Post 890: 1331 Words.

This record was started on January 29^th. I only finished the Episode just now.

The only thing that can justify my decision to struggle through the Office today is this log of my infuriations, which little by little Andy is beginning to reflect with confidence. When Andy returns, he returns to an amoral war zone. Every one is unified against him for taking a leave of absence that Erin herself encouraged (not knowing the extent to which a Spiritual Quest can extend, nor how lucky she was for getting off with three months, considering how long military wives have to wait for a much less Noble Cause than Inner Peace) and their unity in semblance only underscores their egocentric division in actuality. Some of them pretend towards an equality which is not theirs, and those who are just as pretentiously elitist back them up. People take breaks at their leisure without consulting the AUTHORITY of their LEADER, and in place of a justifiable Reason they present his own choices (as though they were arbitrary and not noble) as though those same choices were without Reason, and as though the observation of one arbitrary choice can merit an indefinite number of them. They treat his Authority with the same regard as he is presumed to have treated David Wallace, even though by so doing they establish a naïve, working class notion of the Boss that is as hierarchical and dogmatic as the Hindu Caste System or the Medieval Social Order. It must surely be the mark of a true serf that he will try to level with his superiors by appealing to the authority of THEIR superiors, as though his superiors were not closer to their own superiors in virtue and thereby in possession of certain inalienable and inimitable Knowledge. They treat Andy’s Reasons (measured in not only psychological need but, naturally, duty to Self, Family, and God) as though they were merely HIS Reasons, and not the very reasons for Human Life Itself. Three months is a laughably short time for a once-in-a-Lifetime opportunity, especially for a Hero who saved the Office and who (thereby demonstrably) possesses the moral discernment necessary to recognize the value of a family heirloom and birth-right. But what the egalitarians lack in common sense the elitists, by their very nature, one-up. Oscar, the degenerate homosexual cuckolder with an excuse for every one of his own foibles, the very voice of Corporate Liberal Hypocrisy, especially when he (like all such diabolical voices) points out hypocrisy in Others, tells Andy that Andy is not entitled to that one transcendent virtue that Andy has left in a world of hypocrites and thieves: the Truth. When Andy reads Erin’s texts, Oscar preaches at him, representing the Will of the Tribe, telling him to mind his own business. But then Andy retaliates, pointing out the irony intrinsic to the fact that Oscar is not only involving himself, at that very moment, in ANDY’S business; Oscar too is, by extension, involving himself in Erin’s affair (and I mean that word in most senses of it, if not all.) and that is much LESS Oscar’s business than it is Erin’s, especially considering that the “formal” breakup, which Andy had initially talked her out of with unassailable dignity and Reason, was produced on an impulsive and (I dare say it) hormonal pseudo-reason: her own happiness, which is hardly any kind of virtuous eudaimonia in the context of its injustice towards Andy.

At this point I must point out that I am only ten minutes into Episode Sixteen of Season Nine. I have an other half hour ahead of me. I would have simply entitled this section “Episode Sixteen: The First Ten Minutes”, but considering all the psychosis in this Office, I had reason to suspect, as any man would, that going back and adding a title that was not the first thing that I wrote (even though the title of the Word Document will prove that, and in a way that would not so much incriminate me as it would give me liberty by virtue of its own honesty, which trickles down to its Creator) will be some sort of falsification of evidence. It’s crazy, I know, to consider this in one’s own Private Journal, for fear of what would happen if one chose to make something so unassailable as one’s own Private Thoughts Public. But it underscores my point: that Andy is the least Draconian of all the Office staff, and that he alone remains a fair and levelheaded leader, despite the fact that even people like DWIGHT scorn him for observing certain seemingly arbitrary procedures. He is not an aesthete, but the aesthetes cannot tell him apart from them. Should he bother? Should I? Why bother even to explain this to the Public? Was it not shock upon shock at their stupidity that produces my reservations in writing even my own private thoughts? Whatever. Maybe I will append whatever title I need. If I do so in the Spirit of either exercising an Intrinsic Artistic License or in fathoming the Absolute Depths of Aesthetic Perfection, I need not answer to the Oscars who tell me I did it wrong.

Dm.A.A.

THE NEXT FIVE:

I got five more minutes in to the Episode when I had to stop again. Several things happened:

1.        Andy made me laugh.

2.      Andy stood up for himself. (Here it comes.)

3.      Pete tried to defend himself in a manner reminiscent of Gabe, asserting his own right to violate not only his fellow man’s happiness, but his Boss’s Moral Authority. (It’s still coming.)

4.      Andy tried to fire Pete. (Someone’s going to get it.)

5.      Toby tells Andy Bernard that he cannot fire people over Grudges. (Angry Andy is nearing the Boiling Point.)

Now I see why Michael hated Toby, and why I hated Toby on Michael’s behalf, as well.

The truth is that Andy has the right and DUTY to fire Pete. He had the right to fire Nellie as well, though perhaps not the duty. Andy was merciful and relented when the matter was simply professional, but with the hippie candor of a Michael Scott he says “that was professional; this is personal”. Of course, Stickman Stickler Toby Flenderson greets the ejaculation with a remorseful but irreverent silence, as though to say: No. Personal feelings are less important than professional concerns. Your Life does not Matter. Only efficiency does. And we shall blame you for any acts of justice that you try to take that might disrupt Office Efficiency.

Recall that it was Andy’s Leave of Absence, for which he is still inexplicably BLAMED, that was the ostensible source of the Office’s most Efficient Quarter.

If the System turns on you, it’s through no fault of your own when it suffers under your Will. Your Will is simply coming into alignment with Cosmic Justice, and by turning on you they have turned AWAY from that.

Honestly. And I thought this was a Christian Nation.

Dm.A.A.

Finally I was ready to conclude the Episode. To my delight, my suspicions that the core characters are based on the archetypes of the Tarot was affirmed unequivocally in the closing scene. Oscar, whom I had identified very quickly as the Hanged Man, very early on into my fascination with this program, (and perhaps before I made any other parallels, even between Michael Scott and the Fool) ends the episode by hanging upside-down from an exercise bar that he purchased in an advertisement online; he hangs himself by his own neo-Liberal hypocrisy, so to speak, acting as the moral(istic) Vox Dei of the Office whilst he steals company time to lose himself in consumerism.

The sheer length of the episode all so corroborates my theory that one can watch the Best Of the Office by viewing every fourth episode consecutively, as well as the Season Finales, because the show follows a format wherein every Story Arc is four episodes long.

Dm.A.A.

The Anniversary Effect:

The Anniversary Effect.

Something triggered me towards the early end of class mere hours ago, which feel like minutes.

When Randy owned Happy Chang’s, he would go on and on in a manner that felt one-sided and that I have now concluded to have been manipulative. The ecstasy of dialogue with him was such that excitement would transform manically into anxiety over the course of the trek back, even before the last set of traffic lights that segregated that border of Palomar College from the rest of San Marcos, to the North. This was before the government came down, and not alone, on Randy for Health violations.

Today I felt similarly upon departure from my Game Design class. At once there was an ecstasy of passion, to act, to speak, to write. And yet the passion itself barred me from the possibility of doing so with my Human fellows.

At once, therefore, I felt an unprecedented relief from self-imposed social restriction, a return to days of innocence and freedom.

And yet at the same time the thought of talking to that girl seated upon the bench before the New Theatre was put forcibly from my mind by an all-

Consuming craving for solitude within which to address my Soul, God, and the Universe. Even as I changed course and made my way back to her bench time slipped away; no sooner it seems had I found the bench empty than my Father arrived, and I past what might have been her at my left hand side as he pulled up.

I know why I had not sat next to her in writing out my private opera; there yet lingered the fear that she was Nicole Fitz.

I even wonder now if maybe that alone: her semblance to Nicole, as well as the possibility that it was actually her – was my solitary motive for changing course. But the fear is no foolish or customary attempt at self-preservation; it was informed by Meaning. I KNEW, deep down, though not TOO far down, in this moment, that if I found the NEED to sit beside this young woman before she left that it would be out of a longing for her company, for her attention, undivided, and for Encounter. And this would be mutually exclusive with my private passions.

AT the very least, I can say that it would have been risky to try, at first.

I know what triggered me.

It was tonight, three years ago, that I first met Alanna McLeod.

This is why I regret not having spoken to that girl. It was like losing Alanna all over again. Fitz was bad enough. But it was not my fear of losing Fitz that lost me Fitz. Fitz was borne lost. And so was Alanna. We can live life forwards. But we understand it backwards.

Dm.A.A.

Rebecca:

Rebecca:

Chuck begins to come undone when he admits that his father had no conception of sin but that he had nonetheless to “keep food on the table” for his family, part of whom were stealing from him. The food does not belong to any one else except for those who are free of sin. The theft itself is not a sin in context of the fact that the money is unnecessary. The state has an obligation to ensure the well-being of Chuck and Jimmy. There are absolutely no excuses to fall short of this aim. The food belongs to the Earth, which provides it for those who are worthy of it. To raise it, as to raise a child, is a privilege. It is not a right. If the game you are playing does not ensure that every mouth is fed, then you are obligated to alter the game. At no point must any agent of enforcement cultivate sympathy for the Devil.

Dm.A.A.

Three Years Later:

It is not the absence of pleasure that produces pain, nor is it the presence of pleasure at one’s own expense, but rather it is pain itself that produces pain. In the same manner that one cannot derive an ethic from facts, but only from other ethics, one cannot derive pain from the condition of pleasure, but only from other pain. My pain was derived, therefore, from Alanna’s pain. Anything else is extraneous. Yet it remains my pain, and that I have to live with in her absence. Yet what I do NOT have to live with is the blame for it. My condition need never cast doubt on my own role in producing the condition. All that I ever needed to have done I had done, correctly, by the point that my condition came into being, and nothing that I have done since can I be justly blamed for, because no one is in a position to institute justice, since no one can undo the injustice for which I was never compensated. No one has the RIGHT to cast doubt on my intentions when it would even begin to vindicate those who all ready DEMONSTRATED their own depraved motives. The fact that my righteous actions produced disastrous results, for both myself and for those that I care about, would never cross a rational mind to reflect poorly upon me, for the simple fact that a righteous PERSON cannot be responsible for such outcomes, and only an ignoble and depraved person can be blamed for them. Insofar as one demonstrates one’s own righteousness, by valuing righteousness as the ultimate end, one must concede all of this to me without question. It would be to add to egregious depravity to deny any part of this or to entertain any suspicions whatsoever.

Three years ago tomorrow I met Alanna in a Parking Garage at San Diego State University. I learned swiftly about her condition. From that point forth, every action that I took was motivated just as much by her own well-being as it was by mine, and to the same extent that the former was demonstrably my motive the latter was vindicated, for her interests ultimately became the totality of my own.

Yet there are still those who would question me. I am no longer confused about what happened. Nor am I shocked at their denial of these facts. Yet they remain confused.

The first most salient argument against these remote critics is this: that I did nothing wrong. To begin with, I did nothing to DESERVE the disadvantage nor the disrespect towards me. To that same extent that I would not have wished harm upon any one I am not MORE deserving of it unto myself, as though the former cause were mutually exclusive with the latter (a thought I tremble at), but rather LESS so. It is all ready sufficiently ridiculous that those entities who could behave AS THOUGH their interests were mutually exclusive with mine could be permitted to live and even to PROCREATE in my place, when even the thought of existing in a game of zero sum is absolutely inconceivable and intolerable to a moral person.

The second fact arises in response to the second plaint: that what was done was practical, despite the fact that it produced the most tragic results possible for anyone who loved the coveted love object. Somehow I am made to bear the blame for this tragedy as though it were my doing, as though by behaving as I was SUPPOSED to I simply volunteered to become some sort of scapegoat for those over whom RIGHTFULLY I should be ruler, but who turned out to be my ongoing oppressors by their sheer EXISTENCE. How can this be conceived? The stretch is one my own mind would have never made: that her decision to be faithless to me is justified not ONLY by my best friend’s decision to be DISLOYAL to me, but all so by the implication in her choice that I was somehow unattractive to her, for reasons I may never know and that I’m unentitled towards knowing, and that she made the only choice she sensibly could in light of this nebulous detail.

But the Devil lives in such details. The fact remains that I cannot be PENALIZED for what I did not do wrong, and so much LESS can I be penalized for what OTHERS *did* do wrong BY ME. The lingering caveat is that Alanna owed me no faith. But this changed at the moment that I INTRODUCED her to the other oppressor; any attempt to skew the obligation implicit to that can amount to no more than sheer pragmatism, for it argues from the FOREGONE CONCLUSION that their mutual happiness (AT MY EXPENSE) was a just end and that therefore any means used to arrive at it (even if it meant reducing ME to a means) was justified. Obviously, the very decision to defy my will was a reduction of me to a means in place of an end in and of myself. The pleasure at my expense was not the source of the pain. It was rather the affront to ALANNA’S OWN SOUL that had produced such aggravation in my own condition, for how COULD she go on living having done that? It was obviously out of pity for her that I forgave her, and I retained the right to blame only the impersonal entity that had persuaded her to corrupt herself in a manner that that entity itself had all ready long ago been corrupted. I alone, as blameless victim, can be the judge to weigh their Souls against one an other. How much more unsettling it was therefore to hear her defy my authority by denying her own superiority to that entity!!

Every part of my jealousy, in light of these facts, has been rationalized effectively. Man is not, as Heinlein posited, a rationalizing animal AT THE EXPENSE of being a rational one; it is rather his ability to rationalize EFFECTIVELY that renders him rational. This I have done unassailably. No part of my reason can be REDUCED to jealousy, because jealousy clearly stems FROM it. All that remains is a chronicling of my virtues. Whenever I have successfully mediated a conflict, there lingers a temptation to self-identify with the aggressor in that conflict, hoping to forgive those whom I believe to have done me wrong. But I do more than believe; I KNOW. My successes in mediating ought never to cast DOUBT on my own integrity, as though any act of heroism can be punished by accusations of hypocrisy where an other act of heroism by the same hero were concerned. If I am capable of managing the affairs of others, how much more heroic I must be in managing my own!! After all: the community invariably OWES me that respect in exchange for my services; if I can defend them, they ought to be able to defend me, especially if I have had to, up until this point, defend myself. If it is any testament to the virtues of those aggressors whom I have reconciled that they are able to reconcile, then it is TO THAT SAME EXTENT that those aggressors that I was NOT able to reconcile ought to be disregarded as subhuman. And I myself need not be regarded as an aggressor in such a conflict. If my Father, for instance, can only make peace with my Mother by ceding his own convictions, then what does it say of my own adversaries that NEITHER the approach of ASSERTION on my part NOR the approach of CESSION has worked, but rather that one attempt was made as an excuse to negate the other? No man can be so unreasonable. So I need never fear, as a man, that I will become the equal of such an aggressor. And even in the wake of tragedy, I have the comfort that I may someday see my lost love in the Next Realm. I retain not only the virtue necessary to Ascend to that Plane, but the AUTHORITY to ascertain that she has done so as well. So may she rest in peace.

Dm.A.A.

1001 Words: Satchmo and Miles.

Satchmo and Miles.

A short film.

A rivalry with Egyptian imagery.

1895.

I can do it by myself.

The dream featured prefiguratively various famous jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis. It felt like a music history class, esp. a History of Jazz the likes of which Prof. Weller teaches ostensibly as though it were a Theory class.

In the Dream Narrative I was surprised (even as a Dream Witness) to discover that in fact both Satchmo and Miles recorded their seminal albums in the Year 1895. Eager to commemorate them, I arranged a short film with my old crew, the Suburban Shamans. We even got the real Louis Armstrong to play himself in the short biopic. Miles Davis was dead, so we got a guy to play him. The guy was relatively short on melatonin, but we managed somehow (by means that might be too politically incorrect to utter) to make it work halfway.

The film was chiefly an improv. Job. In the format of a Rap Battle, except save for the rhyming, the two Black Legends were to roast one an other. Satchmo started. His attacks upon “Bitch’s Brew” and the like atoned for his relatively spaced introduction to the works and foibles of his adversary. But even without that saving grace note Louis would have won against the slew of slander that followed.

Either Miles or his Actor (in the former case, we presume the actor to have challenged Miles Himself) knew apparently nothing about Louis Armstrong. He began to harp incessantly about the Egyptian Imagery and the Oppressive Symbols that the “Satanic Degenerate” Armstrong had so frequently employed. Time and time again Louis made a point of clarification, proving systematically that the imagery in question belonged to various Heavy Metal Bands, such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Slayer. By the end of it, Miles looked like Aziz Ansari in Flight of the Conchords. Having been informed that it was Heavy Metal that he hated, and not the revered Jazz Trumpeter, Miles ceded the competition, which had been intended, from the start, to be a friendly game, and which had been corrupted and all most lost to a private vendetta based on misconception.

The guilty conscience would interpret this so: that Miles, the pale criminal who tried to emulate a minority, was myself in Debate. But that is only one angle of it, and at that it is the very conservative angle that Awilda (who is married to a nigger-hating homophobe) would have assessed. The truth is that I AM a minority. I WAS borne in the Soviet Union, at the end of the Cold War. I DO recall those kids at Ikea who would not play with me because I was a Russian, back in Maryland. I AM an introvert. I WAS misdiagnosed by psychiatry. And I AM a virgin in his late twenties, in America.

The self-confident conscience, which emulates Tom Waits in place of Elliott Smith, interprets the matter in this way: that I am Satchmo. Louis Armstrong is a Leo (even though so was Elliott), and as such he represents the Ego. In this situation, my Ego emerges a victorious Lion, roaring with laughter like the trumpeter himself. (Incidentally, towards the end Miles criticized Louis’ trumpet playing, which Louis corrected him about by pointing out that “That was Dizzy, not me.”)

These are two warring factions of my own personality: the Ego and the Shadow. The Ego protects himself against all naysaying by keeping to the Facts and staving off all sorts of cynical pessimism. In this sense, Miles represents not only my own reactionary period* but the entirety of the Social Justice Movement which destroyed Debate in my place, and which Awilda warned me (hypocritically, of course) not to fall into.

*Which was inspired by a dream about Arthur, Awilda’s husband.

Miles is that part of me that shares a radical bone with the proto-Fascism in Debate, but that turns that bone in on itself until it snaps. He is not necessarily “accurate”, but he is precise. His false evidence nonetheless HINTS, by its very dubiousness, at an underlying TRUTH: that Slavery was not a white invention. Louis deflects this, by asserting what the Ego loves most to assert, when it is Healthy: its Individuality. Louis did not enslave the Jewish people; that was someone else. BY THE SAME TOKEN: Andrew Bernard did not take part in the Slave Trade. His ancestors were moral middle men; they did their social role, just as Kant would have wanted them to, and even as participants they might likely have been critics. This is not hypocrisy; it never was. It is Duty. Otherwise how am I to regard my Military Neighbour who drove all the way down to the fields of Rancho Bernardo High School in search of my dog when Pumpkin inexplicably got out?

The Dream was totally devoid of blame or finger-pointing. The rap battle, gone sour, was ultimately thrown by the very naysayer who had taken an ill turn. And besides: he was only ever an actor!! All the while, some hipster was seated nearby, directing the entire thing. It only ever was a game. And whatever aggression lingered in that realm was shed in its last moments of sportsmanship.

11:55 A.M.

February Fourth, 2018.

Epilogue: the last moments of the Dream had me as the Director. I must have been struggling to unearth the True Nature of Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong, if not the entire history of Jazz and Rock and Roll. Someone had told me that Slavery was invented a long time ago by white people, because at some point in ancient history African people themselves were white (a reversal of contemporary genetic common sense) and that that was when THEY got the idea to establish this Peculiar Institution.

The only bad thing American whites ever did was take credit for it. But my protagonist had to PROVE this. And he insisted on doing so, Alone.

Dm.A.A.

APOLOGETIC PSYCHOLOGY: The A.B.C’s of How to Accept Being a Criminal.

APOLOGETIC PSYCHOLOGY: The A.B.C’s of How to Accept Being a Criminal.

As far as I can recall, being in the right had nothing ever to do with following the group. Whenever any group of people were given freedom, they would usually decide matters by a vote that often had little if anything to do with the moral and legal dictates put upon them by their elders and superiors. And this sort of collective deviance found its justification in the systematic criticism, by the group, of those same elders and superiors. A popular motif was of course hypocrisy: Supposing that the superiors themselves were possessed of inferior virtue? Obviously, if we only valued the Law insofar as it served US, and we observed it only out of fear of personal disadvantage, then any authority in a position of sufficient power would have not only the ability but the motive to abuse it. Did this justify the mob of miscreants that were my peers? Veritably, no: because however sketchy the execution of the Law was, its Value was what sold it for me. It was simply a matter of maturity that I came to realize that the Value of the Commodity (the Law) was less than the set of Values that it was advertised and sold for.

The Group persisted, up through high school and into several generations that I witnessed of college students. I can only presume (and in most cases have no choice but to confess) that the tendency for group hypocrisy survives in many people up through old age and even gets in bed with the extremely elderly and infirm on his or her death-bed. At that point, when one has little left to lose, what does the Law amount to, really? It can only hold as much value as the Values that it was meant to represent, and only if those Values are convincing. Obviously, as a human being who craves solidarity with other humans, I can only ultimately stake my well-being on Values which are Universal, such as Love, Compassion, Generosity, Friendship, and Loyalty. Even the principle of Individuality, according to which I retain the felt right to forego all other values in pursuit of my own, is a Universal Principle; most of us at least would DREAM of doing so successfully. That would be a Life worth living and dying for. And that is a Value the likes of which one takes gladly to the grave.

It has become fashionable to speak of “Criminal Psychology”. Like so many dangerous memes, it has even become the ominous title of a Course of Study offered at most Colleges and Universities. The term is ironical, because it implies that Criminals are in some pivotal ways different from Civilians in their very Psyches. Of course, several alarms flair off in my own, private police station (wherein some of the greatest Western minds are my own personal Deputy sheriffs) upon the contemplation of this concept.

1.    The distinction between “Criminal” and “Civilian” is purely semantic. It is a strictly verbal device used by a system in order to categorize people, arguably with the intent of Control. (Foucault.)

2.    It passes judgment upon the SOULS (Psyches) of individuals who violate a set of often arbitrary social dictates. (Nietzsche.)

But those are just the Common Sense triggers. What looms most ominous is of course in the Depths: how are criminals psychically different from civilians?

3.    Criminals are only psychologically different if they exist beyond the Fourth Stage of Moral Development (above the Law) or prior to it (below the Law). [Kohlberg.]

Of course, Kohlberg all so famously posited that MOST individuals operated at the THIRD stage of Development, just one step PRIOR (and therefore BELOW) the Law. Does this mean that most people are criminals? At some point, perhaps this was not the case, because Laws were so simple and basic that only Social Deviants would break them. But nowadays, when it is a mark of genius to know enough Law to hold up in Court, it is not unlikely that you, too, are a criminal. But then: I do not doubt that of most of my readers.

Even if not, so what? If you happen to follow the Law without KNOWING it, even to the extent that your average member of the Fourth Rung does, (which still rests, demonstrably, below most lawyers, who must by necessity operate on the fifth rung if they are to exploit loopholes in the service of their paying clients) it is not because you hold a set of VALUES but rather that you are so AVERAGE in your self-interest that the Law accommodates you. Enter again the classic group dynamics I discussed, which followed us like a long and stalking morning shadow since we were in kindergarten or even daycare. Why does the Law serve those who live BELOW it and ignore and marginalize those who live ABOVE it? Put simply: it was inherited by the Group. That’s right: the same kids who got together to prank the school by tossing peanut butter at the ceilings, or who sprayed their names on the ceilings of their respective restrooms, or who smoked, drank, and fucked in the Hotels and blamed the “snitch” who turned them in during one of her panic attacks: those are the people who help write our laws.

I know what you are thinking: what got lost in translation?

Well, as it turns out, kids remember what hypocrites their elders were, and they carry on the tradition by force of usually unconscious habit. So you get to college age and you learn how to USE and even TWIST the Law IN YOUR FAVOUR. And of course this is easiest to DO in a GROUP because a Group possesses the capacity to punish social deviance. As I have said many times before, a mob of people working in unison is capable of more EVIL than any one individual could ever dream of. They simply have a capacity that is greater than the sum of the group’s parts, which is all ready, by the nature of being multiple, greater than any one person.

So I repeat what I opened this essay with, in different words: as far as I can remember, doing the Right Thing had less to do with following the GROUP and more to do with following one’s HEART. For in a world of chaos and hypocrisy one can at least confess that the SPIRIT of the Law is good. We would like IDEALLY to operate in a world of mutual solidarity, compassion, and self-respect. And even if that is a bit too much to ask of OTHER PEOPLE, one can at least rise up above the Mass of Hypocrites and demonstrate those cardinal virtues in one’s own behavior, with one’s own self and conscience as witness. And insofar as this necessitates a certain degree of elitism in order to be effective in a degenerate age, this renders one’s own SELF one’s only true jury of peers, for one would be peerless save for the company of other deviants, who have often their own paths to follow.

So I repeat the obvious: How I feel is my only moral imperative. What others feels is no concern of mine. The only reason why your conscience should contradict mine to any effect would be if yours were more effective in serving the Universal Principles that rules and regulations were supposed to represent. And this is all but impossible, owing to two salient facts:

1.    Universal Principles are Universal. That means that, in theory, at least, any individual who is growing morally will inevitably arrive at the same fundamental conclusions over a long enough period of time, and upon arrival he will be in the company of an elite society of individuals who would all agree with him at any turn, for both his predicament and the course of action that he deems proper to take in such a predicament would be ubiquitous and unassailable.

2.    Universal Principles are Unenforceable. You can’t legislate love, police friendship, or find a loophole in loyalty. You can only take action against violations of these principles AS AN INDIVIDUAL, and beyond that your extremity is God’s Opportunity, and no mortal’s.

By saying “how I feel” to be my only imperative, I am not advocating for emotivism. Feelings ought to be informed by Reason; the development of an Individual requires certain irrational Feelings to be Refined and Transmuted. But I repeat this: that there will be no Law higher than Conscience. This does not mean that I confine myself to my own actions. On the contrary, Universal Thinking is binding upon Others because outside of the Law disappear the boundaries that isolate people. As Foucault pointed out, the Individual is in many cases a product of Power Structures. But I maintain that there is an OTHER Individuality, expressed as the Jungian Self, and distinct from what Jung called the “social unit”, who is capable of imposing Moral Order upon his surroundings. This would of course be compromising to both tyrants and parasites on both sides of the Law. The Law was only ever the formalization of Groupthink, which by its very design was a simply rudimentary way to defy arbitrary authority and to carry on a hypocritical tradition. To be GOOD has nothing to DO with following the Law; in fact, to the extent that one FORGETS THE LAW TO EXIST, except when it serves a MORAL agenda, one is the very Height of Nobility.

Our Law is what forces us to confine our Wills to our Selves. Law dictates that we can have our own behavior policed, as well as serving the policing of our neighbours’ behaviours. But it robs us of the right to police our neighbor DIRECTLY when he violates a Principle that all of us SHOULD, by definition, hold Dear, because without it all Value and Meaning would dissolve, and Life would return to Nihilistic Chaos. Law is the very ANTITHESIS of the Moral Conscience and the well-being of that elusive entity that alone can wield it: the Individual. Law forbids us to take action against those who usurp our own progress and who attack the very foundations of Human Decency that Empathy and Evolution necessitate: Love, Trust, and Freedom. And Law can only serve its impersonal function so long as it serves those who live ABOVE it and can wield it effectively; it becomes Godless and Depraved when it works only to accommodate the hypocrites BELOW.

When the Law works only to serve those who were Lawless to begin with, and who threw the Values out with the Product, the System of Law produces a breeding ground for the polar opposite of Empathy: Narcissism. The human parasite finds a nook and cranny in every legal loophole. He works as a multiple agent at every stage of Moral Development, belonging all the while, at heart, to only the most base stages that degenerates and infants alone call Home. As the Officer of the Law foregoes his own free thought to equate “Legal” with “Righteous”, his close friend the con artist thrives in that gray area that, by the very nature of the Law, the Law itself cannot oversee, for the Law is a series of Restrictions placed upon the MIND, and only an infinite Mind that is unimpinged upon by these Restrictions can fathom things like Love, Loyalty, Friendship, and Empathy. A machine can be a citizen, but it cannot be a Good Human Being. All of the devices of the Human Intellect fall short of drawing a map of the Human Heart, for the Human Heart yearns above all else to be undefined and, as such, Free.

When a wrong is committed against the Heart, it is Felt for a long time. A restriction is placed upon the Heart’s expression that the Heart must work with. In the process, the Mind must itself exercise restrictions upon the Oppressor that restricted it. Yet it will only appear identical to its Oppressor in the eyes of the Blind Law Man who, BY HIS VERY NATURE, cannot SEE the Heart, for it belongs to that Nebulous Realm that no Law or Restriction can touch, so that only its expression – its Manifestation in the World – can be restrained. And this alone is enough for the Heart, which craves confirmation in the World, to suffer inestimably, even infinitely, for it is on such a dimension that the affront is registered: in the Infinite. Thus what would have been Heaven becomes Hell, and all because Heaven on Earth was lost to Hell on Earth. Karl Popper might argue that the former is futile because it only produces the latter. But in fact the former is essential to the survival of the Heart; the latter is homicidal to impose and suicidal to accept.

Neither the con artist nor his friend the Law Officer avails himself of those Values which protect, avenge, and heal the Heart. This has been condemned to the province of religion. Cancer protects. Scorpio avenges. Pisces heals. The remaining nine prepare each of the water signs for its sacred task. Even in the realm of Western Astrology, however, this task is submerged underwater and the signs are dispossessed of their “constraining” duty and turned, by the very nature of the false freedom IMPOSED UPON THEM, into a priori suspects of manipulation, cruelty, and weakness. And some even yield to these temptations and use their God-given natures as justification!!!

The Officer protects the con artist as well as the Group that most empowers him. The con artist claims to protect both Group and Law, but he does so only to the extent that it serves himself, even if he does so at the expense of not only the Moral Universals but all so the Moral Universalist who is then framed and made to look like a con artist because he is found out to be a Criminal.

This is why Mike Ehrmentraut says to Price: “I didn’t say you were a bad guy. I said you were a criminal.” Being Good and Evil OUGHT TO, by its Nature, be our Main Concern. The Law is a mere FOOTNOTE IN that, and the psychology of the Criminal is simply one of two:

1.    Those who exploit the system for personal gain, narcissistically.

2.    Those who regard the system as just an other immoral and amoral obstacle to Goodness, empathically.

The former live below the Law. The latter live above it. And the Law serves, by its VERY NATURE, the former.

So if you had to decide to be a criminal or a civilian, which would YOU choose?

Dm.A.A.

PUBLIC LETTER TO ANTHONY RICCIO:

There really is no way around this. You have to return my books to me. They are my personal property. I won’t have any more of my property lost or damaged on behalf of ignorance, pettiness, and neglect. I let you keep them, for some short time, in the false hopes that they would teach you the lessons that, had you learned them by now, would have prompted you to return the books upon completion. There is quite a number of things that are like that. They are non-negotiable. For instance, you figured out very quickly that the significance of your near-death experience was that you had to learn to be generous. This you managed by helping Chandler find a safe haven from his adversaries. Yet you forgot this when you tried to hold me in some illusory debt that obviously I will never owe you. This is my point: all of these lessons, if they are true lessons, will allow us to arrive upon a common ground. I do not need you to tell me what they are; I know them all ready. I read these books long before you did. And nothing that you read in any other book can mitigate their significance. If you still find some excuse for refusing to perform your duties to me, then you clearly have not internalized what you were supposed to, and you will not do so by that avenue. I can no longer condone this. You had them in your possession for an allotted time, and that time is now exhausted. I will not ask you again. Return them to me in the manner that I dictated. And remember that even if I owed some debt to you that this debt would still take precedence. And I owe you nothing. I do not feel that I owe you money. You may pretend to feel that I do. But I know that I don’t. I do not need to go outside of my own feelings in order to determine right from wrong; it’s YOUR responsibility to accommodate them. If you continue to contradict them then I must take action against you. Had I owed you any thing, I would have felt differently, and I would have acted on that feeling. Many times I’ve done this. That this letter is convenient to me now only proves this much: that I have the easy job. Do not make it difficult. It would be no less convenient for me to earn the money you pretend I owe you and to pay it back to you. But that convenience would only be the case were it true that I actually owed it to you. This is not the case, and I cannot afford to pretend that it is so. Hence I absolve myself of any suspicions of wrongdoing. That this is convenient to me only follows logically from the fact that I am in the Right. I am not prone to self-interest. What is convenient to me is only that which is just. And you shall find that to be the case for most people.

Dm.A.A.