How To Know God Part 4

What's my life challenge? ...

To survive, protect, and maintain.

Every stage of G.o.d implies a life challenge, which can be expressed in terms of highest aspiration. G.o.d exists to inspire us, and we express this through the aspirations we set for ourselves. An aspiration is the limit of the possible. In stage one, the limit is set by physical circ.u.mstances.

If you are surrounded by threats, to survive is a high aspiration. This would be true in a shipwreck, a war, a famine, or an abusive family.

However, each stage of G.o.d must give scope to the whole range of human abilities; even in the worst situations a person aspires to do more than cope.

You might think that the next step would be escape. In stage one, however, escape is blocked by the reality principle. A child can't escape his family, just as famine victims often can't escape drought. So the mind turns instead to imitating G.o.d, and since G.o.d is a protector, we try to protect the most valuable things in life. Protectors take many forms. Some are policemen protecting the law, firemen protecting safety, social workers protecting the helpless. In other words, stage one is the most social of all the seven worlds we will examine. Here one learns to be responsible and caring.

The reward for learning to protect others is that in return they give you their love and respect. Notice how furious the police become if they are taunted by the very people they are sworn to defend (this occurs in riots, political demonstrations, and racially divided neighborhoods). The protector craves respect. He is also inflexible about rules and laws.

Being a guardian, he sees danger everywhere; therefore he is motivated to keep people in line "for their own good." This is essentially a parental feeling, and you will find that police officers can be fatherly, in both the good and bad sense. They may be quick to forgive offenses where the perpetrator acts humbled and chastised, but they are also p.r.o.ne to dispensing rough justice when a bad guy shows no remorse. Outright defiance is the worst response to a protector, who then feels completely justified in holding you to the letter of the law, just as Jehovah felt justified in punishing infractions of his law. Divine authority could be very cruel even to the chosen people, but those outside the law (meaning anyone with a different religion) deserve no mercy.

What is my greatest strength? ...

Courage.

What is my biggest hurdle? ...

Fear of loss, abandonment.

It isn't hard to figure out what you have to do to survive in a harsh world-you have to show courage in the face of adversity. The Old Testament is a world of heroes like Samson and David who fight battles and defeat enemies. Their victory is proof that G.o.d favors them. But as we saw, no amount of effort will totally appease this G.o.d. The courage to fight must eventually turn into the courage to oppose him.

If we take it back to the family, a vicious circle is involved. If you are afraid of your father because of his violent and unpredictable temper, the prospect of facing him head-on will arouse even more fear. Thus the incentive to keep quiet gets strengthened. Unfortunately, keeping quiet only makes the fear worse, since it has no release. The only way out is to overcome the hurdle, which is true at every stage of G.o.d. As in the family, the devotee of a fearful G.o.d will not move on to a higher stage until he says, "I am tired of being afraid. You are not my G.o.d if I have to hide from your anger."

In social terms we see this played out in rebellion against authority. A policeman who decides to testify against his fellow officers on charges of corruption walks a fine line. From one perspective he is a traitor, from another he has found a conscience. Which one is true? It all depends on where you are heading. Some people have to preserve the system, and since corruption is inevitable, they must decide how much bad can be stomached in the name of the common good. Fathers and mothers make such decisions every day over the bad behavior of their children, just as the police do over behavior under the law. But others look at the same system and decide that doing good isn't consistent with breaking the rules you are a.s.signed to enforce. Parents can't teach truth-telling while at the same time being liars; policemen can't accept bribes and at the same time arrest crooks.

There is no clear line here. As organized religions demonstrate, it is possible to live a long time with an angry, jealous, unfair G.o.d, even though he is supposed to be the highest judge. Neither side of the line is better than the other; ultimately one must learn to live with ambivalence.

The important issue is psychological. How much fear are you willing to live with? When this hurdle is cleared, when personal integrity is more important than being accepted within the system, a new stage begins. Thus the exhilaration felt by many war protesters. To them, demonstrations against authority mark a new birth of morality that is guided by principle rather than outside force. Now translate this to an inner war, with one voice urging rebellion and the other threatening you with punishment for breaking the law, and you have the core drama of stage one.

What is my greatest temptation? ...

Tyranny.

You would think from the story of Adam and Eve that G.o.d's children were tempted to sin, but to me this is just the official version. The guardian wants you to obey; therefore he must make disobedience a wrongful act. The real temptation lies on G.o.d's side, just as it does with any protector who acts in his name. G.o.d's temptation is to become a tyrant. Tyranny is protection that has gone too far. It exists in families where the parents cannot balance rules with freedom. It exists in systems of law where mercy has been forgotten.

The desire to rule is so seductive that we don't need to delve very far into this particular temptation. It is more interesting to ask how it is ever escaped. The tyrant more often than not has to be deposed, overthrown by force. In some societies, as in some families, this happens through violence. The children rebel against authority by killing it; this takes place symbolically-through reckless teenage behavior with drinking and driving, for example. But short of violence there is a subtler mechanism for escaping any temptation, which is to see through the need for it. In Mafia films the gangsters inevitably run a protection racket. Under the pretext of keeping harm away from a storekeeper, they sell him insurance in the form of their protection. But this scheme works only through a lie, since the violence being held at bay comes from the gangsters themselves-they are the threat and the insurance. In spiritual terms, G.o.d's protection is valued only by denying that he is also the source of the threat. In the end, nothing is outside the deity, so asking him to protect you from storms, famine, disease, and misfortune is the same as asking the perpetrator.

I was reading a psychiatric case study in which a father was very worried about his three-year-old daughter. The little girl couldn't sleep well and suffered from bouts of severe anxiety. The father sat up with her every night, reading fairy tales to her and trying to offer rea.s.surance.

"I read to her about Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf," he told the therapist, "and when she gets scared, I tell her that there's nothing to worry about. I'm here to protect her."

"So you can't understand why she still seems so frightened?" the therapist remarked.

"Not at all," said the father. "Do I need to be even more rea.s.suring?"

"No, you need to ask yourself why you choose frightening stories when she is so frightened to begin with."

The answer in this case is that the father was blinded by his need to be rea.s.suring, a need rooted in his past-he had had an absent father who wasn't around to calm his child's fears. This is a telling anecdote, because it poses the central question in stage one: Why did G.o.d have to make such a frightening world? Was it just out of the temptation to tyrannize us? The answer doesn't lie with G.o.d but in our interpretation of him. To get out of stage one, you must arrive at a new interpretation of all the issues raised so far-Who is G.o.d? What kind of world did he create?

Who am I? How do I fit in? In stage two the basic problem of survival has been overcome. There is much less need for fear, and for the first time we see the emerging influence of the new brain. Even so, just as the reptilian brain is buried inside the skull, not abolished by the cerebrum or canceled out by higher thought, the G.o.d of stage one is a permanent legacy that everyone confronts before inner growth can be achieved.

STAGE TWO:.

G.o.d THE ALMIGHTY.

(Reactive Response) If stage one is about survival, stage two is about power. There is no doubt that G.o.d has all the power, which he jealously guards. At the beginning of the scientific era, when the secrets of electricity were being discovered and the elements charted, many worried that it was sacrilege to look too closely at how G.o.d worked. Power was not only his but rightfully so. Our place was to obey-a view that makes perfect sense if you consider heaven the goal of life. Who would endanger his soul just to know how lightning works?

Freud points out, however, that power is irresistible. It is one of the primary goods in life, along with money and the love of women (Freud's worldview was inescapably masculine). If Hamlet's dilemma is rooted in stage one, the hero of stage two is Macbeth, who finds it convenient to murder the king, his symbolic father, but then must wrestle with the demons of ambition. In the first act of Macbeth, when he meets the three witches on the heath, they predict that more and more power will come to him, until in the end he is king. But this is more than a prediction.

Power is Macbeth's curse. It inflames his guilt, it forces him to abandon love; he lives in the shadows of night, sleepless and afraid of being plotted against; and in the end power drives him mad. The kind of G.o.d implied by the drive to power is dangerous, but he is more civilized than the G.o.d of stage one. In describing this new G.o.d we would say that he is Sovereign Omnipotent Just The answerer of prayers Impartial Rational Organized into rules Compared to the G.o.d of stage one, this version is much more social. He is worshiped by those who have formed a stable society, one that needs laws and governance. The Almighty is not so willful as his predecessor; he still metes out punishment, but you can understand why-the wrongdoer disobeyed a law, something he knows in advance not to do. Justice is no longer so rough; the kings and judges who take their power from G.o.d do so with a sense of being righteous. They deserve their power-or so they tell themselves. As with Macbeth, the wielders of power get caught up in urges that are all but irresistible.

The drama of power is based on the reactive response, a biological need to fulfill ego demands. This response has not been studied well; we can surmise that it is a.s.sociated with the midbrain, which lies between the oldest animal structures of the old brain and the rationality of the cerebral cortex. This is a shadowy region, and for decades no one really believed that ego-meaning your sense of ident.i.ty and personality-was innate. Then studies in infant development by Jerome Kagan and others began to demonstrate that babies do not simply learn to have a personal ident.i.ty. Almost from the moment of birth some newborns are outgoing, demanding in their needs, bold, and curious about the outside world, while others are introverted, quiet, undemanding, and shy about exploring their environment. These traits persist and expand through childhood and in fact remain for life. This implies that the ego response is built into us.

The ruling dictum of the reactive response is "More for me." Taken too far, this leads to corruption, since eventually an insatiable appet.i.te must run into the desires of others. But in biological terms the drive for more is essential. A newborn infant exhibits a total lack of discipline and control. Child psychiatrists believe that all boundaries are fluid in the beginning. The baby is enclosed in a womblike world where the walls, crib, blanket, and even mother's arms are still part of an undifferentiated, amorphous ent.i.ty. To take this blob of sensation and find out where "I" begins is the first task of growing up.

The birth of ego is primitive at first. When an infant touches a hot stove and draws away in shock, he remembers the pain not only as discomfort but as something "I" don't want. This sense of ego is so primary that we forget what it was like not to have it. Was there a time when I saw my mother smiling down at me and felt that her emotions were mine? Apparently not-without being able to think or reflect, the seed of ego came into the world with us. Need, desire, pain, and pleasure were felt as "mine" and remained that way, only growing in intensity.

Nor do we find any altruistic G.o.ds in world mythology. The first commandment given to Moses is "You shall place no other G.o.d before me."

Jehovah survives all compet.i.tors in the Old Testament-we don't even witness much of a contest. But in other systems, such as the Greek and the Hindu, the war for power is constant, and one gets the sense that Zeus and Shiva have to keep their eyes open if they want to remain at the top of the pantheon. The Judaic G.o.d is a surprising victor in his emergence from a small, conquered nation that had ten of its twelve tribes wiped off the face of the earth by powerful foes, yet the subjugated Hebrews were able to look beyond their situation. They projected a stable, unshakable G.o.d who could not be touched by any shift of power on earth-the first G.o.d Almighty to survive all challengers.

Jehovah succeeded because he exemplified a world that was fast evolving-the world of compet.i.tion and ambition. Raw power is violent, while the power achieved through ambition is subtle. At the level of survival, you get the food you need by stealing it from others; s.e.x is connected with rape or the stealing of women from another tribe. The G.o.d of stage two doesn't condone rape and pillage, however; he has structured a hierarchical world, one in which you can appeal to the king or the judge to settle who owns the crops and whose wife is legitimate. The struggle to bring in laws to replace sheer might divides stage one and stage two, although there is always the threat of reversion. Power addicts you to getting what you want, exposes you to the temptation to trample other people's needs according to the rule that might makes right. To prevent this we have a new G.o.d, an omnipotent judge who threatens even the most powerful king with retribution if he goes too far.

Who am I? ...

Ego, personality.

Every parent is aware of the phase in a toddler's life a.s.sociated with the "terrible twos," when power dawns. The two-year-old who throws tantrums, coaxes, wheedles, and manipulates any situation to get his way is testing his ego boundaries. Earlier time was spent mastering basic skills of bodily coordination, but now the time is ripe for discovering just how far I, me, mine will get you. Exasperated they might get, good parents do not stifle this sudden fascination with power. They realize that balance grows out of excess; without the testing of limits, the ego would either be cowed into submission or lost in grandiose fantasies.

From its first days, the ego finds that making things go your way isn't automatic. Parents say no, and more important, have their own lives, which means that a child cannot usurp every moment of their attention. These are shocking discoveries, but as a young child adapts to them, he prepares for the bigger shock ahead-that there are other children who want to grab the love and attention that used to be yours by right. This contest of competing egos creates the drama of stage two.

If you know yourself to be compet.i.tive and ambitious, it goes without saying that at some level you have given your allegiance to the G.o.d of this stage. Society rewards these traits so much that we tend to overlook their roots. Imagine that you and your older brother are both trying out for the same position on a Little League baseball team. When the time comes for the coach to make his decision, your feelings are those of a devotee before G.o.d the Almighty: You have to abide by the coach's decision. The Almighty is sovereign.

Even if you want to fight back, the adults have all the power. The Almighty is omnipotent.

You have to believe that playing your best will make the decision fall in your favor. The Almighty is just.

You can't help but hope that the coach knows how desperately you want to be on the team. The Almighty answers prayers.

The coach is a.s.sumed to know what he is doing and capable of judging who is better than someone else. The Almighty is impartial and rational.

You have to study the rules of baseball and abide by them. It does no good simply to beat your brother up to win a spot on the team. The Almighty lays down rules and laws.

This psychology is not mere projection; the same kind of thinking conforms to the way society works. Thus the ego forms a bridge from the family, where your needs and whims are indulged, to the setting of school, where rules override your whims and many other children are taken into account.

The ego is always tempted to return to the infant paradise in which food and love came automatically, without compet.i.tion. This fantasy comes to the surface in adults who believe that they deserve everything they have earned, no matter by what means. When John D. Rockefeller was asked where his immense wealth came from, he gave the famous reply "G.o.d gave it to me." It is essential in stage two to feel this connection, for otherwise one would be competing with the Almighty. In Genesis, after G.o.d has created the first man and woman on the sixth day, he says, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, and every living thing that moves upon the earth.

When power was handed out, several features were notable. First, it was handed to both man and woman. This original couple precedes Adam and Eve; it remains a mystery why the writers of the books of Moses felt called upon to create human beings a second time, in a more s.e.xist version.

Second, there is no suggestion of aggression or violence. G.o.d gives humans plants to eat, with no suggestion that they are to kill anything for food.

Finally, G.o.d looked at his work "and he saw that it was good," implying that he felt no compet.i.tiveness with mankind over who was to rule. In future ages, keeping the peace would often depend on surrounding a monarch with the aura of G.o.d-given rule. (Macbeth owes his worst troubles not to the fact that he committed murder but that he seized the crown unlawfully, against the divine right of kings.) The fantasy of getting everything for me doesn't often come true, however; this isn't the time for the meek to inherit the earth. Stage two is dominated by a G.o.d who justifies strength and compet.i.tion, with no thought that being a loser is possible.

How do I fit in? ...

I win.

The theme of stage two can be summarized as "Winning is next to G.o.dliness." The Almighty approves of accomplishment. The Protestant work ethic sealed his approval into dogma. It is a very simple dogma, free of theological complications. Those who work the hardest will get the greatest reward. But did this belief actually derive from spiritual insight, or did people find themselves in a world where work needed to be done and added G.o.d's stamp of approval afterward? Any answer we give would have to be circular, because the human situation is always being projected onto G.o.d, only to come back as spiritual truth.

In stage one the Fall brings about the curse of having to labor until you return to the dust from whence you came. For work to be glorified now in stage two seems contradictory, yet this is exactly how inner growth proceeds. A certain problem is posed that cannot be solved in an earlier stage, and then it gets resolved by finding a new way to approach it. In other words, each stage involves a change of perspective or even a new worldview.

If we take the Bible as our authority, there is ample evidence to support the notion that G.o.d approves of work, compet.i.tion, and winning. None of the kings of Israel is punished for going to war. Joshua could not have brought down the walls of Jericho with a blast on a ram's horn if G.o.d hadn't aided him. A warrior G.o.d sides with David when he fights the Philistines against impossible odds-in fact, most of the Old Testament victories require miracles or G.o.d's blessing to be achieved.

On the other hand, Jesus is adamantly opposed to war, and in general to work. He has no consideration for money, even promising (or so the disciples understood him) that one has only to wait for deliverance, and this meant deliverance from work, among other things. The Sermon on the Mount is in favor of letting G.o.d handle all earthly needs. One glance proves the point beyond a doubt: Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where it grows rusty and moth-eaten, and thieves break in to steal it. Store up treasure in heaven instead....

No servant can be a slave to two masters.... You cannot serve G.o.d and Mammon [money].

Behold the lilies of the field. They do not toil, nor do they spin [cloth], yet I tell you, Solomon in all his glory was not attired like one of them.

This sort of talk was disturbing. In the first place, it undercut the power of the rich. Jesus explicitly tells a wealthy man who is worried about the state of his soul that if he doesn't give away his money, he has no more chance of getting to heaven than a camel of pa.s.sing through the eye of a needle-no chance at all.

Even if you ignore the letter of what is being said-society has found countless ways to serve G.o.d and money at the same time-Jesus holds a completely different view of power than anyone around him. He doesn't equate power with achievement, work, planning, saving, or acc.u.mulation. If you take away those things, the ego collapses. All are necessary in order to build wealth, wage war, or divide the strong from the weak. These were the very goals Jesus did not want to further; therefore his rejection of power makes perfect sense. He wanted the human wolves to lie down with the lambs.

However, this poses a huge conflict for we who follow the demands of our egos, who want to feel that we can be good and win at the same time. Some sort of work ethic is inevitable in stage two, yet it will always be haunted by the fear that G.o.d doesn't really approve of the things society rewards so lavishly.

How do I find G.o.d? ...

Awe and obedience.

Stage two is much less paralyzed by fear of G.o.d than stage one, but the next closest emotion to fear-awe-is much present. The most primitive G.o.d could strike you dead with a sudden bolt of lightning, leaving the survivors to guess what you did to offend him. This new G.o.d punishes by the rules. Most of his rules make sense in broad outline; every society mandates against murder, theft, lying, and coveting property that belongs to someone else. Yet the Almighty doesn't have to make sense. As the medieval church fathers declared, G.o.d does not have to justify his ways to man. Eventually this att.i.tude will change, but as long as the deity inspires awe, the way to him is through blind obedience.

Every stage of G.o.d contains hidden questions and doubts. In this case the hidden question is: Can G.o.d really make good on his threats? The Almighty has to make sure that no one is tempted to find out, which means that he must exhibit his strength. The righteous must receive tangible rewards, the wrongdoers must feel his wrath. Psalm 101 affirms that a deal has been struck between G.o.d and the faithful: I sing of loyalty and justice; I will raise a psalm to thee, O Lord.

I will follow a wise and blameless course, whatever may befall me.

I will go about my house in purity of heart....

I will hate disloyalty; I will have none of it.

As part of this loyalty oath, the psalm lists what will not be tolerated: crooked thoughts, backbiters, the proud and pompous, the wicked in general.

I remember receiving a lesson in G.o.d's power when I was three; My parents had hired a nurse, or ayah, to take care of me because my mother was preoccupied with a new baby. My ayah was from Goa, a heavily Christian part of India with a strong European influence, and her name was Mary da Silva. Every day Mary took me to the park in my pram. After an hour or so, she would take me out and place me on the ground. Then she would draw a circle around me in chalk, telling me in a solemn voice that if I ventured outside the circle, the G.o.ddess Kali would eat my heart and spit out the blood. Naturally this promise frightened me to death, and I never dared go anywhere near the boundary.

We are all like cows who will not cross a road that has a metal cattle guard laid down, for fear that they will catch their hoofs in it. Ranchers pull a simple trick on the animals by painting the shape of a cattle guard on the pavement, the mere sight of which will make the cows pull back.

G.o.d's laws could be just such a phantom; for fear of hurting ourselves, we pull away from disobedience, even though we have never experienced divine punishment in real life. To this end we take ordinary misfortunes such as illness, bankruptcy, and loss of loved ones, and interpret them coming from G.o.d.

What is the nature of good and evil? ...

Good is getting what you want.

Evil is any obstacle to getting what you want.

Obedience isn't an end unto itself. For obeying G.o.d's laws, the worshiper expects a reward. In stage two this takes the form of getting what you want. G.o.d permits you to fulfill your desires, and he makes you feel righteous in the bargain. In his role as Almighty, the deity now begins to answer prayers. In this value system, the rich can clothe themselves in virtue while the poor are morally suspect an seem shameful. (Lest anyone a.s.sume that this is a biblical tradition or just the fruit of the Protestant work ethic, in China mercantile success as a measure of goodness has been going on for centuries. Only the most self-denying sects of Buddhism have escaped the equation of wealth and G.o.d's favor.) As cut-and-dried as it appears, measuring good and evil according to rewards has its pitfalls. As every young child finds out to his dismay in preschool, others want the same things that you do, and sometimes there isn't enough to go around. Social rules prevent you from grabbing, hitting, and running away. Therefore the ego has to figure out how to aggrandize "me" while at the same time being good. Rarely does the solution emerge as pure honesty and cooperation.

As a result, manipulation is born. The goal of manipulation is to get what you want but not look bad in the process. If I want your toy and can charm you into giving it to me, then no one (including my conscience) can accuse me of stealing. This calculus is very important when you fear guilt, even more so if you fear that G.o.d is watching and keeping tabs. It seems strange that arch-manipulators are motivated by conscience, yet they are; the ability to tell right from wrong yet not completely heed the difference is what separates a manipulator from a criminal or a bully.

Are these simply the kinds of shortcuts we are all tempted to use in order to get our way? If you turn to the Old Testament, there is no mistaking that G.o.d himself is manipulative. After destroying the world in a flood, his covenant with Noah blocks him from using totalitarian force.

Thereafter he is subtler-praising those who hew to the law, withdrawing to show anger, sending an endless string of prophets to attack sin through preaching that stirs up guilt. We continue to use the same tactics in society, pressuring conformity to what the majority believe is good while disguising the evils that are done to the band of wrong-thinkers (pacifists, radicals, communists, etc.) who refuse to fall into line.

What is my life challenge? ...

Maximum achievement.

Stage two isn't just a matter of naked power. It brings a sense of optimism to life. The world exists to be explored and conquered. If you watch a two-year-old as I, me, mine takes over, the sense of delight is inescapable. Ego gives you strength, although its lessons are often painful.

The Buddhist doctrine of ego death as a road to enlightenment is something most people cannot accept. Ego death is based on a good argument, which goes as follows: the more you center your life on I, me, mine, the more insecure you will become. The ego believes in acquiring more and more. Its appet.i.te for pleasure, power, s.e.x, and money is insatiable. But more and more doesn't make anyone happy. It leads to isolation, since you are getting your share at the cost of someone else's. It forces you to fear loss. Even worse, it makes you identify with externals, and that tendency can only wind up leaving you empty inside. At the deepest level, pleasure can never be the road to G.o.d because you get trapped in the cycle of duality (seeking pleasure and avoiding pain) while G.o.d is beyond all opposites.

Convincing as the benefits of ego death may sound, few people would willingly sacrifice the needs of I, me, mine. In stage two this is particularly true because G.o.d gives his blessing to those who achieve.

I was once consulted by a retired executive who was certain he had a hormone problem. I asked him about his symptoms.

"Where can I begin?" he complained. "I've lost all my energy. Half the time I don't want to get out of bed in the morning. Hours go by while I just sit in a chair, feeling gloomy and wondering if life has any point to it."

On the surface this was a case of depression, probably brought on by the man's recent retirement. Medically it's well doc.u.mented that sudden retirement can be dangerous. Men with no history of heart attack or cancer can unexpectedly die of these illnesses; one study found that the average life expectancy of retired executives was only thirty-three months on average.

I dutifully ran a battery of tests, but as I suspected, there was nothing wrong with this man's endocrine system. The next time l saw him, I said, "Would you do something simple for me? Just close your eyes and sit in silence for ten minutes. Don't look at your watch, I'll keep time for you."

Although a bit suspicious, he did as I asked. Ten minutes pa.s.sed, the last five obviously being hard for him, to judge by his fidgety movements.

Opening his eyes, he exclaimed, "Why did you make me do that? How pointless could anything be?"

"You were getting pretty restless," I remarked.

"I wanted to jump out of my chair," he said.

"So it doesn't look like our problem is lack of energy." My remark took him aback, and he looked baffled. "I don't think this is a hormone problem, metabolism, or depression," I said. "You've spent years organizing your external life, running a business, directing a large work force, and all that."

"Right, and I miss all that more than I can tell you," he mourned.

"I understand. And now that you have no external focus, what do you find?

You've paid almost no attention to organizing your inner life. Your problem isn't lack of energy, it's chaos. Your mind was trained to order everything around you at the cost of discovering what it would be like to have internal order."