the best english translation of σωφροσύνη (sophrosyne) (or, at least as good as any other; no better, no worse

how and why do i let myself off the hook so easily? i'm so adept at sweeping the most important of matters underneath the rug. i don't think i lack an equal or anything, but i know that i am able to forget everything important to me. is it forgetting if i know i'm acting against myself as i do it..or i take steps that i know will make me 'ok' with my failure to live up to my own self-image.?

This gap between potentiality and actuality is a probably natural tension of human life; it might never be narrowed to nothing. my problem is the overwhelming awareness of my own plight and my own hand in it. i have no interest self-actualization that takes work. i do only that which comes naturally, i.e. easily. i will tell you of my dreams - or what i believe - and i may treat you very well - but alone in my mind, i will lose. every time. i succumb. i blame. i rationalize. i smoke. i forget. but it's not really forgetting - and if it is then i'm the most heinous,vulgar, culpable amnesiac; it's some bizarre apathy: maybe more nihilistic than anything. nihilistic in my complete and utter internal, actual subordinatation to my emotions opposite the superficial and vocal philosopher of reason, condemning those that are satisfied with short-term, almost already obsolete sources of happiness. condemning. when i am as big of an offender. not that it matters, this comparison. it's pretty much a way for me to pat myself on the back while on the front end, disemboweling and lashing. that's why i never come close to thinking about killing myself in anyway other than completely abstractly. which seems impossible, right? but i will remain alive; perpetually failing to live up to myself, these standards defeated by reason, beloved by emotion, they keep me barely above water; i never really move in any direction.

- i just read the "metanarrative" wiki entry. not really a new concept to me, but i never connected with until now. i still have this battle of reason and emotion narrative running throughout my own life. am i merely the product of a culture who still buys the metanarrative as a valuable concept, thereby creating the metanarrative. isn't this a hole in the poststructuralist disillusionment with such overarching and pervasive explanations of meaning, if people still buy that they exist...but perhaps they're not arguing against their existence, the p.s. are arguing against their performance. so instead, the p.s. focus on the metanarrative as an inaccurate representation of reality and therefore negative in practice. this seems to be the at the heart an attack on living absolutely, or applying narrative absolutely, rather, since lyotard seems to at least accept the narrative as a valuable means of value structural framing, he just wants it localized, more relative and contingent to the context of particular individuals, or very distinct, unified groups of people (?). tho i can definitely see where hes coming from...i find this very broad narrative of a battle between emotion and reason to be not only helpful but realistic.

i'm ok with my failure because i've been conditioning myself to be ok with it for a little more than a decade. so, i've been doing it a while, have even acquired tools to make my own acquiescence that much easier. like a shy rapist, i like to drug my victim. like a good marketer, it involves owning the medium, the message, the conversation. but it's this obsession with means that has gotten me bogged down and in the end always results in my acquiescence. it's in playing this deconstructive, means unpacking game that i am already naked and bent over. i have already lost. the marketer has moved the conversation, i have agreed with his fundamental argument about the efficacy of deconstructing my life in order to reconstruct it. he forgets that i do know. doesn't know that i know enough about the causes to move on - and act. contemplation is a contingent value. it's necessary but not sufficient.

what kind of self-revolution am i advocating, desiring...apocalyptic or gradual? but this is a false way to look at it. first of all, there is a buildup to the apocalyptic..it doesn't happen without antecedent causes. the issue seems to be in the transition, the readiness of the previously dominant but now defeated culture to leave. so, it's an issue of smooth or jagged. in the more jagged situation, it would be less immediately ideal since there'd be prominent remnants of the previous hegemony. so