Unhappiness Versus Happiness

We have all heard the line about how it only takes so many muscles to smile, but quite a few more to frown- forgive the mathematical imprecision. The point presumably being made that frowning is greater exercise for the face. There is more to life than optimum biological fitness, however, and not all facts are equal, particularly not in the inner domain, where it should be realised that as an existential experience smiling is of a higher order than frowning, taking us closer to the truth of ourselves, with the qualification that it should be married to the correct situation- no need to pretend there's virtue in smiling in inappropriate circumstances like an idiot. But otherwise- smile away.

Capitalism and Capital

Poker is capitalism in something like its pure form: the only product being exchanged is money. And if a game of poker is indefinitely continued, all the money will find its way progressively into fewer and fewer hands.

The idea of capital or money is that of a symbol that permits the flow of products of mutual benefit to peoples engaged in different, perhaps very different, activities, and inhabiting even very different parts of the planet. Originally the fundamental reality of money was of its being a precious metal, and the form or symbol into which it was moulded was a very secondary issue. And so one was in possession of something of intrinsic value, which for whatever reasons man commonly seems to regard as 'precious.' The individual within this system held a strong, stable position. Gold, for example, wasn't suddenly going to depreciate madly.

In time the secondary symbolic state has come to have prominence over the first- what it means more important than what it is- and now the existential reality of money is worthless, comprising paper or very unprecious metal, and the symbol is the fundamental truth; ie what the money means. So one is in possession of an ascribed value, rather than a thing in itself. Naturally this is an extremely powerful and potentially corruptible position for those in charge of the money at something like source, if inclined at all towards temptation, given the wholly symbolic nature of the money substance.
Another way of phrasing this is that if psychological realities like greed, love of power and dominion over others are indeed psychological realities, then we can expect pretty much as a matter of course the enormous temptation to corruption to find practical results. If however greed, love of power, etc are not psychological realities, then we have little to fear, and the possibility of the given scenarion little more than a conspiracy theory arising from an erroneous and cynical view of the landscape of human reality. However, most will agree such inner landscape is indeed real. And so, in the words of Josiah Charles Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920's:

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight-of-hand that was ever invented. If you want to continue to be slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit.

The utter defencelesness of the ordinary individual's position with modern money shown most spectacularly in Germany between the Great War and the rise of the Nazis, when inflation snowballed to the point where again the intrinsic worth became greater than the symbolic worth; ie the paper was worth more than the 'money'. The intrinsic unreality or worthlessness of the symbol became something close to absolute.
One might say money realised its own non-existence, and so dissolved into nothingness, but at the expense of such elegance we probably have to rather consider the perennial activity of human manipulation, conscious and unconscious, intentional and error-strewn, where at the very least the Allied victors by their victory terms ensured the first German economic chaos.
Now in the comparatively cashless society the money relationship is even more abstract, where that which is symbolised doesn't even exist as a tangible symbol-object, but almost purely as numbers on computer screens, and so the power dynamics in this system have become ever more centralised towards the bankers and creators of the money symbol.

And so is amply shown the danger of an economic system wholly in thrall to the fluctuations and manipulations of a symbol of no intrinsic substance. With today's crisis no crops are failing, plagues striking, etc. Just a purely mental substance depreciating in value in terms of itself, or/ and disappearing into unknown avenues. See poker analogy. All reminiscent of the paradox examples recently shown, where the mind rushes to board the train of logic ensuing from what are at source unrealities.

The Epimenides Paradox/ Liar Paradox

A re-post of what lies beneath:

On the continued theme of the paradox, I saw mentioned last night in a television programme on mathematics the alleged paradox "This statement cannot be proved." And this apparently a tangent of what is called the Epimenides Paradox, which seems to go in something like its pure form:

This statement is false.

So do we have here what Borges described as a crack in the architecture of reason where we see that the world is false? The supposed logic going, "Well, if it is true that it is false, then it is true. Which means it is false. Which means it is true." And so on. A unsolvable paradox. Logic has been breached. We are free!

The vital essence of language in the form of reason, rather than say poetry, is that at every level what one says is reasonable- makes sense. And here, as should be immediately obvious, is where this paradox gets in trouble. "This statement is false." What statement? There is no statement here, simply the referring to one which does not appear. The sentence, without the accompanying statement, is linguistically meaningless. And so it is of course meaningless to describe a non-existent statement as true or false.

"My dog is black" is a statement which may be true or false, depending on the colour of my dog, and in this correct understanding of what a statement is, no paradoxes occur. The statement exists- refers to something. "This statement" is not however a statement, and so the supposed paradox is simply resting on a foundation of gibberish. And so, alas, no paradox.
Identically- "This statement can't be proved." What statement?

Even if, and here I am giving far more respect and time to this nonsense than it merits, "This statement is false" wasn't meaningless and actually made some kind of sense, the moment it is false it makes no more sense to apply logic to it. It is illogical to treat illogical statements as logical- you don't build and form deductions from a foundation of "Two plus two equals five." Logic doesn't apply. You don't apply rational conclusions to irrational statements. That is simply, and literally, insanity: take meaningless nonsense and run with it. Logic applies to the logical implications of true statements, not false ones.

So summing up, "This statement is false" is linguistic nonsense as it isn't a statement, but in any case a logical train should not follow illogical statements. Or as written in a separate post, "Just because words combined may make what appears a proper sentence doesn't mean the structure is a legitimate one, i.e. language isn't simply a matter of structure but of course meaning also, and here the meaning is absent."

The Writer

"And you are a writer?
"Yes, when I write."
"And what do you write?"
"I write whatever I happen to be writing at the moment I am writing it."
"And what do you happen to be writing at the moment."
"This."

Naked Dialogue

Two figures on a white page.
"The central character is fucked in the head."
"What central character?"
"The one in the story."
"What story?"
"This one."
"But we're the only two in it."
"That's right."
"So one of the two of us is fucked in the head?"
"At least one."
"Well, which of the two of us is the central character?"
"That's for the reader to decide."
"Right. One final question."
"What?"
"Is this modernist or post-modernist?"
"Fuck knows."

More on Machiavelli & the Dynamics of Power

Earlier short piece here. Machiavelli is famous for writing in The Prince on the prudent methods a political ruler must use in order to attain, maintain and strengthen his political power. The very idea that 'Machiavellian' refers to some exceptional and cynical mode of political behaviour rather than a reflection of the norm would presumably have been incomprehensible to Machiavelli as, rather than an instigator of some new ruthlessness, he is simply an observer and adviser of strategy within this field of human conduct and invariably conflict. That politics is a strategical game with the ends being raw power, and since there is nothing moral about power then this is a value that has no meaningful place within this game, just as for instance goodness has nothing to do with breaking a land-speed record. So more or less goes the thinking.

Politics however, unlike the land-speed record and most other 'games', is not self-enclosed, directly affects the wider world, and so this amorality, or often immorality is a very serious issue, and it's best for those liable to be affected by the actions of its players, which is to say all of us, to realise that such a game is being played in the first place and to have some idea of its modus operandi.

As said, Machiavelli when expressing the desirability of deviousness and ruthlessness as practices within this 'game' is simply reflecting a reality rather than particularly instigating anything new. Once however Machiavelli has given his views in his book of ideal if general method, these notions of best practice enter more profoundly into the world of politics as conscious general method to be emulated rather than as accidental and intuitive understandings by various individuals in particular circumstances. The Prince is also a lens through which the more disinterested observer can look upon historical and present-day realities and perhaps discern the methodology behind 'random' events, unseen by the unsuspecting and gullible.

And so the idea that 'Machiavellian' refers to some unusual form of political practice rather than the norm is either an instance of uneducated naivety, or itself an instance of Machiavellian duplicity by those playing the game - that as a virtual matter of course at the other end of government is someone or, more plausibly, some body of people acting to cement and increase their power over their subjects. As quoted in the earlier short piece, "the people are everywhere anxious not to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles are out to dominate and oppress the people." This tension is for Machiavelli an unquestionable, fundamental truth. The ruling elite will always want to oppress the people, to further their control, and by simple logic the ultimate desired destination is absolutism, the totalitarian state. This leap to absolute power is dangerous for the rulers however, as the people are great in number and have no wish to be the subjects of outright tyranny. To excessively act on this urge for such total mastery is to gamble with what they already possess.

Principalities usually come to grief when the transition is being made from limited power to absolutism. Princes take this step either directly or through magistrates.

At the moment in the comparatively free West, it is via the use of the magistrates, or legal 'reform', that the desired movement towards absolutism is being conducted, but this must be justified, if noticed at all by the people, by deception: because of say a perceived external threat [perhaps even a virus], intentionally created or/and hyped up by the nobility's means of public propaganda. He writes:

We must distinguish between....those who to achieve their purposes can force the issue and those who must use persuasion. In the second case they always come to grief, having achieved nothing; when however they can force the issue, then they are seldom endangered.
The populace is always fickle; it is easy to persuade them of something but difficult to confirm them in that persuasion. Therefore one must usually arrange matters so that when they no longer believe they can be made to believe by force.

So they must be made to believe what the rulers want them to believe, which is the necessity of an increase in centralised state power. But greater forces than persuasion must be used. Persuasion simply appeals to the limpid reason. To be made believe by force the far more powerful, primal aspects of human nature must be attacked and harnessed - fear and hatred. And so the application of this being, for example, the Gladio network of terror earlier described here, on which the BBC did a detailed 3-part documentary. In the words of its director, Allan Frankovich:

This BBC series is about a far-right secret army, operated by the CIA and MI6 through NATO, which killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades and other left wing groups. Known as 'stay-behinds' these armies were given access to military equipment which was supposed to be used for sabotage after a Soviet invasion. Instead it was used in massacres across mainland Europe as part of a CIA Strategy of Tension. Gladio killing sprees in Belgium and Italy were carried out for the purpose of frightening the national political classes into adopting U.S. policies.

As one of the key pariticipants in the Gladio network describes in the documentary, methods included not just by perpetration of acts and blaming them on others, but also infiltration of these groups, and leading them to perpetration of the desired terrorist acts. People who imagine themselves to be well-informed about political realities continue, however, in their naivety to consider such simple tactics of control as mentioned by Machiavelli to be the province of the mentally unhinged, to be conveniently scorned and without differentiation as "conspiracy theories."
Machiavelli also says, and he makes no moral judgement here, simply states as a fact:

Princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles.
Because all men are wretched creatures who would not keep their word to you, you need not keep your word to them.
One must know how to colour one's actions and to be a great liar and deceiver. Men are so simple, and so much creatures of circumstance, that the deceiver will always find someone ready to deceive.

This low, depraved notion of humanity is perfectly normal amongst those living within this field of life, the world of power politics, as naturally enough for those within this reality, this is a kind of norm. They are realists within their domain. Also, the perceiver himself is central to that which is perceived, and the individual is simply making of his debased self a general rule of humanity. Thus the influential thinker within the American neo-conservative movement, Leo Strauss, mirrors Machiavelli: "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed." Conscience presumably is never wholly absent in anyone, so even these manipulators must convince themselves of their realism and virtue.

More Stairway

What may be described as metaphysical pressure has been exerted towards myself by obscure persons to add to my earlier piece Stairway To..., but sure as I am of my intimate entanglement with the divine mind, such pressure, dependent for success on fear of the future beyond, is futile. However, due to a mix of compassion and maybe even personal pleasure, I will add a little to what could be said to have been adequately self-contained and complete in its previous form. That piece should be read before what follows.

It should be borne in mind by the conscientious reader that I have ceased to exist as an empirical observer of the scene, and what follows is mere artistry, or lack of, or, as some would say, lies, though by coincidence may coincide with "truth", in both its prosaic particular and exalted general forms.

Our hero began to ascend, and while there was nothing to measure the passage of time it seems certain much of it passed, perhaps even millennia. His mind oscillated between expectation, irritation, despair, hope, terror, boredom and even a form of tension that bordered on the ecstatic, as well as some other forms of psychological terrain it would be too tedious, for all concerned, to continue to mention. He had wondered from his initial starting point whether to go up or down the stairs, and, though not a superstitious man, he thought perhaps, all in all, considering the circumstances, maybe upwards was safer; the lower regions of theoretical afterlife visions tending more towards the dystopian than the utopian. True, at times, following great stretches of time, he did sometimes wonder if he had blundered. "Perhaps a few steps downwards and I'd have got somewhere. A door would have opened and voila! Maybe this is all a mockery - a test to see would I turn coward and avoid the dangerous descent into the nether regions."
Such thoughts were more in the way of keeping himself company than a matter of serious belief however. And upwards he continued.
Finally a change- a flickering of light. A torch. He rubbed his eyes. He glanced below. There was no staircase. He fell into the void.

Though perhaps he came to a door. He opened and once again...life.

Machiavelli and Democracy

These two different dispositions are found in every city: that the people are everywhere anxious not to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles are out to dominate and oppress the people. These opposed ambitions bring about one of three results; a principality, a free city, or anarchy.
When the nobles see that they cannot withstand the people, they start to increase the standing of one of their own numbers, and make him a prince in order to be able to achieve their own ends under his cloak. Similarly, the people start to increase one of their own and make him a prince in order to be protected by his own authority.
Machiavelli, The Prince

One might imagine the progressive increase of the people's power will inevitably lead to true democracy, but Machiavelli makes the important if obvious point:

The people are more honest in their intentions than the nobles, as the latter want to oppress the people, whereas the people only want not to be oppressed.
The nobles have more foresight and are more astute; they always act in time to safeguard their interests, and take sides with whom they expect to win.

And so ideally - for the nobles - the people think they are in power, as in a democracy, but the nobles, or aristocrats of worldly power, ensure that it is they who covertly maintain power, by secretly manipulating the democratic process, placing in power one of their whom the people imagine to be one of their own, and so "achieve their own ends under his cloak." A particularly crude example being the ecstatic foisting of the declared messianic figure of Barack Obama on the people as this wonderful antidote to that pleasingly obvious villain George Bush and his gang. Or prior to him for instance Tony Blair.

Naturally, a political or revolutionary body calling themselves "the People," or the Will of the People or some such- even if the people are unaware of this wonderful fact, need not be, and generally are not, in truth anything of the kind, but a new nobility of power, or, perhaps more likely, a tangential offshoot of some sector of the existing nobility. See the work of Anthony Sutton.
And while since the times of Machiavelli the people clearly did greatly grow in power, the tension between them and those who would oppress them is a perennial fact, of which the movements towards absolutism of the moment are obvious symptoms.

Follow-up post.

More on the Paradoxes

Another mentioned paradox by Borges is that if one continuously halves the distance between oneself and the object approached, then one will never arrive at one's destination. Again, however, there is no paradox here. This is simply the internal logic of this mental set-piece. It is simply another way of saying, If you continually get closer to something, you will never reach it. Nothing is being contradicted as the mental framework simply refers to the dynamics of itself.
If movement were made to mirror the given thought of halving teh distance between one point and another, then, yes, the destination would not be reached. But this is movement made to follow the logic. This logic does not mirror movement where the object point is actually reached, but refers to a situation where the object is not reached; and so there is no paradox here. Just childish reasoning.
It is in no sense a rational representation of ordinary external movement for the same reasons given earlier; ie by the specifics of time and distance, as in a simple car speedometer where one travels at fifty miles per hour.

Zeno's Paradox, Borges

We have dreamt the world...but in its architecture we have allowed tenuous and eternal crevices which tell us it is false.

Borges is writing here of the implications of logical paradoxes where reason betrays its connection to reality; irrefutable logic leading to conclusions contradicting the reality logic purports to reflect.
Borges doesn't quite seem to understand the implications of the paradox correctly here. If logic leads to falseness then the entire edifice of language as an instrument of truth falls apart. There can be no cracks in 'truth', else there is no truth. Nothing is left us which can be intelligently said, including 'the falseness of the edifice.' In other words, nihilistic chaos.

Borges mentions 'perhaps the most elegant of all' paradoxes is where William James denies that 14 minutes can pass, "as first seven minutes must pass, then three and a half minutes, then half this figure, and so on until the invisible end, through tenuous labyrinths of time."

So it is imagined that there is a transgression of truth here, as time- specifically fourteen minutes- most certainly does pass. The 'paradox' here is all rather embarrassing, however. Time passes at the rate of itself, and of course will effortlessly pass all demarcations within the segment being measured. James and Borges are simply confusing - and misusing - the organ of measurement for that which is being measured. All the 'paradox' amounts to is that if one were to count all the imaginable fractions between one whole number and another, this could and would literally take forever as the possible demarcations are infinite. This is the nature of numbers. It bears no relationship, however, to the passage of time. So all this 'paradox' amounts to is a meaningless misuse of logic or reason.

Earlier Borges mentions Zeno's Second Paradox, where Achilles runs ten times faster than a tortoise, giving it a start of ten metres. It proceeds: For every measurement the tortoise travels, Achilles travels ten. Achilles runs ten metres, the tortoise one; Achilles a metre, the tortoise ten centimetres; Achilles ten centimetres, the tortoise one; a centimetre to a millimetre, and so on to infinity without the tortoise ever being overtaken. There is always a gap that cannot be overcome. But in external reality, Achilles does overtake the tortoise, and so logic is seen to be inconsistent with reality.

Is this an intelligent question? Is it an intelligently framed mirror of reality? To measure comparative speed, it is useless simply to say that one is travelling ten times faster than another. It is essential to be specific, and the moment this scenario is specific about the distance travelled, then we find the paradox to fall apart. For if every second, or specific time segment, the tortoise travels one centimetre and Achilles travels ten, then Achilles will, by simple mathematics, overtake the tortoise. And of course the same will occur if the length travelled is a millimetre to ten, or any specific distance. Zeno however keeps changing the terms of reference, leaping from metres to centimetres and so on, with again the more or less identical statement being made as in James' example; ie that one can if one wishes keep splitting the numerical demarcations into smaller and smaller fragments. Again, all the 'paradox' amounts to is faulty reason; the unintelligent framework of a scenario mistakenly imagining the internal logic to refer to something beyond itself.

Borges' position is that of gnosticism or at least gnosticism in the negative sense where, I would say for reasons of timidity before frightening immense and messy reality, a negative value judgement is imposed on life, and this when closely examined, as in the examples, simply amounts to flawed reasoning.

Natural Enquiry

It is usually imagined a question like "Who am I" is a philosophical enquiry. In truth, it is a more a matter of linguistics: what is the agreed nature of this concept "I"?
It seems a simple truth that the idea of the fullness of the mind which produces thought being capable of being meaningfully encompassed within a form of this thought- "I am..." is a simple absurdity, comparable to the idea of the entire ocean being capable of containment within a bucket floating on that ocean.

Chinese Landscape

Though as with all such great Far Eastern images, entwined with the spaciousness of the kind of Zen No-Mind awareness, it could as easily be called a mindscape.

The Realists

One particularly charming and effective path in the direction of what may be broadly called a totalitarian state is the one most obviously being employed in Britain: that is foist a degraded tabloid, tower-block 'culture' upon people and then reap the inevitable rewards. In other words, having treated people as subhuman and gotten the results, one then says "What are we supposed to do with such scum, we need strong measures!" Though in more prettified and reasonable language. Such realists.
Or to put the phrasing of such an advocate slightly differently- "Man when left to himself is evil. We must deal with the reality." Except man here certainly hasn't been left anything like to himself. Though here if one talks of treating people with the dignity of humans, one would be met with a response like "We must deal with the reality as is. You're talking about pie-in-the sky idealism." Except- all these excepts- they are the idealists. It's just that the ideal happens to be a sick one. (The mere existence of an ideal doesn't mean the ideal is in any real sense ideal.)
As usual, whether this is a conscious, unconscious, or mixture of both, process is irrelevant to the outcome.

Naomi Wolf- "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries"

Interview here on how to respond to America's totalitarian coup.
"Once you yield to the first threat, instead of arresting the leader who has staged a coup(enforcing a police state), you see more and more serious incursions, exactly as with Mussolini in 1920.
"The army under Rumsfeld changed its oath recently, a completely new oath 'The Warriors Creed'- to the Commander in Chief rather than to the Constitution, and completing 'the Mission' rather than serving the Constitution."
Of course, exactly as dictatorships do; ie the first duty of the organs of state, and specifically military organs of state, is to the head of state, rather than to the state. Though the quoted sample little more than a random extract, rather than any hyperbolic highlight. Also to add, coups don't require external takeovers; the more famous European examples being coups from within , using and abusing the parliamentary framework to install the desired totalitarian regime.

Stairway to...

A dead man found himself in pitch blackness on what appeared to be a staircase. "What now?" he asked himself.
We would be happy to leave this at that, but perhaps should indulge in what could be described as a psychological glance at our protagonist. He was surprised. In short, he had expected the total absence of light but not the awareness of that absence. He felt it to be somehow personally insulting, but perhaps more so the staircase...though the two together...the surreal banality of it all. Surely if there was to be an afterlife, as there evidently was, he deserved something more... more what? More in keeping with his dignity, importance. If reality had the temerity to continue to exist, it should at least present itself in some more exalted form.
What happened next, if anything, is a mystery.

While the above may seem to have been an opportune moment to close the doors on the above as a whole, we might observe that while it would perhaps be indecent to allow ourselves too easy access to the private thoughts of this, our central and only figure, still it is at least possible that he wondered if the position in which he found himself didn't have similarities to a passage from The Brothers Karamazov, and if so whether this was derivative, even if only subconsciously so, or coincidental- owing simply to the common human origin of these creations' creation, and the the not unlikely similarites of certain of these humans' thought processes, and the imaginative channels into which they flow. Though whether he did ponder this, and if he did, whether it would have been of any use to the situation, is again a mystery. Perhaps a kind of mythic Sisyphus situation arose of perpetual movement upwards, or downwards, depending on inclination, through the darkness. Perhaps he stayed where he was, in moral and intellectual indignation. Perhaps through, I don't know, faith, he finally arrived somewhere.

In the Room...Michelangelo

"Don't you think Michelangelo is the Charlton Heston of painting?"
"Oh yes. But in what sense?"
"The best sense."

Artifice- Hesse on Dostoevsky

There is nothing more explicit of an artificial sense of life and inner unreality, than the compartmentalising of that life(Nothing?). As Marcus Aurelius puts it, "The integrity of the whole is mutilated if thou cuttest off anything." Or, tangentially and by natural extension, Jesus: "He that is not with me is against me," translated here that each moment that is not with truth is against truth. You cannot slice reality up into various distinct components to suit oneself, as naturally, and by simple law of reality, you don't end up with reality but unreality.
Or Hermann Hesse on Dostoevsky's The Idiot: "Dostoevsky's Myshkin is one who no longer separates thinking from living, and thereby isolates himself in the midst of his surroundings and becomes the opponent of all." Surroundings here being the mental surroundings of existentially confused others, and their ensuing unreal "real world."
And to continue Hesse's drift a little:

This gentle "idiot" completely denies the life, the way of thought and feeling, the world and the reality of other people. His reality is something quite different from theirs. Their reality is in his eyes no more than a shadow, and it is by seeing and demanding a completely new reality that he becomes their enemy.
For them the co-existence, the equal validity of both worlds(material and spiritual) is a principle and an idea, for him they are life and reality! But this child is not as innocent as he seems. His innocence is by no means harmless, and people quite properly fear him.

Overheard Conversation in Hell

"New here. Is it always this hot?"
"More or less. But you'll find it's the humidity that really gets to you."

From Ignorance to Truth

"We seem to be talking for hundreds of years and getting nowhere, or worse, getting somewhere that's worse than nowhere."
"Yes, what we need do is define the meaning of the words we are using, and then we'll start to get somewhere."
"Of course, but we must first decide the meaning of the words that the words mean, and then we'll really start to get somewhere."
Right, lets get down to it. Lets start from the beginning and define the word word."
"Right. Word is a word that means word."
"Excellent."

Master & Pupil

"People don't like being told they're gutless, servile lackeys."
"Not even when it's true?"
"Especially not when it's true."

Tintoretto- The Crucifixion

One of the most fascinating of paintings by one of the most individual of artists; one in whom merged the fruits of Renaissance scientific method with the genius of a unique sensibility. Click to see properly.

Structure, Tarkovsky

An intelligent structure is not capable of understanding a structure of greater intelligence than itself. So how is a structure like the individual self supposed to evolve towards an order of greater refinement since the only real knowledge is that which moves us beyond the limits of our selves? How are the manifestations of a greater intelligence, in the broadest sense of the wisdom of the whole being, to work on a lesser self?
Humility is the simple answer. The personality is defined by its own limits, and is so a rigid structure incapable of intelligent advancement. "I lay down my life that I may take it up again." The personality lays down its own self, and into this open space can flow the life beyond the old self. This being the principle upon which art works, and in which lies the vastness of its importance.
For instance, a narrow self resists the open spaces of a Tarkovsky film, and this shallow, hard entity sustains itself by means of its cynicism. By contrast, mainstream Western televisual art sustains this artificial entity by feeding it an unceasing stuttering flow of camera angles and shallow excitements, where the viewer is narrowed to a point of hypnotic concentration, as opposed to open awareness.
The person who surrenders to works such as Nostalgia and Mirror ideally becomes allergic to the ordinary 'artistic' effluences, as why should an order of intelligence be attracted towards an order of intelligence of lesser refinement than itself?
An excerpt from Mirror here.
And re-inforcing the earlier points, from Tarkovsky's Stalker:

When a tree is growing, it is tender and pliant, but when it's dry and hard, it dies.
Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.

Papal Infallibility

For whosever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Gospel of Luke 14:11

In the First Vatican Council of 1870, the Roman Catholic Church produced their declaration of Papal infallibility, which "is the dogma in Catholic theology that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error[1] when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation."(Wiki)

Words can be the most obscure and treacherous of substances, so first what is signified by 'the Church' here, which declared itself infallible, is not some organic spiritual entity but certain human beings acting for what they perceive as a common goal. The psychological fact of a perceived common goal among individuals does not of course mean that the common cause is an independent living being, such as a 'nation state' or here 'Church'.
And so the existential nature of what occurred here was that certain individuals declared themselves infallible.
"In certain matters" qualifies a constraining and reasonable voice. But what is it to be infallible and "preserved from even the possibility of error"? It is to be tautologically utterly perfect; to be God, regardless of whether 'God' exists. This absolute perfection is the nature only of such an absolute divinity, and not even that of a god, such as exists within the pantheon of the Greeks' wilful, quarrelsome deities. No, infallibility is the preserve of only an absolute divinity, in whose mind life is born, preserved and may dissolve at will- to digress a little into such a nature.

Back to the papacy's declaration of infallibility. One cannot choose one's moments of infallibility. To be infallible is not a quantifiable state, applicable only at certain moments. To declare oneself as infallible at certain times requires infallibility in the first place to produce the infallible declaration.
And this is where the crucial aspect of Papal Infallibility lies. As shown, for a flawed entity to pronounce one's occasional, yet absolute perfection is an innate absurdity. Only a perfect being could know itself to be perfect. So what is going on? To understand requires treating the declaration specifically as a statement of logic, and treating it not simply as absurd reasoning, but accepting it as wholly true and justified.
That the declaration of their infallibility is, as it logically must be, an emanation of their infallible nature. They have, to use appropriate terminology, set themselves on the throne of existence, exalted themselves to the pinnacle of creation. They are God. And rather than dwelling humbly within a Christian brotherhood, they are absolute rulers over a hierarchy of lesser beings, who exist beneath them.

Whether the full implications of Papal Infallibility were understood by those individuals who pronounced it is largely irrelevant; that is, whether it was a fully conscious, or somewhat unconscious act. Either way, it is the real meaning of the declaration, and its subsequent subconscious life-force as an idea, though these were not, and are not, stupid people, and it is hard to see that they could not have understood the implications of the declaration of their infallibility.

Is What Is

"The self is infallible. You are exactly as you are."
"And so are you."
"You seem to be taking that as as something of a personal attack."
"And wasn't it?"
"Emm...no."

Wine Human

"Like a good wine, human beings need to breathe."
"Very true."

Island

A note within a symphony was heard in a loud and pompous voice to say, "Where is this composer? I see no sign of him."

Mysticism

The essence of true mysticism is where the mind does not lose itself in external thought-forms, but experiences itself as is. Thus the ultimate nonsense of trying to reason oneself towards truth or progressing towards truth through levels of ascension, such as in the occultic paths of freemasonry and many other such Tower of Babels doomed to self-collapse.