TR Gaddis tears into Dale Carnegie Pt 2 ch 1

[Michael Bailey]

> What I don't quite get is the meaning of the ". . . . the Self which had
> ceased to exist the day they stopped seeking it alone."
>
> Is Mr. P making some kind of error in his thinking? If he were smarter,
> might he had tossed out his library and spent his days asking "who am I
> really, really, really?"  What good would that have done?
>

in the spirit of the Kenosha Kid, what if what is meant is not only
"seeking it [the Self] alone and seeking no other thing"

but also, "seeking the Self alone [in solitude, by themselves]"

both ways, however, the social process of accepting objectively
verifiable goals to be striven for is a different thing to be involved
in than the (deep, possibly alchemical, certainly mysterious, and
highly idiosyncratic) process of individuation?

the thing that strives to find itself, know itself, express in
fullness and freedom every twist and turn of its innards and guts that
is like no other, and makes its own goals based upon its own
uniqueness - it is here suggested, perhaps - is a different,
incompatible, thing than the thing that strives to distinguish itself
among people, strives towards verbally describable goals that are not
of its own making?

highly debatable, if that is indeed what is being suggested

(but I bloviate)

if you'll pardon the crudity,
"don't beat your meat on the toilet seat, come bang your wang with the
rest of the gang" is a crude form of that dilemma I remember hearing,
circa 9th grade...
it was posed figuratively (literal circle jerks weren't held in the
circles I traveled in, although I've heard tell...)(one time, in band
camp)

or, less crudely, I remember my mother telling me during a gloomy
adolescent day: stop brooding, you're not going to hatch anything.
And yet, the noble alchemical solitude of the artist's quest is an
evergreen theme, and figures in tales as diverse as The Recognitions
and The Fountainhead, eh wot?