206 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
Catharsis
There is a more subtle technique for removing guilt. Mercy
identification in this new and improved method is exploited to repair
mental furniture. If the carpet has a mark, rather than disappearing the
soiled floor covering, I identify rather with the Mercy experience of a
clean carpet. If the sofa is torn, I do not attempt to teleport it into oblivion,
but identify instead with a repaired sofa. After all, once a memory has
made its way into the internal world of Mercy thought, it cannot be made
to disappear once and for all. Rather, it can only be suppressed, and we
just stated that memories which are repressed tend to come back to haunt
us.A Therefore, I can get around the problem of reappearing „sofas‟ by the
„novel and improved technique‟ of making sure that the „clean‟ experience
with which I identify is exactly the same as the offending object in every
detail except for the smudge or the flaw. That way I never find myself
smashing into rematerializing mental furniture because I am not using
Mercy identification to move furniture, only to clean it up.
Rather than give an immediate illustration of this mental repair work,
let me quote from the ideas of Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, in his
analysis of the theater form known as tragedy.^10 He described this kind of
play as a catharsis of the emotions, “transferring them from our own
predicament to the sufferings of the tragic hero.” Let us analyze the various
steps which he said are required for repairing damaged mental „furniture,‟
quoting from the words of Aristotle
himself when appropriate.
First, according to Aristotle, I must
start with a piece of good mental fabric.
Since Mercy identification works with
experiences and me, I need a set of
experiences involving people with
which Mercy strategy can identify.
Therefore, I will create a situation
involving people by acting it out—
hence a theater of tragedy. What better way to identify with Mercy
experiences than to sit in a chair and watch a group of people acting out a
certain plot. One is safely passive, encased within beautiful clothing,
sitting in a pleasant environment, and surrounded by hundreds of other
A We will see later that the only lasting way to remove „mental furniture‟ is
to use Perceiver thought to disassemble the unpleasant „object‟ into its
component parts and then to reassemble these pieces into a more desirable
form. We will also see that the counterfeit alternative of „disappearing‟ the
object involves Exhorter thought, which lies as we might expect at the
foundation of imagination.