Welcome to the seventh week of our book club reading A Lodging for Wayfaring Men. We're reading one chapter every two weeks, so we'll be discussing Chapter 4 next Saturday, but in between-weeks we are having a look at the essays in Appendix A. They are short and accessible.

You can find the book club reading schedule here: #1582413

Covetousness and Revaluing the Self by Prester John

At first, I thought this essay was a little woo-woo, new age, but having thought about it for a while, perhaps there is something here. Certainly, this repositioning of "covetousness" is interesting:

People who conceive of themselves as worthy of good things, valuable of themselves, deserving and expectant of pleasure, are not covetous, since covetousness presupposes that you cannot get what you want by your own virtues, and must seize it by fraud.

When we bump up against covetousness, it's often, as Prester John says in this essay, something like envy -- it's all about things that are external to us. Prester John revereses it and makes covetousness all about our own opinion of ourselves -- and especially what we think we are capable of.

"Do you think that you have the ability to create what you want to out of life?"

A word I've been seeing a lot lately in Bitcoin is "sovereignty." It seems like the Bitcoiners who want to pivot to AI but feel sheepish about it are rebranding under "sovereignty" as a way of making it seem like they have not given up on Bitcoin. Nevertheless, sovereignty seems very close to what Prester John is talking about with taking yourself seriously enough that you believe you can create the things you want in life. This is very compelling -- especially now as it seems that AI tools can be used to solve so much of the friction that may have given people reason to give up in the past.

But, a problem with this sort of thinking is this: what if you want more than you are capable of achieving?

No, having devalued your self is not your fault. We were all born into this. These ideas have pervaded all generations and groups of men throughout recorded history. We learned it from our parents and associates, who learned it from theirs. But though it is not your fault, it remains your problem to fix.

If this is the case, I want to know why. why should humanity have developed this way and not along some more honest, noble -- and according to Prester John -- more accurate vision of itself? Because, unless there's a good explanation for that, it seems like we are unlikely to change it.

I've been reading Ursula K LeGuin's The Dispossessed lately. In that story, there are two societies -- a decadent, stratified society much like ours and a noble, anarchic society on the moon above them. The people from this anarchic society seem to have none of the cultural hangups that the more earthly society groans beneath -- and when a scientist from the anarchic society comes down to earth, he is disconcerted by interactions with servants and people in the lower classes -- people who don't seem to mind being treated as servants.

I don't think there are very many people in the world who are uninteresting and have no dreams -- even if most dreams get abandoned in the face of life's many obstacles. But I think what Prester John is getting at is that most of us have pretty severe constraints placed on our dreams -- and we don't often take time to evaluate these.

The solution is to revalue yourself. This does not mean that you should become arrogant and fake. It means that you should analyze your own self-image, and refuse to act on a low or negative estimation of yourself. This will be slow process, and difficult at times.

Well, of course we should, but then there's all these guy wires holding us down. You try to free up your estimation of yourself but you've still got to provide for a family, pay for insurance, it won't do to abandon your friendships, and each one of these is a small enough force on its own, but together they make up a rats nest of responsibilities that prevent you from really changing very much about this estimation of yourself. After all, guy wires are there to stabilize things, even if they end up holding it down.

So, if Prester John is right, and we live in a society that -- for whatever reason -- has crippled our dreaming organs, what do you think you would dream of if you able?

Covetousness and Revaluing the Self by Prester John

During my years as a rabid follower of Jesus, I spent a lot of time going over Bible texts. (And I do mean a lot of time.) Even though I no longer think that those texts were inspired by an omnipotent creator, I do recognize that they were written by a lot of very insightful guys, who, if not always finding the right answers, were at least asking the right questions. One of the things I discovered in my studies was the real meaning and significance of covetousness.

Covetousness is one of those old words that was little-understood even in the old days. Most people think it meant something like envy. But that falls significantly short of the real meaning.

Covetousness has to do with something deeper, with valuing ourselves. Do you think that you have the ability to create what you want to out of life? Now, I’m not asking you if you have actually done this. We all know that the world is fraught with traps, difficulties, and sometimes insurmountable obstacles. But, if those obstacles didn’t exist, would you have the built-in ability to create what you want?

Let me provide some background on this by giving you a very literal translation of a passage from the Bible (Ephesians) that seems to refer to what happened after the famed episode in the garden of Eden, beginning just after man was ejected:

“They went plodding through life in the ineffectiveness of their consciousness. The stream of their consciousness was dimmed by the solidification and desensitizing of their core. And so, they became non-participants in the divine life. This hurt them so badly that they became apathetic, and in that state, gave up control of themselves, and toiled in a reverse catharsis, with covetousness.” The exact rendering of the word “covetousness” here would be “more-hold.” That is, they sought to hold more than they had created on their own. By wanting to hold on to more than you’ve made, you are judging yourself as incapable of making it yourself.

People who conceive of themselves as worthy of good things, valuable of themselves, deserving and expectant of pleasure, are not covetous, since covetousness presupposes that you cannot get what you want by your own virtues, and must seize it by fraud.

Thus, when you sell out (reach a point where the money is good enough for you to sell your honor), you are naming your own value. Perceiving yourself to be unable to create what you want by your own virtues, you sell out.

This finds application in myriad ways.

The point of this discussion is that all humans of our era must fight to revalue themselves. All of us have been touched by covetousness in one way or another (probably in many, many ways), and have accepted a devalued self-estimation. (There’s another very interesting Bible passage that literally translated says “according to your estimation, it happens unto you.”)

No, having devalued your self is not your fault. We were all born into this. These ideas have pervaded all generations and groups of men throughout recorded history. We learned it from our parents and associates, who learned it from theirs. But though it is not your fault, it remains your problem to fix.

The solution is to revalue yourself. This does not mean that you should become arrogant and fake. It means that you should analyze your own self-image, and refuse to act on a low or negative estimation of yourself. This will be slow process, and difficult at times.

By virtue of being a living human, you have immense capabilities. Yes, there may be difficult, or even impossible, obstacles in front of you; but that does not change your basic abilities – they are there, and are more powerful than we have understood.

Remember that sacrificing truth and honor to what seems immediately necessary is based upon either a low estimation of yourself, or – only occasionally – upon truly impossible obstacles.

Work on it. It’ll take time, but work on it.