Post by johnbc on Jul 20, 2020 23:22:16 GMT
The problem with personality is that it is not born ready and has to go through a series of evolutionary mutations before it reaches a level where some intellectual activity is possible. This brings us to the old problem of the layers of personality, which is always a useful tool for analyzing these situations and which can be used as a descriptive instrument of a phenomenon that anyone can observe.
Looking at anyone’s conduct and your own, you will see that all the elements that make up one personality are present in the other as well. We all have basically the same instincts, impulses, needs, base feelings, and the difference between one human being and another is not in the psychological elements that compose it, but only in the form the whole takes on. This form, in turn, changes over time. While all of these elements are there, and the form is also changeable, it is possible to grasp the shape of each moment of a person’s life by asking the following questions: What is the overriding goal that guides that person’s efforts together? What is she looking for all the time? What is she looking for deep within the various goals, emotions, situations and states she experiences? What is the key to all this?
Layer 1
If you look at a newborn baby, you will see that this creature’s first fundamental interest is the discovery of its own body. A baby watches his own body, moves his limbs, because he is trying to gain mastery of something that is still strange to him. Take, for example, the interest the baby may have for his own foot. He takes his foot and stares for a long time.
Another typical thing in the newborn’s life is that he lives in a state of perpetual pursuit of self-satisfaction. This is the first center of interest that is never abandoned. We all have an interest in our bodily well-being and our own body. No one is totally indifferent to their own body.
Even an ascetic has to take his own body into account. He is able to distinguish between the various sensations he has and to consider some pleasurable and others extremely unpleasant. Even the very body discipline that the individual imposes is still an effort to appropriate the body. As you are trying to master your body, you are trying to customize it.
For example, if you are going to take a prolonged fast, you are trying to dominate your body and proving that it is yours, that you are not at its disposal, lost in that set, to that system of organs and impulses, but that there is a center that dominates all that. This effort to master your own body, to personalize it, is the first thing you’ll see a baby doing. This is what I call the first layer of personality. This first layer is always present, you never lose it.
Layer 2
It turns out that over the years there is a passage to other centers of interest, where body instincts begin to address various elements of the outside world. For example, the boy likes to eat some things and not others. It personalizes the expression of his instinct. We all have the basic hunger instinct, which is about the same, but not all people want to eat the same things. You will see that the kid prefers some toys and not others, some activities over others. This means that he is taking possession of a circle a little wider than his own body.
We say that this second layer is the circle of instincts: things that extend beyond the body. Selecting these instincts and desires and meeting them is an effort that goes far beyond the domain of one’s own body, because most of these instincts no longer target their own bodies, but things, people, situations and objects. In this period, the individual is forming the circle of his predominant impulses and desires.
It is evident that he has risen when, for example, he has the alternative of eating several different things. A newborn has no such alternative as it is only drinking milk or those baby food. He does not know those things sufficiently to be able to select them. Imagine how much experience the subject needs to have to be able to identify the difference between a baby food and another, and to know that one he likes it and the other he doesn’t. At first he eats what he likes and dislikes, without noticing the difference, but then personalizing it. This personalization of tastes, desires and preferences is the second layer, which also remains in the rest of his life. That is, we are constantly selecting objects, situations and sensations that we want and do not want, others that we just tolerate and so on.
Now each of these layers that we go through remain in us forever. Each is integrated into the next, becoming one aspect of the next as it transcends and embraces it immeasurably. See that the whole circle of activities that a three- or four-year-old boy likes and dislikes infinitely transcends the size and sphere of his own body. But the body at first was like the whole world to him. In the second layer the body remains there along with the body’s impulse of appropriation, only that it has been automated and is no longer an object of attention. It shifts to the background as the focus of interest shifts to a larger circle, including that one as a part, instrument or medium of him.
Layer 3
Then the circle of social relations opens for the individual, which also infinitely transcends the circle of his mere tastes and bodily instincts. He will have to acquire new codes and new possibilities for action that in the previous layer were inconceivable to him.
For example, a boy in the second layer does not differentiate very well between people and things in their conduct or in their treatment of people and things. The difference between a self-willed object, such as a human being or even a cat, and an inert toy is not very clear to him, because he sees them only as his objects of desire and not as external entities that have an independent existence. The third layer then implies knowing that others are not me, that they are also generative centers of action, decision, meaning, etc., and that I cannot submit everyone to my desire.
This is an absolutely formidable discovery when the subject discovers that he doesn’t rule the world, that he will have to relate to all these beings and learn the rule of the game. To get what you want, it’s not enough to just scream or push.
Little baby imposes his will crying. Soon after, he learns how to push himself to get what he wants. When a baby is dealing with a toy, for example, and the toy doesn’t go the way he wants, he breaks the toy. If he is playing with his little brother and he doesn’t go the way he wants, he beats down his little brother. That’s because for him it’s the very same thing. It is just a matter of imposing your physical strength on the outer universe. This is still the second layer.
In the third layer, the individual realizes that there is a huge fabric of relationships, rules, signs, the whole world of a social language that is evidently not only verbal language, but all possible codes, such as looks, gestures, etc. It is already a world enormously more complicated than the mere instinctive deal between the body as the carrier of desires and instincts and the physical world around.
Layer 4
From this accumulation of experiences a fourth circle is formed: the world of historically consolidated feelings. There is already a story there. Things have a temporal significance; the world of time opens to the individual. The person already has things that are in the past. The distinction between past, present and future becomes important. The individual is able to make a history of his successes and frustrations and from these he outlines hopes, goals and dreams. It’s all about personalizing the emotional world.
If you ask me where the ‘I’ formation comes in, I don’t know exactly, because it’s all ‘me’ after all. But by the time you reach the fourth layer, you already have a personal history and the value of things is judged in terms of time — past and future — . Here, dreams and aspirations are outlined for the first time. One begins to dream of the future, of something one would like to have or to be, and the awareness of the abyss between the real and the imaginary situation deepens. It turns out that above or around the situation, in fact, there is a whole world of signs, aspirations, and symbols that, to some extent, exist only for the individual. Part of this world may be communed with other people, but it is sharply distinct from the physical world. One knows that all of that is real, but it is not physically present.
Of course there is a tendency to say that this whole world is within the person. However, the “inside” is after all just a spatial concept and does not correctly describe what happens, because this whole world of dreams and aspirations is definitely not spatial, it is nowhere. For example, all physical sensation is localized. Either you have a visual, or auditory, or tactile sensation — if you have pain, it is located somewhere or in some places on the body — but emotions and feelings are not localized. We cannot say that they are inside the body, for in that case they would be located somewhere, when in reality they are nowhere. In a way it is even hard to tell if they are within us or if we are within them. An emotion spreads its color over the horizon of one’s existence, to the point that when one is sad, sadness is expressed even in one’s view of the physical world around. Everything seems more dim, gray, dark. If you are afraid, everything seems frightening to you. We can say that on the one hand this world of feelings and emotions is “within you” in the sense that it is not accessible to other people, since only you are feeling it — even if one person feels the same way, you only know this from external signals; there is no immediate co-participation of feelings — ; but on the other hand, as these emotions encompass the whole of your experience, it is you who is within them as if you were in a bubble from which you cannot escape. A state of fear and sadness surrounds you and you cannot get out of it. There is even the expression “I need to get out of this.” There would be no such expression if people did not really have this experience of being within an atmosphere of feelings, as if the feeling were spread into space like a bubble.
Just as in the first and second layers the baby was insistently seeking his physical satisfaction — in the first acting only on his own body and in the second acting on surrounding objects — in the fourth the person is also seeking satisfaction, but in a subtler mode that is emotional satisfaction, which we call happiness. It is the pursuit of happiness and the escape from unhappiness. This will forever form the constellation of symbols that represent for us happiness, misfortune, joy, sadness, and so on. Of course it is a period of intense search for self-satisfaction. Take, for example, teenagers who are persistently looking for situations that seem stimulating to them: parties, sports, outings, sometimes even trouble and adventure. This is the pursuit of happiness. The individual wants to feel certain things. It is the obsessive search to feel certain things and not feel others.
Layer 5
This search is still within us, but there is a point where it runs out, and the mere search for feeling no longer solves the situation, since in some ways the experience becomes repetitive and always doomed to failure. There is a time when the individual realizes that, if he really wants to stabilize certain feelings, the first thing he has to do is to feel good about himself, and that is no longer the same as seeking happiness.
Happiness is always something that comes from outside: it is a situation, a state, any gift you receive. For example, if you fall in love with a girl, your happiness depends on her repaying you, and the most unhappiness will be her indifference. There comes a time when the succession of these emotional experiences is over and the individual realizes that in some ways he is the author of his own states, that much of what he feels does not depend on what is happening or what others do, but his own. It is the moment when he needs to take possession of himself, no longer in the bodily sense as in the first layer, but in the total existential sense. That is, he has to show that he is the master of his own destiny.
From then on the criterion is no longer happiness versus unhappiness, but victory versus defeat. The individual has to win and prove to himself first — not to others — that he is something. It may have some coefficient of exhibitionism as well, but the key is to take possession of his strength, to feel like a creator of situations that depend solely on him. During this period, the coefficient of happiness or unhappiness received from outside is no longer so important, because even the factors that can depress him are seen as challenges that he has to overcome. In this period the individual has to come out victorious in everything but is just trying to prove something to himself.
What matters is subjective victory, being able to look at himself and feel a certain pride. Being proud of himself is important during this time. Let us keep in mind that in each of these layers the former are retained, but they have now become instruments for achieving a goal that embraces and transcends them.
The individual who is in full layer five is looking above all for victory, the feeling of his own worth, his own ability, his own strength. On this he integrates, turning back and forth, his whole emotional world, which becomes a factor of victory or defeat.
For example, he realizes that he must have some control over his feelings. He must suppress certain feelings, otherwise they can hinder him in the struggle to assert his own worth. Those feelings are still there, but they integrate differently into another higher set. Similarly, everything he learned from social relations, language, signs, etc, is there, but now organized according to a new objective.
Layer 6
But someday we all get out of our teens and we have to do more than prove to ourselves our own worth. When he has reached that minimum and indispensable level of self-confidence without which survival in the social environment is not possible, the individual has to move to another layer. In this layer, what matters is no longer the individual feeling that he is worth something — no longer feeling his own strength — but getting some real result.
For example, if you get a job it’s no use feeling it’s great. You have to do something that works within your set of tasks. You must have an objective result, even if it is worth little to you in terms of self-assertion — layer five — or in terms of happiness and unhappiness — layer four — and so on. It is the domain of practical life, of practical needs.
We can say that this sixth layer is a highly accounting one, where all that matters is credit overcoming debt. Some result you have to get. Evidently during this period you are concerned about schedules and the distribution of your energies. You know, for example, that you cannot have rest or repose periods at the sole discretion of your physical well-being, but that your rest and effort must fit within a machine, a gear that aims at goals that are not yours, but you have to make it work as well as possible.
In this period, then, the individual adapts to external demands, but aiming for a result that will benefit him. This is not a psychological benefit — psychologically there may even be a harm — but one makes a tradeoff; enters a trade. He sacrifices some of his self image, his time and his happiness to earn an income at the end of the month or at the end of the year. But this is some practical goal. Of course, this does not only apply to “strictu sensu” economic life. In various domains of life one learns to have a practical sense without which one cannot survive as an adult in society.
Layer 7
After gaining this mastery, one realizes that he is living with others who are also pursuing the same goals and advantages and who do not consider him to be superior to them. What an amazing thing! For the first time you discover that you are not the only one who has goals and that others do not care much about you. Each has its own goals and desires, its organizational scheme that will not allow you to interfere in any way.
For example, if you are very busy or sick and cannot do a certain job, and want someone to do it instead, you will not always find who does it, because others are busy too, especially with their own goals. You realize that people have goals of their own, and they do not consider, surprisingly, that your goals are more important. You enter another sphere, where the balance of rights and duties is the fundamental thing. That is, it is no longer just the organization of your life that matters. It is not just the fitting of your life into a larger gear that yields something to you. It is the fitting of your project and your personal organization into a multitude of relationships with others who have their own goals and who consider themselves, like you, the center of the universe.
In this way you develop a sense of what is today called citizenship. Citizenship is knowing that you have rights and duties, both limited, and that others also have. This sense of rights and duties comes to you not in the abstract form of a civil or criminal code, nor in the form of the Ten Commandments or in any abstract political philosophy, but in the form of the current code of loyalty in the place where you are.
These rules you will have to learn. They are not only intended to produce income, but to get you community support. You must have a place in the community. You have to be respected, liked, even loved if possible. You must please people and be fair to them, according to the standard of justice that is in place there. This standard of justice, when judged philosophically from a greater distance, may seem like a real monstrosity, as it seems to me.
In this regard read Aleksandr Zinovyev, “The Reality of Communism,” and you will see the totally predatory set of codes that the individual must obey to be accepted by his group, his company, and so on. At this stage, when you are in this seventh layer, the rightness or wrongness of the various codes is not objectively relevant. What matters is learning the codes and knowing how to practice them. Of course, group opinion becomes extremely important to you because your future depends on it. To make way in society you will need to be accepted by some people.
By absorbing these codes you become a person like others: you become a citizen with your rights and duties and, having your position recognized, you get the minimum support from the community without which you cannot live. Of course, there may already be a slight concern about the objective justice or injustice of your conduct. But while it may be present, this concern is not the center of attention. You are having more work to learn and adapt to the environment codes and will not necessarily judge them.
Layer 8
At this point you are practically a mature man, but for that you have one thing left: to remember everything you have done and, once you have achieved a certain social position, to be able to examine it critically. It’s time to ask yourself certain questions: What have I done with my life? Is this fair or unfair? This is what I want? Isn’t that what I want? Am I a failure? Am I a success? This self-examination puts you, in the plane of history, in the fourth layer. But now not only in the sense of finding and defining objects that symbolize happiness or unhappiness for you, but in the sense of knowing what you have done for your own happiness or unhappiness and facing yourself for the first time as a subject of your acts. Only when you are at this point you can said to be a mature man: one who is not just a citizen but someone. He is self-conscious and capable of judging himself. This is extremely difficult.
Everything I am describing is proper to the human species, animals do not have it. For example, the animal learns all living codes in one day because they are so simple: you obey the strongest and keep yourself quiet. There is nothing more to learn after that. Seeing a documentary about wolves, I noticed that the strongest chief wolf, when talking to the others, kept its tail raised and the other lowered its tail. It is already a code. The guy with the tail up is the boss. Either you go there, hit him and force him to lower his tail, or you lower yours and keep quiet. These codes are very simple. It is unknown in the animal kingdom any long learning of trial and error. They definitely do not learn this by trial and error. This business is already in the genetic code and I think it takes just one experience to know for the rest of your life.
In humans it does not work that way. This business is enormously complicated. Especially because you will live with many more members of your own kind than any animal will ever do. Not only live directly, but imagine all the people you have met throughout your life, all the immense variety of relationships you had with them, plus those who influenced your life from afar, such as the guy that was president and signed a decree that changed your economic life, or people you saw on television, at the movies etc. It is a crowd of people. No animal has ever had access to this. Even quantitatively the situation is more complicated.
Thus we see that it is proper for humans to cross all layers. However, something is characteristic: for those in one layer, the objectives of the next are incomprehensible. Consider a baby who is in the second layer. For him everything in the world around him is an object and therefore only he exists as a subject. He tries to physically master things, for example by forcing the toy or puppy to do what he wants. The second layer is where you force nature. This means that the next step, which is an intercom and negotiation step, is unimaginable to you. Any signal coming from one of the upper layers will be interpreted by the individual within the parameters of the layer itself where he is situated.
For you to see how poor is the situation in the society in which you live, look around and see the multitude of incapable people who want to be happy and who count on the protection of others for it. These are people who live seeking attention, affection, a little space for them, but who are not able and do not try to be able to do anything. People who are fleeing life’s challenges, that is, not even in the fifth layer yet. This is a tragedy.
It is only in the eighth layer that you are dealing with an adult man, that is, with someone who knows that the fabric of his social obligations is not everything.
Someone who knows that there is beyond that a dimension of the meaning of life, morality, moral conscience, right and wrong, and so on. Not that before one did not know what is right and wrong. But it is only when this point is reached that the individual effectively internalizes the question of right and wrong. For anyone in the seventh, sixth, fifth layer, etc, right and wrong are elements of the outside world. If you are in the second layer, right and wrong are physical forces that are coming upon you. You stop doing wrong because otherwise your father will hit you. If you are in the third layer, there is the game element. This is when the subject learns, for example, that he can pretend to be nice. He can do one thing but pretend he is doing something else — not that he couldn’t do it before, but there he gets mastery of it — . If he is in the fourth layer, everything for him is a matter of happiness or unhappiness, how he is feeling. Good is what he loves, that makes him feel good, and so on. In the fifth layer, good is that which gives him victory, which reinforces his ego, and what depresses him seems to be the enemy, the devil. And so on.
But it is only when one reaches the eighth layer that the problem of good and evil actually begins to exist for the individual. The eighth layer is a crisis, where one can find that one has failed in the sense of life, that one’s life is meaningless. This is where one can repent of one’s sins and try to relocate the command.
Layer 9
Usually adult humans stop at the eighth layer. But some create a new layer where they discover that all those perplexities, contradictions, and difficulties they have observed in reviewing their own lives are structural components of human life. They discover that all human beings had the same doubts and sufferings. Some learn that these problems are not only their own, but of humanity. And they learn it through culture. They learn by reading, learning, and seeing thousands of examples from other lives, becoming interested in lives that passed a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years ago as if they were their own lives. This means that their pattern of humanity broadens formidably to encompass millions of people — real or merely imagined — that they will never know. Through this effort to absorb universal human experience, these individuals, if they cannot find a solution to their personal dramas, find a new reason for living. This is what I call the intellectual personality.
You acquire an intellectual personality when completely everything that happens to you is no longer experienced merely as your personal problem, but as an example, symbol, or suggestion of enormously larger problems that may have no solution. Thinking about these problems and spending time with them becomes one of the great purposes of human life.
Layer 10
The problem of moral personality arises only from the moment that the subject has an intellectual personality, because it is the intellectual personality that will highlight in the individual the idea of universal value as something that exists for us. Without this, how could we morally judge our actions? Below a certain level of personality integration that allows the outpouring of this higher intellectual personality, strictly speaking we can say that the subject’s acts are morally irrelevant — this in the sense of kantian morality, not social morality, for his acts have influence over others.
The moral problem we are talking about arises when, by conceiving that there are universal values in itself, which it is up to him to realize, the individual refuses to do so. But how can we demand this from the one who does not have an individual synthesis formed, from an individual who is still developing within the collective mindset and who, when he errs, errs with others?
The tenth layer signifies the individual who conceives of himself as representative of the human species, as being self-conscious and responsible for all his actions. It is, in short, the “transcendental self.”
In layer 10 the individual observes himself from such a point of view that any other human being in his place would have to look at himself that way. Here is man before reason, before his superior faculties, possessing the capacity to evaluate the rationality of his acts in absolute terms.
Socrates, in arguing, knew that the conditions of truth that existed for him were the same as those for anyone else, because his thinking expressed the self-awareness of his own universality.
Layer 10 represents the achievement of a definite role within the hierarchy of humanity. To be in this layer is to be permanently conscious of the universality of all acts. Awareness that the rational animal, in general, must do in this way under this or that circumstance. Acts then acquire universal significance, though not universal scope.
Layer 11
To the extent that he has a superior intellectual personality and a transcendent self capable of overriding his entire existence and judging it, as he reaches this point, of being able to judge his existence and acts as if it were above himself, is that the subject renders satisfaction before the court of Humanity, of History.
The plan of universality, apoditic thinking, are layer 10 elements. We find there a universally valid theory, but acting in a universal way is already different. The next step would be to judge the whole of life in view of the actions performed and their consequences for humanity.
Achieving certainty with objectivity does not attribute historical meaning to the acts of the individual. It is like having a universality, however, theoretical.
Layer 11 represents the individual action in the whole of the history. It does not matter whether the actions are large or small, because the key here is to know exactly where the individual is situated, not just as a rational animal, but within history as a whole, within the process of evolution of the human species. When the individual achieves a historical role, his action is judged by humanity, reaching a global dimension.
The prototype of layer 11 is the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte. He intended to find out how far the power of an individual could be reached to the point of changing the course of history. If we study his biography we will not understand it by trying to explain it on the grounds of previous layers.
When acting on historical ends, one acts on something that does not yet exist, which implies that such action cannot be evaluated either for its social content or practical benefit, because it is above it. We will only find the key to the behavior if we climb higher. Then the acts are unified and take on a complete form.
Napoleon had no determined plan to execute and this is his characteristic feature: the absolute absence of a spirit of mission. What he possessed was a spirit of trial that led him to experience human freedom and the strength of the individual to the extent permitted. Napoleon sought to direct this towards goodness, as he understood it.
Napoleon cannot be defined in terms of a simple desire for power, which in many cases is irrelevant to History. However, some characters leave a mark and those who know what that mark is, and what judgment History will make of them, reach layer 11.
Napoleon was aware that he had indelibly altered history, which rare men have achieved. This is not due to the amount of accumulated power that can later be erased or reversed. There may even be a tragic mistake when the effects of actions become exactly the opposite of the imagined.
In layer 11 the subject is positioned as a piece of history, which at a specific moment, with full certainty, performs certain actions that will change the course of the human collectivity. There is no room for everyone at layer 11.
Nature itself is hierarchical from beginning to end. There is no natural democracy, because it is evident that people have different degrees of health or intelligence. What really happens is a selection process, although it is difficult to admit that there are better gifted individuals than others.
Layer 12
Mystical psychologies deal fundamentally with the meaning of the individual’s life, of the individual before his ultimate moral responsibility, something that is above the character, something that Humanity itself does not know. It is fundamentally the individual as Universal Man, as Christ, as pastor and responsible for all humanity.
Layer 12 consists of the action of the individual as a function of the ultimate purpose of all things. For Gandhi — who is a prototype of layer 12 — only his relationship with a purpose that transcends the biological life and life of the human species is of interest. When both were over, God would be left, and it is waiting for this moment that his action is guided.
In Gandhi’s case, not even the political objective explains his behavior, since he did not accept India’s independence in any way, placing moral demands far above what humans usually imagine. Gandhi acted just the opposite of political reasoning, appealing to the center of the issue and offering as a guarantee not only his own life, but his postmortem fate. In layer 12 all actions are guided by the following rule: “What will God think of this?” Such is the subject who, according to the Bible, walks before God and knows what He is thinking.
Normally, even an exceptional person does not submit all acts to this criterion. The confrontation with God presupposes that man must be able to conceive his every act in an eternal light.
If we have a decision to make, we can do this or that for layer 5 reasons — it strengthens me, I feel more confident; layer 6 — will give result; layer 7 — it is a duty that it’s up to me; layer 8 — this has logic within my biography; layer 9 — this is what the duty of intelligence imposes. Even in layer 9 is presumed to have the existence of the world, for what sense would it make for practical gain if it were to end tomorrow?
Duty fulfillment regarding a social role presupposes the existence of people who have an expectation regarding the occupant of that role. To act on the coherence of one’s own biography presupposes that it must continue. Acting toward goals dictated by culture and intelligence presupposes that there are achievable ends within the time frame of a historical existence. But if the individual acts solely on the basis of an end, he is acting precisely on the inexistence of a world around him. With or without the world, he would act the same way. Acts then acquire a supra-temporal, supra-historical meaning, that is, eternally man should do so before the world exists or when it ceases to exist. Here action is taken as the direct expression of a divine quality that prescind the existence of the world.
Anyone who believes in God eventually proceeds inspired by the eternal, though it is difficult to understand someone who acts permanently, such as Gandhi, for whom we must use another key of behavior. It’s as if he knows what God wants, as if he is talking to God all the time.
An accomplished holy man acts on the eternal sense of existence, has no other motive, not even History
In layer 12 the actions of the individual seem too complex and enigmatic. To understand the actions of a saint, just believing in him. Then everything falls into place, we begin to realize a coherence, an explanatory principle of actions. This occurs regardless of vocational motivations that have arisen in the course of biography, related to the previous layers, that may have contributed to put the subject in a certain way, but are not enough to clarify the unfolding of his history.
We can speak of holiness only when one’s relationship with an eternal God motivates each of his actions. Not only accidental acts, but all, one by one, there is no single act that can be explained outside this dialogue. Who does the guy talk to, who does he respond to? If we erase this connection, his life becomes a collection of meaningless acts. There are individuals who are already born in layer 12, so much so that as they go through the antecedents they are quickly absorbed.
Looking at anyone’s conduct and your own, you will see that all the elements that make up one personality are present in the other as well. We all have basically the same instincts, impulses, needs, base feelings, and the difference between one human being and another is not in the psychological elements that compose it, but only in the form the whole takes on. This form, in turn, changes over time. While all of these elements are there, and the form is also changeable, it is possible to grasp the shape of each moment of a person’s life by asking the following questions: What is the overriding goal that guides that person’s efforts together? What is she looking for all the time? What is she looking for deep within the various goals, emotions, situations and states she experiences? What is the key to all this?
Layer 1
If you look at a newborn baby, you will see that this creature’s first fundamental interest is the discovery of its own body. A baby watches his own body, moves his limbs, because he is trying to gain mastery of something that is still strange to him. Take, for example, the interest the baby may have for his own foot. He takes his foot and stares for a long time.
Another typical thing in the newborn’s life is that he lives in a state of perpetual pursuit of self-satisfaction. This is the first center of interest that is never abandoned. We all have an interest in our bodily well-being and our own body. No one is totally indifferent to their own body.
Even an ascetic has to take his own body into account. He is able to distinguish between the various sensations he has and to consider some pleasurable and others extremely unpleasant. Even the very body discipline that the individual imposes is still an effort to appropriate the body. As you are trying to master your body, you are trying to customize it.
For example, if you are going to take a prolonged fast, you are trying to dominate your body and proving that it is yours, that you are not at its disposal, lost in that set, to that system of organs and impulses, but that there is a center that dominates all that. This effort to master your own body, to personalize it, is the first thing you’ll see a baby doing. This is what I call the first layer of personality. This first layer is always present, you never lose it.
Layer 2
It turns out that over the years there is a passage to other centers of interest, where body instincts begin to address various elements of the outside world. For example, the boy likes to eat some things and not others. It personalizes the expression of his instinct. We all have the basic hunger instinct, which is about the same, but not all people want to eat the same things. You will see that the kid prefers some toys and not others, some activities over others. This means that he is taking possession of a circle a little wider than his own body.
We say that this second layer is the circle of instincts: things that extend beyond the body. Selecting these instincts and desires and meeting them is an effort that goes far beyond the domain of one’s own body, because most of these instincts no longer target their own bodies, but things, people, situations and objects. In this period, the individual is forming the circle of his predominant impulses and desires.
It is evident that he has risen when, for example, he has the alternative of eating several different things. A newborn has no such alternative as it is only drinking milk or those baby food. He does not know those things sufficiently to be able to select them. Imagine how much experience the subject needs to have to be able to identify the difference between a baby food and another, and to know that one he likes it and the other he doesn’t. At first he eats what he likes and dislikes, without noticing the difference, but then personalizing it. This personalization of tastes, desires and preferences is the second layer, which also remains in the rest of his life. That is, we are constantly selecting objects, situations and sensations that we want and do not want, others that we just tolerate and so on.
Now each of these layers that we go through remain in us forever. Each is integrated into the next, becoming one aspect of the next as it transcends and embraces it immeasurably. See that the whole circle of activities that a three- or four-year-old boy likes and dislikes infinitely transcends the size and sphere of his own body. But the body at first was like the whole world to him. In the second layer the body remains there along with the body’s impulse of appropriation, only that it has been automated and is no longer an object of attention. It shifts to the background as the focus of interest shifts to a larger circle, including that one as a part, instrument or medium of him.
Layer 3
Then the circle of social relations opens for the individual, which also infinitely transcends the circle of his mere tastes and bodily instincts. He will have to acquire new codes and new possibilities for action that in the previous layer were inconceivable to him.
For example, a boy in the second layer does not differentiate very well between people and things in their conduct or in their treatment of people and things. The difference between a self-willed object, such as a human being or even a cat, and an inert toy is not very clear to him, because he sees them only as his objects of desire and not as external entities that have an independent existence. The third layer then implies knowing that others are not me, that they are also generative centers of action, decision, meaning, etc., and that I cannot submit everyone to my desire.
This is an absolutely formidable discovery when the subject discovers that he doesn’t rule the world, that he will have to relate to all these beings and learn the rule of the game. To get what you want, it’s not enough to just scream or push.
Little baby imposes his will crying. Soon after, he learns how to push himself to get what he wants. When a baby is dealing with a toy, for example, and the toy doesn’t go the way he wants, he breaks the toy. If he is playing with his little brother and he doesn’t go the way he wants, he beats down his little brother. That’s because for him it’s the very same thing. It is just a matter of imposing your physical strength on the outer universe. This is still the second layer.
In the third layer, the individual realizes that there is a huge fabric of relationships, rules, signs, the whole world of a social language that is evidently not only verbal language, but all possible codes, such as looks, gestures, etc. It is already a world enormously more complicated than the mere instinctive deal between the body as the carrier of desires and instincts and the physical world around.
Layer 4
From this accumulation of experiences a fourth circle is formed: the world of historically consolidated feelings. There is already a story there. Things have a temporal significance; the world of time opens to the individual. The person already has things that are in the past. The distinction between past, present and future becomes important. The individual is able to make a history of his successes and frustrations and from these he outlines hopes, goals and dreams. It’s all about personalizing the emotional world.
If you ask me where the ‘I’ formation comes in, I don’t know exactly, because it’s all ‘me’ after all. But by the time you reach the fourth layer, you already have a personal history and the value of things is judged in terms of time — past and future — . Here, dreams and aspirations are outlined for the first time. One begins to dream of the future, of something one would like to have or to be, and the awareness of the abyss between the real and the imaginary situation deepens. It turns out that above or around the situation, in fact, there is a whole world of signs, aspirations, and symbols that, to some extent, exist only for the individual. Part of this world may be communed with other people, but it is sharply distinct from the physical world. One knows that all of that is real, but it is not physically present.
Of course there is a tendency to say that this whole world is within the person. However, the “inside” is after all just a spatial concept and does not correctly describe what happens, because this whole world of dreams and aspirations is definitely not spatial, it is nowhere. For example, all physical sensation is localized. Either you have a visual, or auditory, or tactile sensation — if you have pain, it is located somewhere or in some places on the body — but emotions and feelings are not localized. We cannot say that they are inside the body, for in that case they would be located somewhere, when in reality they are nowhere. In a way it is even hard to tell if they are within us or if we are within them. An emotion spreads its color over the horizon of one’s existence, to the point that when one is sad, sadness is expressed even in one’s view of the physical world around. Everything seems more dim, gray, dark. If you are afraid, everything seems frightening to you. We can say that on the one hand this world of feelings and emotions is “within you” in the sense that it is not accessible to other people, since only you are feeling it — even if one person feels the same way, you only know this from external signals; there is no immediate co-participation of feelings — ; but on the other hand, as these emotions encompass the whole of your experience, it is you who is within them as if you were in a bubble from which you cannot escape. A state of fear and sadness surrounds you and you cannot get out of it. There is even the expression “I need to get out of this.” There would be no such expression if people did not really have this experience of being within an atmosphere of feelings, as if the feeling were spread into space like a bubble.
Just as in the first and second layers the baby was insistently seeking his physical satisfaction — in the first acting only on his own body and in the second acting on surrounding objects — in the fourth the person is also seeking satisfaction, but in a subtler mode that is emotional satisfaction, which we call happiness. It is the pursuit of happiness and the escape from unhappiness. This will forever form the constellation of symbols that represent for us happiness, misfortune, joy, sadness, and so on. Of course it is a period of intense search for self-satisfaction. Take, for example, teenagers who are persistently looking for situations that seem stimulating to them: parties, sports, outings, sometimes even trouble and adventure. This is the pursuit of happiness. The individual wants to feel certain things. It is the obsessive search to feel certain things and not feel others.
Layer 5
This search is still within us, but there is a point where it runs out, and the mere search for feeling no longer solves the situation, since in some ways the experience becomes repetitive and always doomed to failure. There is a time when the individual realizes that, if he really wants to stabilize certain feelings, the first thing he has to do is to feel good about himself, and that is no longer the same as seeking happiness.
Happiness is always something that comes from outside: it is a situation, a state, any gift you receive. For example, if you fall in love with a girl, your happiness depends on her repaying you, and the most unhappiness will be her indifference. There comes a time when the succession of these emotional experiences is over and the individual realizes that in some ways he is the author of his own states, that much of what he feels does not depend on what is happening or what others do, but his own. It is the moment when he needs to take possession of himself, no longer in the bodily sense as in the first layer, but in the total existential sense. That is, he has to show that he is the master of his own destiny.
From then on the criterion is no longer happiness versus unhappiness, but victory versus defeat. The individual has to win and prove to himself first — not to others — that he is something. It may have some coefficient of exhibitionism as well, but the key is to take possession of his strength, to feel like a creator of situations that depend solely on him. During this period, the coefficient of happiness or unhappiness received from outside is no longer so important, because even the factors that can depress him are seen as challenges that he has to overcome. In this period the individual has to come out victorious in everything but is just trying to prove something to himself.
What matters is subjective victory, being able to look at himself and feel a certain pride. Being proud of himself is important during this time. Let us keep in mind that in each of these layers the former are retained, but they have now become instruments for achieving a goal that embraces and transcends them.
The individual who is in full layer five is looking above all for victory, the feeling of his own worth, his own ability, his own strength. On this he integrates, turning back and forth, his whole emotional world, which becomes a factor of victory or defeat.
For example, he realizes that he must have some control over his feelings. He must suppress certain feelings, otherwise they can hinder him in the struggle to assert his own worth. Those feelings are still there, but they integrate differently into another higher set. Similarly, everything he learned from social relations, language, signs, etc, is there, but now organized according to a new objective.
Layer 6
But someday we all get out of our teens and we have to do more than prove to ourselves our own worth. When he has reached that minimum and indispensable level of self-confidence without which survival in the social environment is not possible, the individual has to move to another layer. In this layer, what matters is no longer the individual feeling that he is worth something — no longer feeling his own strength — but getting some real result.
For example, if you get a job it’s no use feeling it’s great. You have to do something that works within your set of tasks. You must have an objective result, even if it is worth little to you in terms of self-assertion — layer five — or in terms of happiness and unhappiness — layer four — and so on. It is the domain of practical life, of practical needs.
We can say that this sixth layer is a highly accounting one, where all that matters is credit overcoming debt. Some result you have to get. Evidently during this period you are concerned about schedules and the distribution of your energies. You know, for example, that you cannot have rest or repose periods at the sole discretion of your physical well-being, but that your rest and effort must fit within a machine, a gear that aims at goals that are not yours, but you have to make it work as well as possible.
In this period, then, the individual adapts to external demands, but aiming for a result that will benefit him. This is not a psychological benefit — psychologically there may even be a harm — but one makes a tradeoff; enters a trade. He sacrifices some of his self image, his time and his happiness to earn an income at the end of the month or at the end of the year. But this is some practical goal. Of course, this does not only apply to “strictu sensu” economic life. In various domains of life one learns to have a practical sense without which one cannot survive as an adult in society.
Layer 7
After gaining this mastery, one realizes that he is living with others who are also pursuing the same goals and advantages and who do not consider him to be superior to them. What an amazing thing! For the first time you discover that you are not the only one who has goals and that others do not care much about you. Each has its own goals and desires, its organizational scheme that will not allow you to interfere in any way.
For example, if you are very busy or sick and cannot do a certain job, and want someone to do it instead, you will not always find who does it, because others are busy too, especially with their own goals. You realize that people have goals of their own, and they do not consider, surprisingly, that your goals are more important. You enter another sphere, where the balance of rights and duties is the fundamental thing. That is, it is no longer just the organization of your life that matters. It is not just the fitting of your life into a larger gear that yields something to you. It is the fitting of your project and your personal organization into a multitude of relationships with others who have their own goals and who consider themselves, like you, the center of the universe.
In this way you develop a sense of what is today called citizenship. Citizenship is knowing that you have rights and duties, both limited, and that others also have. This sense of rights and duties comes to you not in the abstract form of a civil or criminal code, nor in the form of the Ten Commandments or in any abstract political philosophy, but in the form of the current code of loyalty in the place where you are.
These rules you will have to learn. They are not only intended to produce income, but to get you community support. You must have a place in the community. You have to be respected, liked, even loved if possible. You must please people and be fair to them, according to the standard of justice that is in place there. This standard of justice, when judged philosophically from a greater distance, may seem like a real monstrosity, as it seems to me.
In this regard read Aleksandr Zinovyev, “The Reality of Communism,” and you will see the totally predatory set of codes that the individual must obey to be accepted by his group, his company, and so on. At this stage, when you are in this seventh layer, the rightness or wrongness of the various codes is not objectively relevant. What matters is learning the codes and knowing how to practice them. Of course, group opinion becomes extremely important to you because your future depends on it. To make way in society you will need to be accepted by some people.
By absorbing these codes you become a person like others: you become a citizen with your rights and duties and, having your position recognized, you get the minimum support from the community without which you cannot live. Of course, there may already be a slight concern about the objective justice or injustice of your conduct. But while it may be present, this concern is not the center of attention. You are having more work to learn and adapt to the environment codes and will not necessarily judge them.
Layer 8
At this point you are practically a mature man, but for that you have one thing left: to remember everything you have done and, once you have achieved a certain social position, to be able to examine it critically. It’s time to ask yourself certain questions: What have I done with my life? Is this fair or unfair? This is what I want? Isn’t that what I want? Am I a failure? Am I a success? This self-examination puts you, in the plane of history, in the fourth layer. But now not only in the sense of finding and defining objects that symbolize happiness or unhappiness for you, but in the sense of knowing what you have done for your own happiness or unhappiness and facing yourself for the first time as a subject of your acts. Only when you are at this point you can said to be a mature man: one who is not just a citizen but someone. He is self-conscious and capable of judging himself. This is extremely difficult.
Everything I am describing is proper to the human species, animals do not have it. For example, the animal learns all living codes in one day because they are so simple: you obey the strongest and keep yourself quiet. There is nothing more to learn after that. Seeing a documentary about wolves, I noticed that the strongest chief wolf, when talking to the others, kept its tail raised and the other lowered its tail. It is already a code. The guy with the tail up is the boss. Either you go there, hit him and force him to lower his tail, or you lower yours and keep quiet. These codes are very simple. It is unknown in the animal kingdom any long learning of trial and error. They definitely do not learn this by trial and error. This business is already in the genetic code and I think it takes just one experience to know for the rest of your life.
In humans it does not work that way. This business is enormously complicated. Especially because you will live with many more members of your own kind than any animal will ever do. Not only live directly, but imagine all the people you have met throughout your life, all the immense variety of relationships you had with them, plus those who influenced your life from afar, such as the guy that was president and signed a decree that changed your economic life, or people you saw on television, at the movies etc. It is a crowd of people. No animal has ever had access to this. Even quantitatively the situation is more complicated.
Thus we see that it is proper for humans to cross all layers. However, something is characteristic: for those in one layer, the objectives of the next are incomprehensible. Consider a baby who is in the second layer. For him everything in the world around him is an object and therefore only he exists as a subject. He tries to physically master things, for example by forcing the toy or puppy to do what he wants. The second layer is where you force nature. This means that the next step, which is an intercom and negotiation step, is unimaginable to you. Any signal coming from one of the upper layers will be interpreted by the individual within the parameters of the layer itself where he is situated.
For you to see how poor is the situation in the society in which you live, look around and see the multitude of incapable people who want to be happy and who count on the protection of others for it. These are people who live seeking attention, affection, a little space for them, but who are not able and do not try to be able to do anything. People who are fleeing life’s challenges, that is, not even in the fifth layer yet. This is a tragedy.
It is only in the eighth layer that you are dealing with an adult man, that is, with someone who knows that the fabric of his social obligations is not everything.
Someone who knows that there is beyond that a dimension of the meaning of life, morality, moral conscience, right and wrong, and so on. Not that before one did not know what is right and wrong. But it is only when this point is reached that the individual effectively internalizes the question of right and wrong. For anyone in the seventh, sixth, fifth layer, etc, right and wrong are elements of the outside world. If you are in the second layer, right and wrong are physical forces that are coming upon you. You stop doing wrong because otherwise your father will hit you. If you are in the third layer, there is the game element. This is when the subject learns, for example, that he can pretend to be nice. He can do one thing but pretend he is doing something else — not that he couldn’t do it before, but there he gets mastery of it — . If he is in the fourth layer, everything for him is a matter of happiness or unhappiness, how he is feeling. Good is what he loves, that makes him feel good, and so on. In the fifth layer, good is that which gives him victory, which reinforces his ego, and what depresses him seems to be the enemy, the devil. And so on.
But it is only when one reaches the eighth layer that the problem of good and evil actually begins to exist for the individual. The eighth layer is a crisis, where one can find that one has failed in the sense of life, that one’s life is meaningless. This is where one can repent of one’s sins and try to relocate the command.
Layer 9
Usually adult humans stop at the eighth layer. But some create a new layer where they discover that all those perplexities, contradictions, and difficulties they have observed in reviewing their own lives are structural components of human life. They discover that all human beings had the same doubts and sufferings. Some learn that these problems are not only their own, but of humanity. And they learn it through culture. They learn by reading, learning, and seeing thousands of examples from other lives, becoming interested in lives that passed a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years ago as if they were their own lives. This means that their pattern of humanity broadens formidably to encompass millions of people — real or merely imagined — that they will never know. Through this effort to absorb universal human experience, these individuals, if they cannot find a solution to their personal dramas, find a new reason for living. This is what I call the intellectual personality.
You acquire an intellectual personality when completely everything that happens to you is no longer experienced merely as your personal problem, but as an example, symbol, or suggestion of enormously larger problems that may have no solution. Thinking about these problems and spending time with them becomes one of the great purposes of human life.
Layer 10
The problem of moral personality arises only from the moment that the subject has an intellectual personality, because it is the intellectual personality that will highlight in the individual the idea of universal value as something that exists for us. Without this, how could we morally judge our actions? Below a certain level of personality integration that allows the outpouring of this higher intellectual personality, strictly speaking we can say that the subject’s acts are morally irrelevant — this in the sense of kantian morality, not social morality, for his acts have influence over others.
The moral problem we are talking about arises when, by conceiving that there are universal values in itself, which it is up to him to realize, the individual refuses to do so. But how can we demand this from the one who does not have an individual synthesis formed, from an individual who is still developing within the collective mindset and who, when he errs, errs with others?
The tenth layer signifies the individual who conceives of himself as representative of the human species, as being self-conscious and responsible for all his actions. It is, in short, the “transcendental self.”
In layer 10 the individual observes himself from such a point of view that any other human being in his place would have to look at himself that way. Here is man before reason, before his superior faculties, possessing the capacity to evaluate the rationality of his acts in absolute terms.
Socrates, in arguing, knew that the conditions of truth that existed for him were the same as those for anyone else, because his thinking expressed the self-awareness of his own universality.
Layer 10 represents the achievement of a definite role within the hierarchy of humanity. To be in this layer is to be permanently conscious of the universality of all acts. Awareness that the rational animal, in general, must do in this way under this or that circumstance. Acts then acquire universal significance, though not universal scope.
Layer 11
To the extent that he has a superior intellectual personality and a transcendent self capable of overriding his entire existence and judging it, as he reaches this point, of being able to judge his existence and acts as if it were above himself, is that the subject renders satisfaction before the court of Humanity, of History.
The plan of universality, apoditic thinking, are layer 10 elements. We find there a universally valid theory, but acting in a universal way is already different. The next step would be to judge the whole of life in view of the actions performed and their consequences for humanity.
Achieving certainty with objectivity does not attribute historical meaning to the acts of the individual. It is like having a universality, however, theoretical.
Layer 11 represents the individual action in the whole of the history. It does not matter whether the actions are large or small, because the key here is to know exactly where the individual is situated, not just as a rational animal, but within history as a whole, within the process of evolution of the human species. When the individual achieves a historical role, his action is judged by humanity, reaching a global dimension.
The prototype of layer 11 is the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte. He intended to find out how far the power of an individual could be reached to the point of changing the course of history. If we study his biography we will not understand it by trying to explain it on the grounds of previous layers.
When acting on historical ends, one acts on something that does not yet exist, which implies that such action cannot be evaluated either for its social content or practical benefit, because it is above it. We will only find the key to the behavior if we climb higher. Then the acts are unified and take on a complete form.
Napoleon had no determined plan to execute and this is his characteristic feature: the absolute absence of a spirit of mission. What he possessed was a spirit of trial that led him to experience human freedom and the strength of the individual to the extent permitted. Napoleon sought to direct this towards goodness, as he understood it.
Napoleon cannot be defined in terms of a simple desire for power, which in many cases is irrelevant to History. However, some characters leave a mark and those who know what that mark is, and what judgment History will make of them, reach layer 11.
Napoleon was aware that he had indelibly altered history, which rare men have achieved. This is not due to the amount of accumulated power that can later be erased or reversed. There may even be a tragic mistake when the effects of actions become exactly the opposite of the imagined.
In layer 11 the subject is positioned as a piece of history, which at a specific moment, with full certainty, performs certain actions that will change the course of the human collectivity. There is no room for everyone at layer 11.
Nature itself is hierarchical from beginning to end. There is no natural democracy, because it is evident that people have different degrees of health or intelligence. What really happens is a selection process, although it is difficult to admit that there are better gifted individuals than others.
Layer 12
Mystical psychologies deal fundamentally with the meaning of the individual’s life, of the individual before his ultimate moral responsibility, something that is above the character, something that Humanity itself does not know. It is fundamentally the individual as Universal Man, as Christ, as pastor and responsible for all humanity.
Layer 12 consists of the action of the individual as a function of the ultimate purpose of all things. For Gandhi — who is a prototype of layer 12 — only his relationship with a purpose that transcends the biological life and life of the human species is of interest. When both were over, God would be left, and it is waiting for this moment that his action is guided.
In Gandhi’s case, not even the political objective explains his behavior, since he did not accept India’s independence in any way, placing moral demands far above what humans usually imagine. Gandhi acted just the opposite of political reasoning, appealing to the center of the issue and offering as a guarantee not only his own life, but his postmortem fate. In layer 12 all actions are guided by the following rule: “What will God think of this?” Such is the subject who, according to the Bible, walks before God and knows what He is thinking.
Normally, even an exceptional person does not submit all acts to this criterion. The confrontation with God presupposes that man must be able to conceive his every act in an eternal light.
If we have a decision to make, we can do this or that for layer 5 reasons — it strengthens me, I feel more confident; layer 6 — will give result; layer 7 — it is a duty that it’s up to me; layer 8 — this has logic within my biography; layer 9 — this is what the duty of intelligence imposes. Even in layer 9 is presumed to have the existence of the world, for what sense would it make for practical gain if it were to end tomorrow?
Duty fulfillment regarding a social role presupposes the existence of people who have an expectation regarding the occupant of that role. To act on the coherence of one’s own biography presupposes that it must continue. Acting toward goals dictated by culture and intelligence presupposes that there are achievable ends within the time frame of a historical existence. But if the individual acts solely on the basis of an end, he is acting precisely on the inexistence of a world around him. With or without the world, he would act the same way. Acts then acquire a supra-temporal, supra-historical meaning, that is, eternally man should do so before the world exists or when it ceases to exist. Here action is taken as the direct expression of a divine quality that prescind the existence of the world.
Anyone who believes in God eventually proceeds inspired by the eternal, though it is difficult to understand someone who acts permanently, such as Gandhi, for whom we must use another key of behavior. It’s as if he knows what God wants, as if he is talking to God all the time.
An accomplished holy man acts on the eternal sense of existence, has no other motive, not even History
In layer 12 the actions of the individual seem too complex and enigmatic. To understand the actions of a saint, just believing in him. Then everything falls into place, we begin to realize a coherence, an explanatory principle of actions. This occurs regardless of vocational motivations that have arisen in the course of biography, related to the previous layers, that may have contributed to put the subject in a certain way, but are not enough to clarify the unfolding of his history.
We can speak of holiness only when one’s relationship with an eternal God motivates each of his actions. Not only accidental acts, but all, one by one, there is no single act that can be explained outside this dialogue. Who does the guy talk to, who does he respond to? If we erase this connection, his life becomes a collection of meaningless acts. There are individuals who are already born in layer 12, so much so that as they go through the antecedents they are quickly absorbed.
