we might not fear that he was reaching for his gun. His hand was in the inside of his coat jacket, save for one extended thumb that covered the coat flap, when our waitress, Debbie Harry, dressed with neon class minus a left shoulder strap, brought his stout ale. At first, it looked as though he was about to tip her, because he withdrew three coins. Then Blondie asked: Is that the I Ching? He replied that it was. She said “Rock on!..!” as he turned back to face us and she took her leave, exposing a tattoo of dancing twins on the hind of the aforementioned shoulder.

Richard Wilhelm cast the coins six times, as Kafka recorded the results for us on a napkin, with his Owl’s Feather Quill. Richard then explained what I can only guess was this old translation by him:

“If you are a passionate soul, you must find a better time to find kindred spirits. In these times, they are only curious legends, bas-relief, dead poets.”

We sat at the bar. A man sat to my left named Alasdair. I heard him speaking to Kafka, at my right, about how he was kicked out of a bar once called Plan Nine alehouse. He said that nowadays people only care about how you make them FEEL, not how Good you ARE, and that these people don’t give a damn about whether or not they SHOULD feel that way. He explained that in Days of Yore men and women would strive to orient their affects in accordance with a fixed set of principles, calling them the stars to every wandering bark, and they would never let their affects supplant their reasoning. I thought then of Daniel Sinclair from Palomar College, and how I worried about whether or not it was mature to allow my feelings direct expression without being filtered through my values. I did not realize I’d spoken aloud until Kafka whispered in my ear: your feelings ARE values. But only if you put them first. I then remembered the distinction between I.N.F.P. and E.N.F.P: the former but his values FIRST, whereas the latter was inclined to USE values to further an emotivist agenda.  

Alasdair was kicked out because he did not meet the age requirements. As the Bouncer was removing him, Alasdair recited his complaint to the entire bar. He even mentioned that Blondie was not yet of age, though Joyce defended her right to work there. Alasdair called Joyce her Guardian Angel, complaining spitefully about Air Signs as Muhammad Ali removed him from the premises. As this happened, I overheard Muhammad stage whisper that Alasdair was right, but that we goats had to do our jobs no matter what.

I bought Debbie a drink, to spite the system. We shared a booth during her lunch break, overlooking the street corner, where a man was helping a female patron from the neighbouring bar to stand as she was trying to find refuge from him in a thin tree. Debbie and I talked about the Office. She told me that despite the long-running romance between Andy and Erin, most viewers found the two of them so repulsive together that it was only practical and predictable to have them split, to have Andy avenged to his heart’s delight so as to dampen his fall, and then to have them keep their professional distance. But I complained that Andy LOVED Erin, and that he was a Good Man who only wanted to balance a tormented family life with a job for which he was qualified to be the next Michael Scott, wherein like Mike he had to answer to a gang of selfish creeps, acting as both their Underdog and Scapegoat. I explained that Alasdair was right, and that Erin broke up with him based only upon how he made her FEEL, and not how she SHOULD feel about him based on Merit. And that no Man of Merit can allow his virtue to be stolen by vicious people.

It was not long before Blondie recognized me. She told me that this blind date had started on a keen if unexpected note. We both laughed. I told her that I was surprised to find her here. She explained that both she and Alasdair came here too young. They died alongside Virtue Ethics and Rock and Roll.

I put on a playlist of my own device on the jukebox. Blondie and I danced to the Talking Heads and Fleetwood Mac for the remainder of the night. James did not intervene. Salinger won the drinking concert; Hunter had to take a cab.

It’s funny; I remember asking Alanna if she listened to Blondie. I started listening to them on Sunday the Eighth of this upcoming Month. I’d never realized hitherto that it was International Women’s Day, remembering it as the Day that She Betrayed Me. I recalled it as Unholy Sunday, and ever since then Sundays were ordeals for me. I used to think it was because Leo was strong on Sunday and I had problems with both my own weak ego and my Father. But it was just lingering trauma. For years I would tell Alanna that she made the wrong choice that day, and that Feminism was the work of the Devil: an emotivistic agenda, devoid of virtue and value, that enthroned the Will (as all Satanist disciplines do) at the expense of Justice, making possible, as Alasdair MacIntyre had explained, the use of men as means towards ends, a violation of the Categorical Imperative, otherwise known as the Golden Rule. I did not recognize her own agenda at the time: her attempts to use the culture in order to climb me and my comrades to the top. Ironically, only the weak bars in the ladder gave her leverage.

When she replied to my text, she said, “No. But..,” sent me a photo of her portrait of Debbie Harry, and then said, “I know how to draw her.” That all ways stuck with me. To HER mind, Debbie WAS Blondie. The woman was the band. And I was betrayed not out of the Power of Love, which I had to accommodate in a spirit of chivalry and humility, but rather that Love of Power that I witnessed on Unholy Sunday.

As the bar closed, Blondie and I decided to climb up onto the roof from the patio. I let her go first, for safety, and because I loved the view. (Pervert that I am, I guess.) I reminded her: reach for the weak rungs in the ladder. They will all ways, though you might never expect it, take you further up than the strong ones. She replied that the strong ones, if she were tied to them, would drag her further down when swimming in Deep Water. And I retorted that while the weak ones give her something to hold on to, she should tread cautiously, for they will snap under her feet and be her downfall that way.

At the top, we found that the Café was a lot less glamorous. Blondie said: “I guess that the weak ones let me down after all.” There was a tent that smelled of whiskey and vomit. Out from thence emerged Neil Young, an aging hippie that was all so Not Yet Dead. He told us plainly to leave his house, saying “you can’t keep doing this, man.” So we took the stairwell back down to Earth. Blondie advised that we hit up Chicago next. I asked if she would not prefer Cleveland. She said that Chicago was on their way. It was a means to an end, entertaining as an end in and of itself, but hardly the Hall of Fame.

Dm.A.A.

Spoiler Warning: PI.

4:35 P.M. 2/21/2018

Restating my presumptions:

Darren Aronofsky’s Pi is essentially an emotivist work of religious fiction with strong Occult implications.

Evidence:

The piece revisits the story of the Free Masons. Max is blessed with the Name of God, ostensibly. The capitalists want it so that they can operate the stock market in their own favour. The Hassidic Jews want it because they believe themselves to be God’s Chosen People. It makes sense that he would withhold the Holiest of Truths from the former. But what about the latter?

When Meyer first appears, he is an immediate mirror for the protagonist. Max and Meyer are seemingly living at cross purposes, although they are in actuality seeking the same end by very common avenues; they are both mathematicians working with a data set.

The parallel is not lost to Max when he presents his zealous speculations to his former professor. Yet Saul dismisses Max as being pseudo-scientific, condemning this strain of mathematical thinking to the realm of “numerology” because it lacks “scientific rigour”.

When I first watched this scene as a stand-alone piece on YouTube, eight years ago or so, it must have triggered me to the extent that a butterfly pushes against the interior of its cocoon. It was precisely the sort of pretension that the children of professional scientists are raised on. And it is, as the story heartens me to admit, a lie.

The truth is that Saul himself only gave up on unraveling the MEANING of the 216-digit number (or, as the Hassids posit, the 216-letter Name) because he was, as the protagonist his former pupil intuits, intimidated by it. At the end of the film, when Saul dies, Max discovers, all too late, that Saul was speaking from his own experience as an impure person. Informed by the Jews, Max understands the significance of the Number because he has lived to tell (and to withhold) the tale. The Ancient Jewish Myth states that those who are impure will die upon hearing the name of God. When Saul dies but Max lives to witness the aftermath (pun not intended consciously) Max understands himself to have been Chosen, pure of heart, and so he becomes a martyr, destroying what is left of the code by burning up Saul’s record of it and proceeding to drill a hole in his own brain. The ultimate scene shows Max gazing in placid contentment at some leaves, wistful and without conviction. It has become no longer a pattern to him but a simple thing, like Basho’s frog. Cleansed of the name of God, Max is reborn a simpleton, and he attains oneness with Divinity by living the life of an ordinary man.

All of that is very well. But the path towards Nirvana and ignorance is a troubled one. Mahayana Buddhists write with contempt about the pratyeka-Buddha: an all-but-holy man who attains Enlightenment and then does nothing with it for Humanity or for Society. Alasdair MacIntyre would call such an individual, in contemporary Western terms, an emotivist. He is not truly motivated by virtues such as loyalty to the Common Good. He is doing it all for himself, and not without vanity.

When Saul discourages Max from going too far down the proverbial rabbit hole, citing the positivistic dogma of confirmation bias, it is a clerical warning rather than an intellectual argument. Saul represents the Scientific Community as well as the Church that it found its conception in. Group thought in every generation threatens to restrict the Roving Soul that Terence McKenna rants about and to confine the intellect to the Intersubjectivity of Peer Review and Holy Communion. Max knows that this is a dead end, and he would rather spiral out of control than to confine himself to the Known and Academically Polite (read: pretentious). The distinction betwixt numerology and mathematics dissolves as Max teams up with Meyer to unriddle the Mystery. The Mystery consumes Max in a Marcelian fashion as he ceases to be a “biased” observer and becomes PART OF WHAT HE OBSERVES. Hence the film reaches Heisenberg grade.

(And yes: that last part was as much a reference to the filmmaking of fellow Aquarian Vince Gilligan as it was an homage to the theoretical physics of the twentieth century.)

Of course, confirmation bias is bogus. Only in a very controlled environment can any one say, with certainty, that patterns are inevitable, equally insignificant intrinsically, and only of importance to the extent that an arbitrary subject INTERNALIZES them, to the exclusion of the rest. Not only are patterns not inevitable in an ostensibly “chaotic” Universe. It is all so not inevitable that one would NOTICE them and FIND MEANING WITHIN them. To presume upon a psychoanalytic interpretation, wherein any man of above-average intelligence would notice them, to the detriment of himself and his fellows, is clinically naïve. (In both senses, of course, of the term “clinically”, both as a practitioner and as a potential patient.) Beyond that, it is intellectually arrogant to so enthrone the individual intellect to suggest that it COULD do that to a person and that an organized intelligentsia such as the Scientific Community, working in concert with Psychiatric Companies, Courts of Law, and Law Enforcement, as well as the Media and the General Public, would be NECESSARY TO restrict the intellectual quest of such a person. If the Will can produce Synchronicity, it must be only in concert with God. And at this point the religious maniac is the least pompous of all agents. But as the Zen people say: the student who has attained satori goes to Hell straight as an arrow.

Max’s willfulness helps him once. When he accepts a lift from Meyer for the first time, he is not acting merely out of arbitrary bias. He spares himself a much more dangerous ride with the salespeople and his other stalkers. Psychoanalytically, one might posit that Meyer helped Max in a manner that any one of those well-meaning parties would have; the only drawback would be that Meyer was Max’s Chosen Guardian, and since Max is intelligent enough to fool himself, he is surely clever enough to accept help only from a man who will humour his neuroses.

But Aronofsky sticks it to Big Pharma when that same saleswoman demands the rest of Max’s code while her cronies have a gun up to Max’s head. It turns out that Max was not just a drugged-up paranoiac; he was right to suspect those who were motivated only by money. And it is not long thereafter that we discover that they are bent on using nothing short of the NAME OF GOD for a strictly worldly purpose. All of a sudden, Max’s rude dismissal of their materialism seems a lot less pretentious and a lot more pressing.

Denying them the remainder of the code, part of which they stole from his garbage, is a heroic move, and it is perhaps his only decisively good one. (Note that to be heroic here is the Category and to be Good is only one Part of that; the rest is vainglory.)  After all: not only were they out to jinx the market from the very beginning. Their ruthless ignorance in using PART of the code resulted in a Stock Market Crash. Naturally, they lost ethos.

But when Meyer saves Max for a second time from their clutches, the Jews are made to look less noble. Again Max finds himself bullied and pressed for information. But something peculiar happens when Max confronts the Rabbi. Rabbi Cohen is a man of contradiction that perhaps can only be found in religion. He is as severe as he is amiable. Yet one cannot judge of his demands based upon affect alone. Since capitalism has all ready failed, one cannot weigh the priest by the scale of salesmanship. Rabbi Cohen is blunt: Max is impure, and he is but a vessel for a message that was INTENDED FOR the Hassidic Jews. Max refuses to surrender the message to them. And it is precisely at this moment that Max becomes an Emotivist. When he told off the salespeople, he appealed to a Value; he was searching for something greater than materialism. But even materialism is a higher end than simple vanity; at the very least it is palpable. Max alone FEELS the significance of the Number. And he has no interest in testing any hypothesis that it might be of value outside of his head, to which he has been condemned by social forces and the weight of his own burden. So again he is no longer WITHIN THE WORLD, a part of the Mystery he is investigating. He has again REMOVED HIMSELF and become merely a biased subject. And he even admits that the 216-digit numeral is “just a number”.

Again, Max finds a mirror in the Jews. Meyer mirrors Max by studying the Torah whilst Max studies the Stock Market. Rabbi Cohen mirrors Max Cohen as his namesake, citing the Legend of the Cohens and their shared ancestry and culture. Max breaks both mirrors in his pursuit of God’s Truth. And he ends up absolutely Alone.

When Max refuses to give the number he has memorized to the Jews, he ceases to be a Jew. To be Jewish is truly to believe the Jews to be God’s Chosen People. But Max instead calls HIMSELF God’s Chosen Person. And he refuses to give up God’s Gift, arguing that the Rabbi is himself IMPURE. Max does not argue for his own PURITY. He only argues for the Rabbi’s IMPURITY.

There are two Gods, from a secular ethical standpoint: the Just God and the Narcissistic God. The former is a projection of the Rational, Empathic Conscience. The latter is a projection of the narcissistic ego.

To the man of Reason and Heart, an impure man who is cornered into admitting his own impurity has no further argument until he ATONES for his misdeeds. An impurity or sin is literally an error, and the most fundamental error is HARM TOWARDS ONE’S FELLOWS. Only by atoning for the misdeed can the impure man be made pure and only then can he judge of his fellows to that same extent that their own deeds are harmful. Until then, he is subservient to his victims.

But to a narcissist, God is a Scapegoat. Since the narcissist elects to worship himself, he calls himself the Scapegoat. Since all men fall short of his own standards, all men fall short of God. No man can judge, therefore, of another man, at least not justly. If the narcissist is judged, he appeals to God’s forgiveness and condemns his critic. The narcissist cannot escape criticism for long, but he can enthrone his vices at the moment that it is most convenient to reveal them, calling them by the name of one last virtue: Honesty. In truth, nothing can stop him from judging Others. Since he is his own God, he can judge of other men liberally and then repent, knowing that God (himself, as opposed to God Himself) would forgive him. So the narcissist is never TRULY honest; he simply perverts the meaning of the virtue itself, divorcing language from substance in the manner that MacIntyre describes in the first chapter of After Virtue. The narcissist IMPLIES moral superiority so long as he can get away with judging others, and he REFUSES moral inferiority, appealing to Divine Equality, at the very moment that he has been exposed. This is called Shifting the Goalposts, and in Kierkegaard’s philosophy it is the crucial distinction betwixt Christianity and Christendom. In other words: the former God makes secular sense. But the latter God is a pathological lie.

When Max refuses to supply the Jews with the information they have spent generations in search of, he behaves narcissistically. Any one can choose to say that he was himself Chosen to be the Recipient instead of the Messenger. If someone takes something or someone from me and I feel entitled, I can claim to have been the rightful Recipient, and my thief can call me a mere Messenger, electing himself the rightful Recipient. The thief can appeal to any number of arguments to defend himself, but which of them is one that he will stand by when the tables have turned? If he is a narcissist: none, until they RETURN. Emotivism says that both of us are EQUALLY WRONG, and this is satisfying to the sinner who does not answer FOR HIS SIN but rather projects it upon others as an excuse to withhold what God gives him that it might be of Service. The thief might claim that I am narcissistic for claiming a person, place, thing, or idea as my own. But he is DOUBLY so for not only DISPOSSESSING ME OF IT but pretending that I was but a MEANS TO SERVE HIS ENDS.

Admittedly, the impurity, in this context, of the Jews is no longer in question. Rabbi Cohen has no shame in treating Max as a means towards the ends of the Synagogue. But what sets him apart from the capitalists is that he has the God of Scripture, and perhaps decades of scholarship, on his side. If God INTENDS for Max to deliver the message unto the Jews, and if the name of Cohen carries that meaning, then Rabbi Cohen is simply serving God by demanding the message of Max. And in so doing, he is serving a Just God who would not take kindly to an uninitiated everyman who has all ready messed up once (letting slip the Name of God to fall into the hands of the capitalists) damaging the Jewish Project by withholding that information from his superiors that would enable them, perhaps, to set things Right.

The matter of the thief is resolved not by appeal to personal feelings of entitlement but rather to Universal Values. The narcissistic thief has no interest in sharing what he steals nor of serving others; all that comes his way belongs to him by default. He is at once the disease and the cure, and he refuses to cure those whom he infects because he believes the cure to belong to himself, heedless of the fact that both the disease and the cure that comprise the entirety of his nature were given TO him by Greater Forces. The narcissist scapegoats those who are without sin, for only a sinner can do so, yet he pretends to be their scapegoat. Only once he is exposed to the elements of Charity, Good will, and Justice is he exposed for an agent of the Devil.

At every step, Max moves closer to a Transcendent Realm. But is it God, or is it the Devil? The number is 216 digits long. This is six to the third power, analogous to the sign of the Beast. The last number to appear in the film is 56,664. The Jews themselves might be worshipping the Devil. But it does not pardon Max.

When the thief steals, he appoints himself to have been Chosen, and he appoints his victim to be the Messenger. The victim is made to LOOK LIKE an equal of the thief when he himself insists that it was HE that was HIMSELF Chosen. At any point, claiming to have been Chosen is in SEMBLANCE Narcissism. But this is not to say that only the victim of a potential theft can be Truly Worthy. Often a narcissist, when asked to atone, will refuse to be “robbed” of his own autonomy in doing so. So even a thief can be MADE TO LOOK LIKE a potential victim. How do we tell them apart? Simply: It takes one to know one. A thief will recognize in others potential thieves. Hence Max projects his own errors upon the congregation. A virtuous man would THEORETICALLY, therefore, see Max as more than just a means to an end, by the same token as a thief sees all others as potential thieves. But virtue would afford one the opportunity to see not only PERSONAL value but COLLECTIVE value. So one cannot preclude the purity of the Rabbi in the ultimate assessment of the situation at hand. The Rabbi has the Group on his side. Yes: if the Rabbi is narcissistic, he will turn on this Group at the earliest opportunity. But there is at this point no evidence yet that the Rabbi has even a trace of self-service. We only know that Max refuses to help them. When the narcissistic thief steals, he does so in total apathy towards his fellows. When the narcissist is stolen from, he does so with hypocritical indignation. At every point, he refuses to believe in any value greater than self-interest. And this is the principal pitfall of emotivism: Isolation.

Both the thief and his victim can claim to be entitled by the Will of God. The victim has the moral advantage in this discussion of having been unjustly used as a messenger, and he can just as easily claim to be impartial AS a messenger, making the most of the authority that his position presents him with. The victim can claim that the Thief defied God. But the Thief can one-up the VICTIM by pretending that NO ONE can defy God, but that the victim is attempting to do so by possessing himself of Godlike omniscience in judgment. Beyond that, either party might be narcissistic. If I compare my own experience to that of Max, I might find myself in Max’s position, so that my thieves are represented by the Rabbi. But they might argue that to the same extent that I find Max repugnant I am myself his equal, and if I claim him to be heroic they might argue that he is just as self-entitled as are they. The process of Leveling robs us of all distinctions and leaves audiences only to argue by analogy, fruitlessly. And this is but a stalling tactic for narcissistic entities.

The way out is found in Marx: to give unto every man what he needs and to take from every man only that which he can afford to give. Max can afford to share his secret because it does not rob him of his own knowledge of it. He would be doing more than only serving the Jews. He would be making Public the Truth, which supposedly should serve all men. Yet he arbitrarily refuses, deeming it too dangerous, apparently, because his own mentor could not withstand its portents. So Max, imitating the teacher who was a martyr in service of Truth, becomes a martyr in service of Ignorance.

The matter is not even only as murky as determining whether or not a thief is narcissistic. We all so do not have the luxury, under emotivism, of knowing WHO THE THIEF IS. Max appears to be the rightful recipient of God’s Message. But from the Rabbi’s perspective, it RIGHTFULLY BELONGS TO THE JEWS. If your postal worker claimed your mail as personal property, he would be a thief. Would he not?

Again: it is only by embracing a super-personal value that a person can hope to fathom Super-Personal Intent, such as of a Super-Personal Entity, be it Diabolical or Divine. Christendom and pseudo-Judaism cannot do this. The pratyeka-Buddha cannot do this. But the Virtue Ethicist can. As a virtue ethicist, I find myself in the position of the Rabbi. I was stolen from, and I demand reconciliation. But my thief is playing the part of the victim. I know this because he refuses, at every turn, to serve the HIGHER GOOD. And so he admits to his own narcissism, earns the label “thief”, and becomes a villain worthy of retribution. And it is not hard to find him in the likeness of the anti-hero Maximilien Cohen. If Max is correct in assuming that out of Chaos the initial Order may be reconstructed, then it is only by rejecting the absurdities intrinsic to emotivism that Man can attain harmony in Virtue. Max dies a Satanist who only cares for how God’s Message makes him FEEL. He has no right to refuse to share this message with Humanity, even to set right the mess he has made as God’s Messenger, because he has no REASON to outside of whim and fancy. It is only by identifying this failure in others that we can discern thieves from victims, narcissists from their prey, and the self-entitled from the Truly Chosen. If the principle of “As Above, so Below” holds Truth, then we must behave as Just Gods in service of a Just God, instead of emulating the Narcissistic God that people so often accuse the Jews of worshipping: the Devil.

7:01 P.M.

2/21/2018

Dm.A.A.

CHUCK as HERO: the Real Good Man.

I still don’t know why so many people are obsessed with the idea of Chuck-as-Villain and yet seem to overlook what his brother becomes. When Kim says, “But you made him this way,” she knows that she is lying; she is just being a lawyer, and in that moment she is being Jimmy’s kind of lawyer. This corruption of Kim attains its consummation in the Court Room scene that follows the Climactic Conclusion of Season Three, Episode Five. Kim describes Charles as “irrational”, even though she knows that his vendetta against his brother is absolutely justified, in the same manner as she knows that Jimmy OBVIOUSLY saboutaged his own brother for her alleged benefit. If Chuck is smart enough to even CONCEIVE of a narrative such as the switch from “1261” to “1216”, then he surely knows his brother well enough to be CERTAIN of it. But Kim’s lie goes deeper than that. She blames the victim – Charles – in part because she wants to save Jimmy, as though she OWED HIM ONE (the second-lowest rung on Kohlberg’s Moral Hierarchy), in part because she is apparently moved by his beau jest, which Chuck sees through, and in part because she wants to keep the client instead of doing her legal duty to sue her boyfriend and long-time friend for forgery.

But what alarms me most is the blatant disregard that redditors and the like have for the Law. To Charles McGill, the Law is Sacred; his only motive is to uphold it. Admittedly, this is all so less than Ideal; after all: Social Institutions comprise only the FOURTH rung of Kohlberg’s Seven-Rung Hierarchy. But beyond that rung things rule even moreso in Chuck’s favour. For instance, there is the concept of Kantian Deontology, or the notion of SOCIAL DUTY. Chuck has chosen a role for himself that he must fulfill, and he does. His choice was not arbitrary; it was informed by Reason and a longing for Justice, not only for himself but for all Rational Beings. His Justice is only tempered by his mercy for his brother, who skews Justice in an act of vengeance that ultimately traumatizes some children who become innocent victims of a vindictive and immature prank. Yes: the McGill who felt wronged by marital infidelity and took action in Absurd Protest is more SYMPATHETIC AND CONSCIENTIOUS THAN the Goodman who tells Walter White to “grow up” and to accept the “cruel world”, (an other push in the Heisenberg direction*), reciting that same story of marital infidelity, minus the fecal details that follow from it.

*In this sense, Saul “makes Walt that way”, but only because Saul refuses to redress an injustice, despite being an officer of the court. Chuck, conversely, never flinches in his own pursuit of that ideal that all lawyers are SUPPOSED to uphold.

Redditors who hate Chuck hate more than the Law, but Humanity Itself. To be human is to have the inalienable right to UPHOLD AN IDEAL AS SACRED. This is again why Joseph Campbell said that we became human when we first started hoarding stones with ornate patterns on them. These stones had no utilitarian, survival value. They were simply BEAUTIFUL.

To Chuck, the Law is Beautiful. But its beauty goes beyond both utility AND aesthetics. Chuck recognizes that Jimmy’s attempts at asserting Justice are not only self-interested and barbaric; they all so HURT PEOPLE. These are Chuck’s exact words when he last sees his brother in Season Three. Chuck, conversely, does not hurt people; he simply sets the stage for them to HURT THEMSELVES AND EACH OTHER. But he never spares them an opportunity to ESCAPE by doing the RIGHT THING. Is this merely an arbitrary imposition of his own Will? Demonstrably: no. At every corner Charles McGill demonstrates not only a surpassing intellect as a strategist but all so as a Saint. As Jung said: morality is a type of intelligence. If people can adore Heisenberg for his wile and cleverness, even in spite of the countless deaths in his wake, each of which was only ostensibly guilty of his or her involvement in the same drug trade that Walt is exploiting for monetary benefit, then how can ANY one have anything less than reverence for Charles McGill II? The simple answer is that people are, on average, immoral degenerates. At least on Reddit.

Ultimately, Jimmy wins a victory against Chuck in the manner that Walt outwits Fring: through innovation, quick thinking, and chicanery. The whole piece can be read as Vince Gilligan giving the Aquarian finger to the entire archetype of Capricorn that finds its consummation in the Law. But then we remember that Vince did not write Saul alone; Saul is apparently every bit as much Peter Gould’s brain-child as he is Vince’s. Their custody is joint. And I’m not sure if Peter’s an Aquarius as well. I have no reason to suspect Vince of hiring only people of like temperament; despite the fact that Beneke, for instance, totally epitomizes the Pisces stereotype (down to the fact that his birthday is in March, only a few days prior to Holly White), his aggressive adversary proves to be played by Bryan Cranston.

At every corner, Chuck McGill justifies himself. This makes him menacing only because he has the entire force of Truth and Virtue ON HIS SIDE; he is every criminal’s worst nightmare, to such an extent that what he represents, the Planet Saturn, has become synonymous with the Devil in contemporary post-Christian society. Keep in mind: Saturn, the ruling planet (God) of Capricorn, is the origin of the loan-word “Satan”.

But Charles is in no respect a Satanist. Gilligan shows sympathy (or maybe that’s Gould?) for Charles extensively. We see Charles at his shadiest moments and his brightest, from the secret phone call to his reception at the Firm that he founded near-single-handedly. We know that he suffers from an illness which doctors cannot trace the cause of because science has not produced an explanation for it that can surpass his own brilliant self-diagnosis, a virtue that can only belong to those individuals who are capable of self-reflection to such a degree that neither the Scientific Community nor the Medical Community can offset their judgement. Devoid of partisan bias, he lives a hermetic existence, relying only on a few people who OWE HIM A FAVOUR, entirely former or current employees of his law-firm of Hamlin-Hamlin McGill. Instead of settling for a generous stipend, he demonstrates an unyielding determination to the Law, which has been his career of choice since long before he had any visible reason to hate Jimmy, and in the wake of Jimmy’s not only illegal but immoral and amoral behavior that hatred could only be EXPECTED to grow, and must be allowed to, of natural course. By far Chuck is the most SYMPATHETIC of any of the characters because he represents the Hero that each of us wants to be. He is Totally Human, not devoid of envy; his envy is simply directed towards his INFERIORS, who would rob him of his station and its sanctity, rather than his Superiors, which apparently are non-existent. His Cause is the very definition of a Noble One and a Just One, because it is the ultimate consummation of Man’s Potential to express Heaven in terms of Earth: the Law. The Law to him is that Diamond that Capricorn Yogis are said to strive for constantly. It is yet earth-bound, hence imperfect. But to that same extent Chuck is DOWN TO EARTH, challenged only by the wayward tendencies of inferior men who have their heads in the ground and can be uprooted by coercion and blackmail. When he finally decides to sue the firm, it is not a breakdown but a breakup, and he was the partner who was wronged, because his subordinates do not respect his wishes. These wishes are never arbitrary; Chuck is BEYOND THAT. At every step he finds justification for his actions. But unlike Jimmy, his attempts at justification are not merely RATIONALIZATIONS but rather REASONS, because only his pious subservience to these same ideals could produce his line of successes.

So WHY THE FUCK do people HATE him?!?

We KNOW that Jimmy is a con artist and an embarrassment to the family name, totally deserving of both his brother’s hatred and his condescension. This is made CLEAR to us as the Observers. My only explanation for the ongoing hatred that auditors and redditors feel for Chuck is in the principle of Participation Mystique. When we watch a show or even a legal proceeding in real time, there is a tendency for the Witness (be it Legal, Spiritual [as in the Hindu Godhead], or as a Television Auditor) to LOSE HERSELF in the Role. So simply because Jimmy is presented as the recognizable “Hero”, and because Chuck is working AGAINST Jimmy, Charles becomes a “Villain of the Sow”. Our sympathy for Jimmy is so powerful a form of narcissistic self-identification that we forget to self-identify instead with the character who actually DEMONSTRATES VIRTUE. This is in part because, as I have reflected, we RELATE TO Jimmy, but we want to BE Chuck. Chuck is what we would all LIKE to be; Jimmy is what we HAVE to be. And it is only because we live in so fallen a world wherein “have to” no longer is synonymous with “should” that the Rational Animal must choose between his own Rational Nature and his Animal Side.

Charles McGill represents that rich tradition that only people of surpassing moral and intellectual intelligence can truly uphold: the Law. Never once does he step outside of EITHER the Law nor “common decency” in his “vendetta” against Jimmy. He never USES his feelings as an excuse; when Kim describes him as being “irrational”, or having an “irrational” vendetta, she is transparently lying. Everyone in the Court KNOWS that Chuck is the most RATIONAL person that they have ever met. But without the Spirit of the Law informing it, the mechanics of the Court Room result inevitably in his demise.

If he does not use his feelings as an excuse, neither can we, lest we stoop to Jimmy’s level. When Jimmy tries to manipulate Chuck into extortion, he demonstrates a certain degree of narcissism. He PRESUPPOSES, without WARRANT, that Chuck is just as arbitrary and manipulative as Jimmy himself is. But we know that this is not true. When Chuck makes the phone call to Howard, he does not ACTUALLY BREAK THE LAW. The phone was in Chuck’s own mailbox, after all, so it becomes Chuck’s legal property. Don’t think that our “genius” writers didn’t catch that. Beyond that: Chuck is willing to endure PHYSICAL PAIN in order to do what is necessary to keep the Wrong Kind of Lawyer – Saul Goodman – OUT of practice.

It is shocking, even triggering, to read some of the sewage that runs through the veins of Reddit in this respect. One poster shamelessly CONDEMNS Chuck for tape recording Jimmy and using the tape even in the wake of Jimmy’s “well-meaning” confession. But Jimmy never had a CHOICE in the matter; he was simply doing the Honourable thing, for once*, and it is only honourable insofar as it can attain the END of having him punished. This end is no merely PRAGMATIC end; it is intrinsic to the very CONSISTENCY of Honesty as a Virtue. Jimmy falls SHORT of this consistency because he believes, wrongly, that he can GET AWAY WITH IT. His perception of Human Goodness is SKEWED by personal interest and that sense of shelter that we call Public Opinion; Chuck’s is not. Chuck finishes what Jimmy starts. Jimmy’s exit lines for the Season are that it’s “[Chuck’s] word against [Jimmy’s]”. But Chuck gets the Last Word, for it was Chuck’s Plan All Along, and UNLIKE either Jimmy or Jimmy’s victims, who suffer a fate WORSE than Death, which is Dishonour, Chuck is not swayed by petty sentimentality.

*Keep in mind: Jimmy only DOES the honourable thing BECAUSE he thinks that he can get away with it.

Redditors such as the aforementioned project their own emotive preferences onto Jimmy; IN HIS PLACE, they would PREFER not to be treated in this manner. But Chuck is not breaking the Categorial Imperative by treating his brother in the way that he himself would “not” want to be treated. Chuck is treating a Criminal in the manner that a Criminal SHOULD be treated, and Chuck would himself WANT to be treated this way IF CHUCK WERE A CRIMINAL. Jimmy incessantly tries to PROVE that Chuck would NOT want to be treated in this manner, so as to accuse Chuck of breaking the Categorical Imperative. Jimmy wants to be Chuck’s equal, but he does not want to put in the work to GET there. But first: Jimmy must PERSUADE CHUCK TO BECOME A CRIMINAL. And that is impossible; his brother is incorrigible. So Chuck only treats people in the manner that he would theoretically want to be treated if proven wrong. He never IS ACTUALLY PROVEN WRONG. And that is why people who are pathologically, terminally wrong hate him. They project their OWN irrational biases ONTO him. Chuck is the scapegoat; he is free of sin and a victim of not so much his own virtue as its saboutage by the vices of others. He is made to BEAR the sins of Jimmy. And Jimmy is misrepresented as the Scapegoat TO THE SAME DEGREE that his identity as the Sinner (and hence the Bane of the Goat [Capricorn] that must bear the burden for his sins) endears him to other sinners who SEE their own Evil WITHIN him. Some might argue that any one who is able to IDENTIFY Evil in Jimmy but to OWN UP TO the Projection of her own sins UPON him is operating from a position of objectivity that is SUPERIOR to that of Charles McGill. But in fact it is only because people like Kim EXPRESS their own Evil sides in Conscious Life that they identify with Jimmy. They do not hate Jimmy [only] because they CANNOT project their Shadows upon him. What WOULD be Shadow in a DECENT person (such as Charles) is made into Ego, and that Ego enjoys the comforts of a crooked lawyer and an entire Kafkaesque Kangaroo Court that sings his praises incessantly as Law Himself dies in a state of legal madness. (An ironic turn of plot and phrase is that Charles is “legally insane”, in both the sense that the Law deems him Crazy and that his Love of It DRIVES him “Crazy”.) So where do they project their Shadowed Goodness? They project it UPON CHUCK, whose Ego is in its Right Place, as is his Heart. They PRESUME that NEITHER Chuck’s Ego NOR his Heart is In Its Right Place, only because he seems to be mentally ill (again: a criminal misconception; by far the most hated villain of the series is his Doctor, who BREAKS THE LAW when she subjects him to an M.R.I, replying to his knowledge of his own rights with the Fascist statement “I don’t think this applies”.). In truth, it is the Sinners who are Mentally Ill. Foucault transcribes in Madness and Civilization an entire list of attributes that were FORMERLY regarded as Insane in a more Civilized Age. EACH of them, from Marital Infidelity onward, are MORAL shortcomings, rather than shortcomings of OBJECTIVITY. To be crazy is not to react in an unusual manner to stimuli. It is not to have “unusual perceptions”. It is simply to be a BAD PERSON. Ironically enough, when this definition of mental illness was SEVERRED from the treatment of mental illness by an impersonal Scientific Community, to be “crazy” no longer had any thing to DO with being Virtuous or Vicious. Yet because people who WERE immoral and amoral wanted to GET AWAY WITH being so, they began to define “Being Right” and “Being Sane” as “Being Relatable”. So as emotivism grew in power, backed by Fascism on the Right and the proto-Fascistic FEAR of Fascism* on the Left, an Immoral Majority (which called itself a Moral Majority, on the Right, and which produced the punk rock reactionaries of the Left, just as Pluto was entering Scorpio) came to abuse Morality as a Scapegoat. This is what happens to Chuck, both on screen and off screen, and it happens to everyone and every THING that he represents with unyielding fortitude and consistency. The crazy people call him crazy because they think that he is projecting his own repressed Evil onto Jimmy. But in fact THEY are projecting their own repressed GOODNESS ONTO CHUCK, and they are CALLING it Evil. Between the Ethical Egoist (in the sense not of a Consequentialist but rather a Deontologist who is not without the sin of Pride, even if only in semblance) and the Degenerate Egoist (Represented by the W.M. logo of Wexler and McGill, which is incidentally all so in the shape of a STOCK MARKET CRASH) the RIGHT choice is clear. Chuck has won the right to hate his brother. But we have not even BEGUN to hold a candle up with which to burn him down.

*An other symptom of Neurotic Projection: one becomes what one hates most.

I could go on. But all of 2884 words in, it would be no more than elaboration. There are countless ways that I could have made my point. Any digression I might account for [in the form of a rebuttal]. But the Devil lives in the Details. And I am tired. So I shall cap this off at 3000 words instead.

Chuck represents the archetype of Lawful Good. But Saul Goodman is the Unlawful Good that turns to Evil. Who pushed whom? We can only make the matter relative if we see them as Characters rather than People. In the words of Winston Wolf: “You are a character. But that doesn’t mean that you HAVE character.”

Dm.A.A.

No Team Pete.

This is ridiculous. I'm sorry but it's not Andy's fault that Erin overreacted to the thought that Andy had once been engaged to a woman over a year ago. There is absolutely no intrinsic imperative that obligates him to divulge that information, especially if the present relationship is faring so SMOOTHLY that he is likely to have put it from his mind. Erin's reaction was purely emotive and nothing more. Andy did the appropriate thing by going to pursue Erin in Florida, who after all SHOULD have told him that she was leaving permanently, because that is of CONSEQUENCE in the FUTURE, rather than a thing of the past. In the process Nellie literally USURPED HIS POSITION ILLEGITIMATELY and continued to sabotage his relationship with Erin, a very healthy one that completed both people with its fair share of sacrifice, despite the mercy that Andy showed his manipulative, nymphomaniacal rival. Andy was perhaps the only consistently MATURE character on the show, next to Michael Scott. In his absence the company thrived, and yet he was not rewarded for the decision, despite the fact that he was honouring a family tradition and taking time to find himself and TO mature instead of simply USING the Office as a stage for his own metamorphosis. Viewers sympathize with Jim because most of his struggles get on camera in a humourous light. But none of us knows what happened down in the Caribbean. We only see the horrendous aftermath. There is all so nothing intrinsically in your argument that either indicated that Erin WOULD be miserable nor that she should NOT be. Erin betrays Andy when Pete offers her Happiness. I don't know about you, but I threw my remote at the floor when I heard that. I could not believe they showed it on television. Happiness is not an incentive for mature, moral action. Respect for authority whilst trying to balance conflicting traditions in a hostile environment is veritably a test of it. Perhaps what most notably exposes YOUR immaturity is that you "just wish". No one cares what you "just wish". Wish fulfillment is for children. Erin got what she wanted without ever having to confront her deep-seated issues and underlying hypocrisy. Andy, conversely, was punished for doing Every Thing Right. It is never the mark of maturity to accommodate an other adult's immaturity. She pardoned her parents for abandoning her for decades, yet she could not see beyond her own infantile feelings of abandonment when he returned home after a MERE three months (what? Is that supposed to be a long time? How about a YEAR since he had dated Angela?) from a trip that had been ON HER SAY SO. I just finished watching the last episode hours ago and I STILL cannot get over my disappointment. The Nard Dog remains the Tragic Hero. And it's SHOCKING that he is not remembered as Michael Scott's Rightful Protégé. Dm.A.A.

Jim Conclusions:

Jim may be a sociopath, but not for the reasons that people suspect.

1. People presume that Jim's love for Pam is none of Jim's business because of her relationship to Roy, but this is a violation of logic called the Fallacy of Naturalism.
2. There is seldom any actual articulated argument about Jim's moral infractions except for speculation that he employs others as means towards ends deliberately, a violation of the Categorical Imperative. However, with only partial insight into his possible motives, this remains a fallacy of projection.
3. Posters confuse "moral imperatives" with "social norms" with "caring".
4. People presume that Jim SHOULD BE HAPPY FOR PAM, when in fact Happiness has little to nothing to do with love and is primarily a goal for sociopaths to pursue. It was this same false appeal that was responsible for the show's central tragedy: the loss of Erin to Pete. (funny that I see at present an advertisement for a show entitled "Sneaky Pete".)
5. Posters are right to condemn Jim for playing pranks on Dwight, but only because Dwight is demonstrably Jim's superior. Dwight does not suffer from any sort of disorder or eccentric behavior. His perspective is usually moving and refreshingly rational, except when he behaves in a competitive manner.
6. All of the above are employed by sociopaths in furthering a narcissistic agenda and blaming victims. This is why sociopaths perpetually behave as though they are morally justified even when their actions hurt people who DO NOT DESERVE to be hurt. Righteous conviction, such as displayed by Dwight, for instance, do not motivate them and morality itself becomes merely a means towards an end, devoid of compassion, constancy, or meaning. They presume upon their own entitlement when they receive consent but they do little if anything to warrant the grounds for consent. In this sense, Jim's social infractions are actually Noble, since he has no reason to presume that Pam SHOULD give Roy her consent. And that is EVERY one's business as a moral agent. OBVIOUSLY.
7. Jim's sociopathy is actually only readily apparent in how he treats Michael when he socially excludes him. It is not that Jim betrays social norm. He is its very embodiment, and hence he is our suspected sociopath. No one can actually be THAT normal.

Dm.A.A.

The Tragedy of Andrew Bernard:

The Tragedy of Andrew Bernard:

I still don’t and will never understand why Andy Bernard does not end up marrying Erin in the ultimate episode of the Office. His romance to her is by far more relatable and beautiful and desperately nail-biting than Jim and Pam. I understand the schtick that Jim is The Guy Who Gets Away With Things Inexplicably, hence questions arise surrounding his mental health. But how is it that Jim gets away with being gone so long (pursuing a career instead of upholding a tradition or seeking enlightenment in the Caribbean Islands) in Season Nine and the Nard Dog, who is only gone for three months (DURING WHICH TIME THE COMPANY PROSPERS, BY THEIR ADMISSION, AS THE OSTENSIBLE RESULT OF HIS CHOICE) is ABANDONED by his girlfriend? I was totally unmoved when Erin’s birth parents showed up to the Seminar because it was totally devoid of meaning. Not only does the formerly perfect girl embrace them with total abandon devoid of righteous fury. Throughout the entire forty-minute finale she pays absolutely NO HEED TO HER LOVER ANDY, preferring the company of the Nameless Douchebag Alcoholic whom she ended up cheating on Andy WITH. This mystery is only seconded by the fact that all of this happens in the wake of Andy’s bold act of vulnerability going “viral”. I do not understand how it is possible that the second-most-heroic character in the series is LAMPOONED for his breakdown before the impersonal and inhuman judges, which include the grossly untalented Clay Aiken. Dave Grohl wouldn’t put up with this. Why should Andy? When I watch or read Hamlet, which the nard-dog probably has memorized, I feel every heartstring quiver with every line. And this is how I feel for Andy Bernard. And it is not just because I sympathize with him, whereas I do not remember my past lives in orphanage. Ethics are impersonal (in the positive sense of the word) and they are objectively universal to all rational beings. There is simply no Universe in this Multiverse wherein Erin can forgive her parents for having abandoned her for thirty-something years, only to take out her feelings of abandonment on a man who was coping with the disintegration of his own family. There is nothing that can really make this story sentimental or relatable. I’ve only known a few people in my entire life who wouldn’t have their heads spin at the thought of it. And all for what? For HAPPINESS? Andy honoured his Family tradition and returned a Changed Man, but no less intense is he then than when he took his leave of the Office and drove all the way down to FLORIDA to find Erin. If I wrote a sequel for the Office, it would follow the demise of Pete and of course Toby’s adventures in Europe, chasing Nellie. Andy’s respect for the traditions of a family that visibly DEPLORED him is by FAR more sympathetic a sob story than Erin’s quest for “Happiness” (Again: how do you MEASURE that? And don’t you DARE say endorphins) or her abandonment by a Mother and Father who never receive their due come-uppance. Much less comprehensible is the rise of Daryll to the top, alongside Jim, even when he CONFESSED to an aversion to Work Itself. Even less so is Toby’s being single. Even less so is Nellie’s ongoing and irrational aversion to him. Even less so is that Oscar, whose sodomistic affair (WHY DOES WORD NOT RECOGNIZE THIS WORD?!) with Angela’s Husband, by no means selfless or principled, even by his own hypocritical standards, is allowed into Public Office and even becomes GODFATHER TO ANGELA’S SON. How can the ends justify THOSE means? How is Dwight rewarded for his aggression towards Andy but Andy is only caught where he began: at Cornell University? Why is Erin’s Happiness greater than his Rights? A hero MUST uphold those same values with which he defends every woman he has ever been with and every organization that he had ever pledged his loyalty to, even if contemporary cultural complications compel him to choose love over station, tradition over love, or station over tradition, from time to time. The Underdog even had his ARSE TATTOOED, yet in the end the World won’t THROW HIM A FUCKING BONE.

If it seems like I am unraveling, I am. I might have nothing left to live for. The prosperity of every other character on this show, against all odds and decency, only makes Andy’s Tragedy that much higher when weighed on a Scale of Justice that hoists it in proportion to the weight of his adversaries. May he ascend to Heaven if he kills himself in such times as these. May the Internet forever bewail the Irony of his Loss of both Angela and Erin, to say nothing of the family name that was his birthright. May we forever remember the Tragedy of Andrew Bernard, borne pure into the only true poverty, in a wasteland that mistakes it for wealth even as it sees him as its victim and that overlooks the irony of its own envious contempt, which should be considered the first symptom of its OWN poverty. And if my own envious contempt casts doubt on my sincerity, may it be remembered that I did not deny my own poverty. Andrew Bernard is the only true hero next to Michael Scott, hence Michael bestowed upon Andy the burden of Management. Jim and Pam are nothing compared to Andy and Erin, the two lost orphans, like the Gemini twins, one of whom dies in war. Andy is not a cis-white-male. He is the only man who never played the race card and who even had the courage to defend his ancestors, who were only ever moral middle men in a slave trade that started on the African Continent. Like them, he performed his duties to the best of his worldly abilities. They simply outweighed those duties that one elects arbitrarily, as does an entrepreneuring sociopath like Jim Halpert, because he was BORNE INTO THEM, and hence they are closer to God than any career choice for which a man may be blamed. Virtue is inescapable, and Andy makes no attempt to run from it. Yet every step he takes in one righteous direction, prompted by his fellows, is mistaken for treachery, not because it does any harm to any one (which it invariably does not; even when Erin misses him to the point of fury, she has to live with having prompted him to do so) but because it is MISTAKEN FOR BEING ARBITRARY by a gang of ARBITRARY PEOPLE who feel INCONVENIENCED BY IT. At no point does the Nard Dog break a promise, violate the Categorical Imperative, create an adversarial situation, (except to spite Erin, just to prove a point, and rightfully) betray a friend, or disobey an order or social cue. (Except when he stands up to a Panel of Judges that dismiss him without cause.) Andy DOES EVERY THING RIGHT. And he is left empty-handed as all of his fellows prosper. Perhaps he NEEDS Erin in order to ground him. Perhaps Erin needs to be grounded. Pun intended. But  how many WOMEN would HONESTLY judge of a man in need that they would not themselves volunteer to help? If Woman is EQUAL to Man, is she not burdened by the same altruistic task? Is that not the life-blood of Society and Human Compassion?

When people like Andrew Bernard are condemned for doing the RIGHT thing, it only opens the floodgates for degenerate sociopaths, without either noble birth OR moral conviction, to be praised and comforted for doing the WRONG thing. Phyllis is pardoned for blackmailing Angela. Dwight is rewarded for bullying Andy. Jim is praised for hitting on Pam in spite of Roy. Etc.

What did Jim ever do right? He only PRETENDED to be AMBIVALENT to Pam when it so pleased him, rather than STANDING UP FOR HIMSELF as he ADMITS HE SHOULD HAVE. Andy is the Old Soul of the Office who, like Michael Scott, is capable of seeing the finish line before the rest of the crowd knows it is running a race. And ironically enough he is the least competitive of any of them. He only craves that which all of them receive as a reward for their own sloppiness. He is condemned only for his own cleanliness. And as Pam Beasley said: wanting things to be clean has nothing to do with being rich. Andy is the only TRULY ENTITLED character, and he KNOWS it. No one can hold a candle up to him, yet all of them enjoy the fruits of HIS labours and even the prosperity brought on by his calculated and inspired absence. HAD Jim and Pam NOT WASTED TIME that they REGRET HAVING WASTED, would they not all so have appeared self-entitled? Andy suffers not from excessive Desire but from Conviction. Yet any TRUE Drama or Comedy REWARDS that Conviction when it is properly oriented. It does not confuse it for vice as it treats actual vice as though it were virtue. So may it last of all be remembered that at no point am I opening the gates of sympathy that they might flood out the flame of justice in its persecution of the narcissist and deviant. I would rather that it buoy us up to an altitude from whence we might again recall the distinction between TRUE entitlement and the passive aggression of a silent, manipulative self-interest. There is a reason that Hamlet stabs Polonius behind a curtain. In a more decent time, Jim would have met his come-uppance, and Andy would have died a beloved Prince. The sword of discretion must again be used not to defend one’s self when one is in the wrong, but rather to segregate virtue from vice. And insofar as Andy wields it in accordance with a just assessment of his own value, his service to Humanity as an Artist, and in the overlying context of a civilized culture and rich tradition of principles, he has earned that right that Americans mistakenly consider a Universal Entitlement for which one does not have to fight: to fend for one’s own self. To defend oneself.

Dm.A.A.