348 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
on to aspects of thought which are pleasant, and suppresses internal
structures which produce mental pain.
This strategy could be called „putting the right foot backward.‟ On the
one hand, the focus is upon subjective Mercy thought—the correct „foot.‟
However, internal Mercy structure is not advanced, but rather torn down—
the „foot‟ is moving backwards and not forwards.
„Putting the wrong foot forward‟ leads to pseudo-cultures and pseudo-
theories. These are positive results which are incomplete. The conditions
created by „putting the right foot backward‟ are similar, because the same
„foot‟ as before ends up in front, but more noxious, because the relative
movement is backwards. Instead of pseudo-culture, one finds pseudo-
identity: Mercy experiences with the strongest feelings no longer have
contact with me, but are now blocked off and assigned to various multiples.
Therefore, each aspect of me becomes hollow emotionally, for it is aware
of only some Mercy feelings.
Pseudo-culture looks to Teacher professionalism for its appeal.
Pseudo-identity, in contrast, depends upon Teacher order for its very
existence. The person whose mind is fragmented can only survive because
he lives in a natural world and a physical body which stay in one piece and
continue to function, even when his thinking falls apart. The individual
with multiple personalities may have gaps within his internal recollection,
but the external world continues to tick along, and it provides a stable order
which holds together his internal multiplicity.
Pseudo-theories in turn take the form of pseudo-life. Each fragment of
intellectual Teacher identity is based upon the defining experience of some
Mercy hurt or trauma. Some of these mental fragments are very single-
minded, like two-dimensional caricatures of real persons. However, the
vividness of the defining Mercy trauma which underlies them makes up for
this lack of Teacher generality. In the same way that pseudo-identity
depends upon existing Teacher order for its existence, so pseudo-life must
have its Mercy defining experiences in order to continue.
Finally, we have the fourth option of „moving the wrong foot
backward.‟ This approach attacks mental stability by destroying the
external Teacher order present within the physical body and the natural
world. It is what happens during war. Each side bombs the land of the
other, and kills its soldiers—this reduces the order of the natural world to
rubble, and destroys the physical „order within complexity‟ which we call
life. I think we can safely describe death and destruction as a move
backwards. Even those who survive in a physical sense often experience
permanent mental scarring.
The Really Big Picture of Walking
We have compared mental growth to the process of putting one foot in
front of the other. I have suggested that progress is achieved when we