The self of self

Essence precedes boinking.

The lunatic is in my head.

Obviously, there are a number of infelicities in this passage. But I think the content is relatively clear and wouldn’t be objectionable to many writers on morality. Sanford is saying that morality, which in typical Republican fashion he identifies with the laws of God, exists in order to restrain the pursuit of self-interest, narrowly conceived, and from our taking our own concerns as more significant than those of other people and thus trampling on the legitimate aims and projects of others. Moreover, when we conform our conduct to morality, we act in what is our own long-term best interest. In this sense, morality “protect[s] us from ourselves.” The remark about the “self of self” seems merely intended to emphasize that we are often inclined to exempt ourselves from moral requirements because of the importance we attach to particular desires, which, despite the urgency with which they present themselves at the time, are often destructive even to our own long-term good.

Sanford is a hypocrite and a reprehensible chief executive. But, despite the grammatical awkwardness of this passage, I believe it contains a relatively clear meaning, even if many would criticize both the underlying view of morality and Sanford’s identification of morality with the laws of God.

This is where what you want is a manuscript expert (but failing that you’ve got me). My most plausible guess is that he meant to say ‘The biggest sin of self is indeed self’ (which is a clunky way of making a fairly standard theological point that the greatest sin is a concern only with one’s own desires) and then had an eye-skip in what he was reading (or a mental skip in his phrasing) and got onto ‘self’ too early in the sentence.

“Whether or not Theory jargon incapacitates humanities folks, communication with regular folks-wise, I think it might provide a leg-up”

Awesome! I shall now dig up a rant by the Time-Cube guy and claim that analytic philosophers, whether or not they’re morons, probably have a good shot at understanding him.

Yeah, Kevin, the passage’s meaning is indeed clear, but that’s no thanks to the “biggest self of self is indeed self” remark, which is pointlessly redundant to the point of being gibberish. Rumsfeld’s poetics made far better use of repetition.

Soren K said it better, I think around the middle of that paragraph.

The biggest self of self is self:
A part that parts its part to be a whole,
The screw that once held stud to shelf
When loose, is held to have a sovereign soul
(and, so far as shear-stress will permit, gov’rnance of the whole.)
Rust to dust: but living flesh to coal,
which in its value must give of itself,
return to air what verdant Nature stole
(this too in bondage, each atom volatile while sole.)

“Every clown has a silver lifeboat.” – John Lennon

He may have meant:

And the biggest sense of self is self.

That self line is noise in the signal. Omit it and the paragraph in context is clear and easy to follow as human language.

As included, it might be a weird bit of tautological mysticism, a sort of pointer that he has a larger, more esoteric point to make about the relation of self within the larger laws of God, but it’s clearly not a topic suitable for the general press conference-attending audience. Maybe an artifact from the Bible study class he was reported to be taking with his wife, assuming it’s not just your standard Bible exegesis course, but more of an in depth look at the Bible as hermeneutic text.

Holbo, that is. Halbo is your evil twin who asks people to search a line of gibberish to see if it contains jargon.

I take it that the expectation is that one should be far more poised and eloquent when giving press conferences that involve embarrassing personal disclosures?

He must have converted to pentacostalism–he’s speaking in tongues!

“And the biggest self of self is indeed self”

from a restroom wall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. . .

call Larry :202-224-2752

This would have worked; it’s just two or three political scandals too late.

Allow me to try that again:

from a restroom wall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. . .

“And the biggest self of self is indeed self”
call Larry :202-224-2752

This would have worked; it’s just two or three political scandals too late.

Thank you, Keven Robbinsfor providing the proper response to Holbo’s query.

Re:

…morality…exists in order to restrain the pursuit of self-interest, narrowly conceived, and from our taking our own concerns as more significant than those of other people and thus trampling on the legitimate aims and projects of others. Moreover, when we conform our conduct to morality, we act in what is our own long-term best interest. In this sense, morality “protect[s] us from ourselves.”

I would add that morality is necessary because we are not adequately advised by our biological instincts/urges on how we must act in order to experience the highest levels of happiness (in the long run). This, because we also have “higher needs”, and/or long-term needs, that can only be satisfied if/when we are successful in foregoing the satisfaction of various instinct/urges. (For example, we cannot obsessively act to satisfy our desire to taste delicious foods and to avoid physical exertion and still hope to enjoy the greater long-term happiness of good health and a physical appearance that others find appealing.)

So ultimately, it is true that we are biologically programmed to ‘sin’ and it is also true that the Mind must intervene in order for us to experience higher levels of happiness in the long run. I would further argue that the Mind is able to inhibit the actions of the ‘Body’ only because the Mind is able to persuade the Body that the long-run consequences of acting “sinfully” are more to be feared than the consequences (denied pleasure/denied ‘release’) of not yielding to instinct. To act morally, then, is to be “smart-selfish” instead of “stupid-selfish.”

His yammering is the froth of Christian brainwash. Tis my guess.
Perhaps referencing a gospel account of statements by Jesus, exhorting disciples, “Whoever will come after me, let him deny himself …” “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it … ” “For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” and so forth. Goes on to chide this “adulterous and sinful generation”, apropos.
Many of his Christian ilk in this country, and elsewhere, are wicked fools. Using faith as a cudgel to manipulate people giving themselves a psychological pass for their pride, ignorance and misdemeanors. A civil society needs to keep these dogmatists in check.

“Separation of Church and State,
How sweet the sound.
That Saved a wretch like me”

Seems sensible to me- there’s one word wrong. Should be “the biggest enemy of self is self”. And thus morality protects us from us.

Sanford, a Lacanian! Who knew?

Following Zizek (c.f. http://www.lacan.com/zizekother.htm) Sanford asserts the inexistence of the big Other, and indeed notes the futility of the injunction to BEHAVE in the name of the big Other, and instead succumbs to its obscene underside. The big self is therefore none other than itself.

Sanford has uttered undoubtedly the most psychoanalytically sophisticated political enunciation of the nature of protestant selfhood of this century.

Over at Language Log they suggested that he meant to say “The biggest source of sin is self”, and, in the heat of the moment, anticipated “self” twice. Single anticipations of a word like this are a common speech error; double anticipations are rare, but not impossible. And in favour of this, the word being substituted, “self”, would have been salient and prominent in his mind as he was producing the sentence (since it was kind of the point of what he was saying), and the target words, “source” and “sin”, have some resemblance in sound to “self”—all monosyllables, with the shared “s” at the start. These are the sort of things that make anticipations more likely.

Attempting to extract a mystical meaning from the original is maybe more fun, but, at a certain point, mystery crosses the line into gibberish, and you have to ask yourself if that was really what he meant to say.

As Cheney might have observed, “Go fuck your biggest self of self.”

I’m going with the double anticipation theory as an answer to the question itself.

However, this journey has been far more valuable to me than the destination: I’d really like to buy Salient lunch for sharing with us the majesty of #13.

Hmm. For clarity’s sake, let’s make that And the biggest [“]self[,” or source of danger,] of [any] self ….

@Alex Prior

You might enjoy these lines from an old song:

If you will not when you may,
You shall not when you will, sir.

:)

I’d really like to buy Salient lunch for sharing with us the majesty of #13.

Thanks! You may also enjoy John’s very fun periplum thread, to which I contributed the Stevens parody Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Periplum, which managed to not be the best poem in the comment section. A fellow by moniker Bad Jim achieved ambrosian immortality and brought back a little to share with us. Good times.