Flavio's notes & aphorisms
A Well-Ordered Mind
How do people select their values, then? Either they extol the conscientious and disciplined man, or they romanticize the creative bohemian. But what is the conscientious man trying to do, except keep chaos and anxiety out of his mind? And what does the bohemian do but indulge so that terror is kept at bay? The first imperative of every human being, having ensured his survival, is to structure his consciousness. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that man fears the dissolution of his consciousness into chaos more than he fears death. The dissolute hedonist and the self-righteous conservative are, ultimately, after the same thing.
And neither is fundamentally wrong. It is only when preferences are transformed into rigid values, and rigid values into calcified opinions, that mayhem ensues.