15.1. Emancipating oneself from “I”, this small (yet) cumbersome word

“Unlike most children who imagine being Michael Jordan or Ronaldo, Woods never imagined he was anyone but himself. In his dreams, he had famous opponents, and he won against them [...] Ordinary children dream of conquering the world of sport, but Tiger planned his conquest. He was ten when he told his parents he wanted to study accounting: ‘Why accounting?’ Earl (his father) asked, ‘To be able to watch over those who will take care of my money’” [STR 98, p. 35].

The intrapersonal MO.O.N., the last of the MO.O.N. wheel, both correlated with the extra-personal MO.O.N. and coherent with the interpersonal MO.O.N., is the most delicate MO.O.N. to process. Indeed, the latter embodies Being (nous) in what the history of ontology and psychology, from Freigius, has elaborated as the fundamental science of the moral man. But Being begins with “I” which, in Western culture, seems to be the central pillar of the Being as a thinking, reasoning, demonstrating, knowing, acting and feeling subject. From him/her, everything begins, everything is done and everything ends (eidos). “I”, this small word that has become very cumbersome, is, at the same time, any ability, any skill and any possibility: “If I want, I can”, “I have everything in me”, “searching for potential in oneself” and “finding (all) the answers in oneself”, repeats the Truth of the “motivational” literature that aims to stimulate personal development in us, a conceptual product of the 20th Century.

It is then necessary to deploy not courage, but attention, in order to understand the first three stages of this last great category of MO.O.N.s. It will always be time to read the concrete examples, and return, if useful, to the first great part of our last development.

The intrapersonal MO.O.N. should not be thought of from the “I” perspective, the apparently inescapable pillar that the Being puts forward, but as a sum of skills independent of this cumbersome ontological “I”; it is, in any case, the choice that we made in order to remain coherent with the line initiated since the beginning of our work. Hence, “I” is used as a useful functional method and not as a branch of personality. Let us argue our point.

Without going back over the aspects proposed in the first part of this book, let us recall that Greek philosophers give to the “view” of the mind a power to act that activates knowledge (epistemê). From there, access to the full power of creation on the world (autos-kratos) begins for the thinking Being (I), as soon as this power is withdrawn from the Gods of Olympus. Those who know, the Leaders are those who act the right way. He/she who is aware or knows (istôr) is (therefore) able to act on the world, especially if he/she is a geometer, proclaims Plato. But we certainly owe the fundamental formalization of psychology to Freigius, and consequently the pre-modern architectural bases of the study of Being. “I”, in fact, thinks only of “oneself” (self(s)) as a form of inwardness, because from the outside, it becomes “you”, “the other”, or even “the true subject”, which is therefore measurable, given that “I” is worth “one”. The confusing “to be or not to be” certainly ended up welding Being to “I”. Indeed, if “I” am not, “I” can only be a wandering vagabond (alaomai), condemned never to become a moral and intelligent Being. Among the Greeks, in fact, the wanderer is the one who must die in order not to return to the profane space where he lived-thought. The wanderer, or homo-viator, is the one who is formed by and in the journey, and not only by the access to pure knowledge. It is possible to understand why auto-didacticism is worth contempt on the part of “he/she who Is-Knows”. Auto-didacticism – in the end – is one of the useful concepts for understanding the concept of intrapersonal MO.O.N.

Compliant with Aristotelian tradition, Freigius, perhaps the “first” psychologist in Occidental history, extended as much as refined the foundations of the intelligent soul (psukê and intellegere) in his work, Ciceroninus in 1575. The latter is elaborated and thought of from the logos (psukê-logos: psychology). The term psychologia is more fully elaborated in his writings, Quaestiones Physicae, and lays the foundations of vocabulary from which modern psychology would unfold over the next five centuries. The human soul (which has no biological equivalence; it is not an organ) is divided into two categories: one is irrational and organic and the other is rational and inorganic [MEN 05, p. 130]. Will (volontas) and intellect belong to the skills of the inorganic type. Senses and internal or external movement belong to the sensitive family (ibidem). Psychologia, or the statement of the intelligent soul, would then establish the architecture of what would become “I”. The passive intellect (accipiendi) transforms ideas into objects and then becomes general or abstract ideas, thanks to the active intellect (agendi). Then, compared and composed (componendi), they are available to the judgment (iudicandi), in other words, that which makes it possible to define what is true or false. This judgment can then be submitted before reason (ratiocinatrix), which can confront the one and the other. Reason can then lead to immediate intuition (contemplandi), which “immediately grasps, that is to say, without sensory mediation, the most universal truths and principles. Lastly, practical intelligence (practica seu agendi) directs action according to the rules of morality” (Ibidem, p. 133); here we see how ancient practical intelligence (metis) is replaced by rule and morality without discussion or negotiation.

This elaboration prolongs the Aristotelian invention: the term ti. Indeed, it answers the question that the Being asks. Is it a substance, a quantity or a quality that Aristotle ruminates over in Physics? For although the whole being is one, there is nevertheless the problem of what is within “I”. And “what” refers to the noun “ti”. “I” owns “something”, and that “something” is what makes an individual “talented”, “intelligent” and “powerful”. Greek thought, no more than current thought, does not manage to think this “something” could be in “I”, so it negotiates it with the edifice and the complex tools of the intellect from which “I” is elaborated, constructed and becomes “real”. By this skillful and slim ploy of the mind, the third term (ti), both ontological and substrate (hupokeimenon), is introduced as the subject of change. Thanks to ti, “I” can be free (liberitas) and talented, since “I” has something in him/her (gift, talent, capability, potential, intelligence, etc.) that allows him/her to succeed in life. Let us finalize this key point with which we can then devote ourselves to the intrapersonal MO.O.N., free of a “ti” that is certainly useful in the conceptual elaboration of the “self”, but, in our opinion, is quite cumbersome on a daily basis, simply because it is itself cluttered and settled by more than 2,000 years of concepts and models relating to the Being.

I exist because I, a concept actualized by a substrate, is apprehended as much from a logical point of view as from a physical one. This double aspect then allows “I” to elaborate as something “that has a proper existence” (kath’ auto pephukos) and is a “true subject” (hupokeimenon). As soon as the subject (the being) exists in its own right and thinks of itself as a true subject, “I” is something real. When we say “I”, we firmly think that this “I” exists, when in fact it is not “I” that exists, but the sum of images woven by Western (ontological-rational) thinking that our brain emulates into a coherent “film”.

“I” then uses the resource of its language to think and therefore, exist. The great creation of identity starts from ti, from which personality would be able to unfold from the 19th Century. The amalgam that results during the great century to come exacerbates this invention of Antiquity. “I” can, thinks, wants, is aware, knows, acts, creates, manages, invents, innovates, directs, feels and so on. And given that “I” is both “something” and a real subject, “I” is measured and classified as “types”: innovators, creators, legalists, the gifted, those with high potential and so on.

This was sufficient to create “emotional intelligence”, a concept that combined both the “other” and “I”. This is what Howard Gardner achieves in his theory of multiple intelligences when he evokes the proximity between intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence (1997). He induces the idea of the “I” and the “other” from this Aristotelian foundation. As soon as the relational and emotional principles are thought from the Being, it becomes possible to elaborate the concept. In his 1997 book, The Forms of Intelligence, Gardner says:

“We could indeed describe our two forms of personal intelligence separately, but this would imply artificial separation and repetitions that are not necessary. In ordinary circumstances, none of these forms of intelligence can develop without the other” [GAR 97, p. 253].

While it is true that from the conceptual and ontological points of view, the separation is artificial, from the point of view of operability, observation and assessment, the gap between the two natural modes of operation is sufficiently significant to organize them according to a principle of coherence, and not of correlation (not even in the implication of an impregnation/superposition (see dynamic table of MO.O.N.s in the Appendix). Certainly, this premise can be defended intellectually, but collapses factually, unless the person naturally deploys these two forms of intelligence, to use Gardnerian terminology.

Interpersonal intelligence, which we rename as the natural interpersonal mode of operation (see core component: empathy-interaction , also in the Appendix), implies a principle of interaction between people. This includes the ability to spatialize the reality of others, as well as a sense of observing (especially one’s lip movements and those of the body in general) the same “other”, in order to adjust to him/her and anticipate his/her tendencies. The intrapersonal MO.O.N. does not fit into this socalled “relational” logic. However, if emotion seems to be “the” common point, becoming the point from which one and the other (the relationship) thinks of oneself, hence the concept of emotional intelligence, then it was, and still is, obvious that the one and the other (intra and interpersonal) are inseparable, from the point of view of Gardner cognition.

For our part, this point (relational-emotional) is not common, and in any case, it is not emotion which, in its classical concept, must serve as a reference point to define the positioning and operating principles of the intrapersonal MO.O.N., although proximity is significant. Indeed, the observation of people in reality and/or emulated situations can show so-called empathetic skills without being able to control the forces (fear, anger, anxiety, joy, doubt), which, fed by potential (the forces in progress), lead to emotion (disorder, discomfort, stir, unsettle).

After having briefly explored this (onto)logical and sensitive “I”, we propose to no longer (only) apprehend “I” from the side of the substantial Being (and therefore of a personality), but from that of an autonomous and assertive force for which the intention (a thinking oriented towards a result) is to deploy itself or, to use human sciences terminology, to “grow”. Within the framework of the enterprise, “I” activates the (great) ego and power problems for which a bi-centenary conceptual production has tried to define their ins and outs. Thus, because “I” is 1 and by principle 1 is not 2, any other 1 opposed to “I” (1) must be conquered, dominated, associated, bought, seduced, lulled, subdued, eliminated, federated, motivated, trained, managed, “plastered” and so on.

NOTE.– A natural operating mode is not thought of starting from “1”, but from a process by which the person no longer thinks of themself through the concept of the “self”, or of an “I” identity (and obstructing), but by a moving force. Yet, the characteristic of a force is that it polarizes itself with other forces through the dynamic interplay of configurations. Thus, it is here that we “definitively” move away from the founding concept of intrapersonal intelligence, as well as from the classic “I” (ontological-subjective) to a dynamic concept whose intention is to embrace, as much as learn from, the course of things.

15.2. Emotion, this inescapable aspect of Being

“Emotional literacy is a meta-capacity; it determines how well we use our other assets, including our intellect” [GOL 97, p. 61].

Before being a psychologist, William James was and remains, it seems to us, a naturalist. The study of his life, travels, semantics and operating mode in the processing of situations and problems reveals more of a relation of thought with Darwin than with Freud, his contemporary. One of the MO.O.N.s of the latter is naturalistic, and although it obviously combines with other modes of operation such as the interpersonal and intrapersonal ones, the latter “pushes” him to become a traveler who “likes to understand what is behind the scene” [MEU 10, p. 55]. Hence, as Damasio (respectfully) criticized, James could not “enter” into a psychology of emotion that he would have made, on the one hand, from the Being, and on the other hand, from neurological evidence, a discipline at the dawn of his development. Therefore, there remains the theory of pure bodily cause. James was interested in the natural movement of humans. From his young maturity, he seemed to develop an intensely positive faith in life. This faith led him to traveling, as well as to a sustained pugnacity of self-discipline:

“I strongly believe in the innate goodness of humanity. I love every living being, every living or inanimate being... Humanity is good in everything, and as soon as governments or priests are abolished, the notion of sin will not even be known”¹.

Like “talent” and “intelligence”, the word and the concept of emotion do not escape the principle of our culture, aimed at defining to know. Many authors suggest their definition. And although the credibility and seriousness of their studies are not called into question, the “logic” of inherently thinking in these definitions leads them to let themselves be absorbed by the delicate “what is it?” In this way, the “what is emotion?”, just like everything else, is reified and invites multiple definitions elaborated by the semantic and epistemological resource of the authors. For the psychiatrists Lelord and André, emotion “is therefore a sudden reaction of our entire organism, with physiological (our body), cognitive (our mind) and behavioral (our actions) components” [AND 03, p. 15]. For Damasio:

“Emotion is constituted by a series of changes in the state of the body with particular mental images having activated a specific neural system, the act of feeling is, basically, constituted by the lived experience of these changes, juxtaposed with the mental images which initiated the process. In other words, to feel an emotion depends on the juxtaposition of an image of the body, strictly speaking, with an image of something else, like the visual image of a face or the auditory image of a melody” [DAM 01, pp. 201–202].

Paul Ekman, however, was interested in the way emotion manifests itself, especially on the face. The first lines of his book, Unmasking the Face: a Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Expressions, evoke the purpose relative to the face and the feelings that are expressed there. Thus, emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, joy and sadness involve multiple movements of the nose, mouth, eyebrows, chin, ears, forehead and so on. It is possible, in order to investigate this question in more detail, to apprehend the neurophysiological principles and, in particular, the nervous control underlying facial expressions in Rosenzweig, Leiman and Breedlove’s book, Psychobiologie (translation: Biological Psychology) [ROS 98, p. 533]. Antonio Damasio approaches the question of emotion from the neurological point of view. With regard to his work, he says:

“Emotion results from the combination of simple or complex mental assessment processes, with responses to these processes from potential representations. These responses are mainly carried out by the body itself, translating into this or that emotional state of the body, but they can also be carried out by the brain itself (brain stem modulating neurons), which leads to additional mental changes” [DAM 01, p. 194].

It is commonly understood that emotion means “outward movement”. This is incomplete. Indeed, the word emotion is derived from moving, esmouvoir (13th Century), which led to the classic Latin word emovere “stir, shake”, in the 16th Century. It was much later that the word emotion, from the old- and middle-age French, was called motion, meaning “movement, disorder, discomfort”. Nothing in these origins implies or gives indications to emotions such as joy, fear and anger. Indeed, if researchers define emotion according to the principle of reaction and movement, then several emotions are induced “conspicuously”, 6 for some, 16 for others. A negotiation as implicit as it is remarkable, realized through the Aristotelian “ti” (to produce knowledge to explain “I”), is induced here by this evidence (by the addition of thoughts). Emotion as well as disorder is transformed by “magic” into fear, anger, disgust and so on. Note that this “magic” is abduction, that is, the invention of a new rule and/or the formalization of an implicit rule, here the implicit “ontological” rule. The word emotion indicates a consequence of something, so it can neither be the origin nor the object of the consequence in the same space-time. If a wall falls because of the wind, the wind cannot be the only object responsible for the fall, but it is one of the forces due to which the wall collapses; some of the questions that arise are: was the wall weakened? Was it adapted to absorb this force? Were the materials of quality? Was the soil loamy? Had the weather dissolved the joints? Hence, we believe that confining emotion to the sole cause of forces such as the so-called “classical emotions” is reductive. Fear, anger, joy and sadness cannot (therefore) “be” emotions. They “are” something else. What seems to us to be the most acceptable is to consider them as forces whose intensity leads to movements of the body and the face, as well as to thought. Like energy (energia), about which we have no knowledge [ALL 03, p. 158], we have no exact knowledge of what these forces are, apart from the way they seem to manifest themselves in the brain. It then seems coherent to consider the types of forces such as fear, anger, worry, joy, love and other “forces” from the same categorical family as energy, in other words, forces by which a person, a group or an animal moves (emotion). Energy, when channeled, can cause movement, but energy is not “the” movement.

Emotion is therefore no longer a manifestation of the psyche, but the consequence of a sum of forces internal and external to the person. This, by its actualizing skill, can transform this energy into movement (decision-action; decision-non-action).

In order to test this epistemological audacity, let us make a slight detour towards Chinese thought in order to assess (by tensioning the gaps) the plausibility of our reflection.

The term emotion and its concept present a coherent gap between the common ground of Chinese culture and the common ground of Western culture. Indeed, the compound character evoking emotion, ganqing (感情), consists of the characters 感(găn) and 情(qíng). The first is the notions of “sensing, touching, feeling” or “perceiving, experiencing, guessing”. The second refers to many aspects including sentiment (sensitivity, impression, emotion) and, in particular, sentimental attachment, passionate love, as well as desires and their appetites. However, let us not be deceived by the tempting superposition of posing our passionate and psychological repertoire (pathos-psuché) on 情(qíng). Indeed, 情(qíng) makes it possible to apprehend the principle of an “emotional” ability [JUL 14a, p. 104] (which one finds with the couple xing-qing 性情), in other words, the way in which the “nature” of the person, in the sense of a “reactive interiority”, correlates with the “sensitive exteriority”² designated by the binomial “wind-light” (fengjing, 风景). If qing evokes the consideration for a person as much as the (regard for a) good functioning of the heart (wu zang, 五臟), the character 情 offers an indication and grasps the face of Being that we cannot miss. The first aspect is evoked by the character 陽(yang). It designates the “inner life”, in the positive sense (which embraces the course of things), thus opposing 性(xing)’s share of 陰 (yin), whose slavery must be avoided; that is, to avoid – by anticipation-perception – the affect, by coup, taking possession of the mind and consequently investing the slightest asperities in it, leading, as we know, to the sum of actions, decisions and “negative” behavior, that is, in opposition to and apart from the natural course of things.

The second aspect that interests us is the one that relates the circumstantial, the available conditions and reality (as physicality) to the natural property: the state of things. It is here that François Jullien’s study offers the interstice through which and into which it is possible to slip in order to apprehend the double perceptualemotional aspect. But before continuing this work, let us specify that it would be a profound mistake to want to “see” something “identical” between our two cultures. Indeed, on the Western side, emotion, by principle and definition, refers to the ability to behave in a moral and social way (pathos). Emotion that is implicit in movement (movere) is associated with the thinking and feeling Being (see the work of Freigius), hence the amalgam with forces translated into moral values (given that disgust can lead to irony). When Ekman processes emotions, he does so, for example, with the intention of showing how to detect lying (moral deceit). Damasio, Lelord and André, as those previously mentioned, dealt with emotions with the intention of showing the “relational” effects (what stands between) and/or the opposition with a purely rational process of the decision. In all cases, the common ground inherent in emotion is “Being” (ontology) and its “functioning” is conditioned by “I” (autos), the other (alterum) and things (res). On the Chinese side, when emotion is evoked, it is in the sense of conformity (not in the sense of European law) with the Grand Process. Emotion embraces the course of things. Thus, emotion becomes negative when “I” deviates from the process, but when it embraces the said process, “I” lives in a smooth and conforming fashion with Heaven and Earth, in other words, it signifies: “I am fulfilled”. Here is a key aspect of thinking of the intrapersonal MO.O.N. Indeed, it is no longer “I” as an identity Being and reference point of intrapersonal intelligence that manages (his/her) “emotions”, but a coherent force (a sum in motion), in the ability to lead-direct-orient perceived and then channeled forces without them affecting him/her, that is, without the emotion (the disorder, the reaction) catalyzed by the forces disturbing Being (“I”) and their functioning. This postulation implies that the intrapersonal MO.O.N. can designate a set of natural skills capable of dissolving the “affected” brought about by the said forces, before they affect thought (and his/her mind); at least, dissolve them in such a way that their activities do not go beyond their mere usefulness: avert a trending situation for which a coherent decision should be taken. Therefore, fear, anger and sadness are no longer emotions, any more than running tap water is the sink. Emotion would be the wave that the stone generates when it ricochets on the water. The stone “disturbs” the water, but the stone is not the water. The ricochet generates wave spheres, until the stone slides and penetrates the water in its disposition, and not in a vertical fashion. This disposition avoids the unique, noisy, immediate, chaotic and splattering “splash”.

The force ricochets in the mind, but does not “splash” around. Emotion shudders enough that “I” (as a Force) exploits this shudder to its advantage, without being so invaded that “I” is submerged by the emotional reaction. This is where the operating principle of the intrapersonal MO.O.N. resides: to exploit the forces to its advantage, in order to act, decide, operate, learn by capitalization of experimentation and settle memory so that knowledge prevails over (intelligible) know-how.

Again, let us turn to Chinese thinkingAgain, let us turn to Chinese thinking and take the character 生气 (shengqi). It means “to get angry; to get cross”, but also, and especially, vitality, strength, unalterable, a beneficial mind, alive, acting, awake and alert. It is possible to appreciate (in the sense of nuancing, ji) how much the question of anger is detached from the sole concept of the “inner” state inherent in the being “I am angry, you are angry”, but on the contrary, that it is only one “aspect” among the sum of meanings. Anger is thought of as an active and dynamic movement, and not as an attitude subject to moral and psychological analysis: “Why did you get angry?”, “What makes you angry?”, “What does your anger send you back to?” or worse “Who makes you angry?”. The attitude, that is, the way in which we manifest the emotion activated by these internal forces (anger, love, fear, etc.), will then be conditioned by the combination of social models and cultural codes that the body, through its dynamic skill, expresses. “I” is affected by the impact that these forces operate in the individual’s mind (the constructor and the organizer of images). This is another way of saying that the images translated by the activity of the frontal ventromedial cortex (VM), as well as the sensory interpretation of the body linked to a series of situations, send signals to the facial muscles or to the autonomic nervous system. Let us take this opportunity to underline this apparently harmless little word used by Damasio when he explains how nature “tinkers”, including at the level of the brain:

“I insist that VM (frontal ventromedial cortex) depends on A (amygdala) to express its activity, that it is like ‘straddling’ the amygdala. This relationship of dependence grafted onto a prior relationship is a good illustration of how nature develops mechanisms by tinkering. It uses old structures and mechanisms to create new ones and generate new results” [DAM 01, p. 192].

This idea of “tinkering” must not, of course, become a pretext to justify our development, but it must remind us, as Jean-Pierre Changeux points out, the humility, restraint and caution implied by the scientific approach [CHA 00, p. 83]. However, in the end, isn’t that what the concept of “emotion” would have lost: its caution and restraint?

Hence, we will no longer use the term emotion to refer to the classic range of “emotions”, but the word forces. We put the word in italics to emphasize this passage from one meaning (emotion) to another (force). Forces thus lead to emotion (the observable manifesto). The intrapersonal MO.O.N. would then be the ability to identify, regulate and drive the forces activated by images and situations so that the latter do not affect the mind, but participate in driving decision as much as the strategies of action and non-action.

Finally, as a possible conclusion, let us approach the question of positive and negative “emotions” (forces) in a brief and simple way. Besides the confusion between the concepts of positive and negative on one side, and evil or good on the other, it is not the force that is “good or bad”, but its use, just as a force is positive and negative only according to potential and situation. A person wins the lottery, crazy with joy, crosses the road and is fatally knocked down: the “emotion” is good, but its consequence is negative, that is, the result is not a priori what the person had imagined three seconds before the accident. Another person perceives a dubious shadow at the corner of the street; the force felt is fear, as soon as the source is analyzed, the person anticipates the possible risk, and calmly changes course. The person avoids a potentially dangerous encounter, just as they perhaps only avoid the shadow of a reflection on the wall, due to a converging organization of objects suggesting the presence of an individual. The consequence is positive: they feel safe and will be. The forces are “indifferent” to Being. A force (emotion) does not say, “today, I’m going to make this person angry all day to see how they will manage the situations that I will contribute to causing”. These forces offer a source of possible trends from which to build. The force called anger is neither “good” or “bad”, but its consequence can be as “negative” as it can be “positive”, as soon as the “force”, uncontrolled-unregulated, is individualized, that is, it and “I” amalgamate. (My) anger takes control of (my) mind.

We recall that the one that follows the course of events and remains consistent with the expected result is positive and the one that deviates from the course of things (and the result) is negative. But what is positive can, if the potential evolves, become negative if one does not adapt to the inclination of the tendency. Thus, the inner forces would only be indications to this tendency, or if we anthropomorphize the idea, the role of advisers is to warn us in anticipation of what is happening, or will happen, or, in a situation, to react appropriately. The intrapersonal MO.O.N. captures its forces and understands their inclinations so that thought, forewarned, can operate in a favorable and adjusted manner.

15.3. Perceptive-emotional: when the interiority becomes available to the exteriority

“This perception-emotion is not passionate and pathetic, it is exactly the opposite. Could it even be emotional?” [JUL 04, p. 93].

“The misfortune with emotions in psychology is that we look at them too much as unquestionably individual things. As long as they are considered as eternal and sacred psychic entities, like the old immutable species in natural history, all that can be done is to respectfully catalogue their characters, their qualities and their special effects” [JAM 06a, p. 52].

Our work relating to strategic operation led us to study the work of François Jullien, in its scope of thought. The investigation of his work over the past 13 years, as well as the contributions offered by the latter during our exchanges, has “enlightened” (in the sense of making visible, explicit), as well as fertilized (and thus potentiated), these spaces apparently conquered by human science. The concept of what is perceptive-emotional [JUL 14a, pp. 89–111] offers a resource whose hollow vitalizes both the semantics relative to “I” and the way in which this same “I” can operate without obstructing itself (systematically) with an interesting psyche (psukê), but which is useless in everyday life.

IMPORTANT.– The intrapersonal MO.O.N. is singularized (without isolating itself) by its ability to latently perceive the forces leading to emotion. This ability to perceive this feverish troublemaker upstream thus makes it possible to defuse internal coups, and consequently, behavior and decisions with often painful outcomes. On the one hand, the perceptive allows one to “feel” upstream that which generates a slight propensity in the situation, the potential. This “perceptive” skill of the intrapersonal MO.O.N. assesses the process of that which is “on the move” and which is expressed daily by “it rises”, “I don’t feel it” and “I’ve exploded”, then moderates-regulates it so that the forces cannot reach that stage of individuation from which the affected Being (in the sense of pathos) finds themself as “infected”, as much as surpassed. It is here, in the face of perception, that emotion finds its place and utility.

François Jullien evokes:

“A state of sensitivity (of vibration, in a more elementary way, as they say) which is awakened without us being able to point out the cause precisely [...] it is about an emotionality, or tonality, which responds, spreads, beneath any emotion [...] That is why it is a question, not of an ‘affect’, but of emotion as an ability, which is more original, to be affected” (Ibidem, p. 95).

This emotional ability thus moves away from its philosophical meaning (affectivus), which aims to qualify experienced feelings giving rise to affect the “state, disposition of the soul” (affectus). The said capacity then approaches its Latin origin affectare, itself designating in old French, affaitier, the idea of arranging, disposing, researching, preparing, instructing or taming what is engaged, without ever letting oneself be “invaded”. As soon as affect and emotion branch off from classical philosophy, the mother of cognitive psychology, it (then) becomes possible to potentiate “I” (dynamic force) and consequently to think of the intrapersonal MO.O.N. without individuating or psychologizing it.

The intrapersonal MO.O.N. would then be the ability of “I”, as a dynamic force, to learn through and in experimentation before it becomes experience, that is, “images” promoting conscious activity so that it is possible to “behave” in a manner adapted to current or anticipated situations. Adapting, here, should be understood as coherent with the situation and not according to the social norm; hence, after adapting, we prefer the notion of adaptive as a specific semantic form of the aktionsart type, because it allows us to specify the principle of a conscious and not sudden continuity of adaptation. The issue of managing emotions here is therefore no longer central. This is because, on the one hand, the concept of “managing emotion” (like that of talent) is inappropriate: in fact, the term management, gestio, a legal term linked to the administration of a military establishment, has nothing to do with emotions, and on the other hand, as we have seen, emotion is the visible manifestation – the consequence – of forces of fear, anger, anxiety, joy, love and irritation. Thus, the adaptive ability inscribed in this perceptive-emotional interplay makes it possible to lead the forces so that their physical and/or pictorial manifestation shows an attitude, a decision or a just speech (without a gap) with what the situation implies. If the classical “I” then intervenes, woven with its historical impregnation, that is, the images and sounds (words, music, sounds as well as noises) of its family, professional, educational or virtual history (the Internet) and so on, it remains no less capable of acting as much as not acting (wuwei). However, it is no longer a question of non-action linked to the investigation of an external (durative) process, but of an ability to regulate oneself, to wait without fear or manifestation of stress until the situation evolves towards a more favorable one. The ability to maintain oneself in a state of availability-sensitivity, in Jullien’s sense, without (ever) letting oneself be overwhelmed by doubt, fear, excitement, recklessness or confidence, allows constant adjustment to situations, to events and, lastly, to one’s own “inner state”: available by the perceptive, sensitive by the emotional. Thus, the expression “to grin and bear it” can be understood by the principle of taming (affaitier or weakening) the forces initiated-fed by possible images-sounds related to situations and/or to our history.

All the common expressions such as “to have confidence in oneself”, “to trust in life”, “to learn from one’s failures”, “to question oneself in order to move forward”, “to learn from one’s experiences” and “to manage one’s emotions in order to live one’s life to the fullest”, which can be read in books and on the Internet, are only the injunctions placed on an operating dynamic that we can observe in different densities in people. Thus, many observed-assessed people are naturally unable to identify forces that overwhelm them. However, on the contrary, the “famous” hypersensitivity remains a deficiency of the emotional-adaptive ability in a large part of the cases. It behaves, by image, like a tap that only has two options: a boiling or an icy jet (without nuance). As for its flow, it would either be powerful or non-existent.

These people are unable to tame the inner forces (emotions, in the classical sense) or the images that activate them. The assessment of more than a thousand entrepreneurs and (middle or senior) managers shows – without a gap – that a person whose intrapersonal MO.O.N. is not very effective has great difficulties or even an inability to control oneself in a frustrating or difficult situation, to capitalize (learn) situations or to anticipate forces and dissolve them upstream (the fear of speaking in public, the fear of winning, etc.). The individual will then, for example, systematically question themselves, find the “culprits” for their “inoperability”, develop a skill of denial for “everything that happens to them” and so on. Thus, all people of the entrepreneurial type, without exception (known to date), whose intrapersonal MO.O.N. is weak, do not succeed in a sustainable way in their entrepreneurial projects. And if they do succeed, it is, in the majority of cases, because operating modes such as the extra-personnel and/or interpersonal modes compensate, as a crutch, by making it possible to surround oneself, to anticipate, to ruse, to adapt, to imitate, to federate and so on. However, this “lack” of operating maintains a latent force that must be “fought” constantly, since it is not “naturally” regulated-tamed.

This is how concepts can be rethought here, such as assertiveness, whose common definition implies knowing how to say things in a natural and spontaneous way without hurting the sensitivity of the other. If we keep, for convenience, the term assertiveness and propose it as one of the core components of the intrapersonal MO.O.N., it will then be possible to write that assertiveness would be the ability to tame-adapt (to) a situation, regardless of its nature or form, ongoing or anticipated, before the disorder (emotion) actualized by internal forces leads to any commentsattitudes “exceeding thought” and which is inappropriate, that is, before any trouble disturbs the so-called logical mind. And if “I” am surprised by the event and the forces succeed for a short moment in their coup (short-circuiting the amygdala), the adaptive-emotional resource “I” allows me to arrange the situation, as well as to not seek the “cause”, but the onset (the initial condition(s)) from which the “reaction” results. It is this process which then “instructs” the memory of new favorable images (which embraces the course of things) in order to allow “I” to anticipate and/or regulate the forces of interiority, perceptually, so that which is emotional allocates the appropriate resource to the situation. To put it vulgarly, whoever so possesses this “talent” develops a natural self-confidence, resilience and ability to adapt to life’s trials, constant optimism, the ability to find what is good and beautiful in difficult situations and so on. This person will never feel the need to work on his/her “self”, not because they are “better” than others, but because they are able to produce the resource in a natural and processual way in order to advance. His/her perceptive skill, as opposed to a skill of pure intellectualization, allows him/her to process the images that situations produce in real time. Thus, they do not contract a personal “debt” with the past. If “I” deploys (by weaving) a linguistic MO.O.N., “I” could naturally conceptualize, or even theorize, the principles (princeps) resulting from the experimentation. However, if the linguistic MO.O.N. does not have the support of an intrapersonal MO.O.N., then its operating principle can “loop” for years through the production of a wealth of knowledge of the “self”, which never allows action to be taken, just like a car whose engine would rev without ever passing first and then second gear. It produces “noise”, it wastes energy, but it does not advance, except through the development of a sum of concepts invading the mind, such as an exoskeleton, which makes it possible to stand, but only in an artificial manner.

An example of this operating gap can be identified with Sigmund Freud:

“My self-analysis is still hanging in the balance. Now I understand why. I can only analyze myself using objectively acquired knowledge (like a stranger). True self-analysis is really impossible, otherwise there would be no more disease”³.

It is not a question of criticizing Freud, but of highlighting how his (heavy) linguistic skills⁴ took “leadership” over his life by producing a meaningful and “brilliant” theoretical-conceptual work. Having received the Goethe Prize, he said: “I must regress and say that it was my fiancée’s fault that I did not become famous in those early years” [FRE 84, p. 25]. This sentence, put forward at an age of great maturity (60 years ago), may seem surprising coming from such an “intelligent” man on the issue of personality; but it may indicate “what” was not capitalized (learned), thus causing a disorder (an emotion) in Freud that was still present several decades later. It is perhaps for this reason that the famous psychoanalyst could neither be interested in questions of learning nor in those of the development of human aptitudes; not because he was not intellectually capable of it, but because he did not deploy this operating skill. Freud said: “analysis can say nothing that enlightens the artist’s gift, just as the actualization of the means with which the artist works”⁵. Psychoanalysis, Freud stated, had become the content of his life, and his most important contributions, he continued, are the two types of impulse (Eros and the death drive) as well as the decomposition of personality (Id, ego and superego)⁶.

His contemporary opposite, William James, with whom, at the risk of insisting that the naturalistic MO.O.N. permeates his intrapersonal skills, quotes Alexander Bain’s educational principles that he considers to be “remarkable”:

“When it comes to acquiring a new habit, or abandoning an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong an initiative as possible [...] do you make promises incompatible with the old way of life [...] and every day on which we avoid a defeat offers one more chance for it to never happen”⁷.

If James seems so sensitive to these remarks, we believe it is because his conception of life correlates with the great principle of the continuous transformation of Nature, what the Chinese would call “general propensity” (da shi). The permeation of his naturalistic mode of operation, combined with his intrapersonal mode of operation, leads him to say, speaking of education:

“the aim is to form the manner of behaving; habits are the very fabric of the latter. The great matter in education is to make our nervous system our ally and not our enemy; it is to capitalize on our acquisitions and live comfortably with their interests. For this, we must render as many useful actions as possible automatic and habitual, as soon as we can, and guard ourselves with great care from what might become unnecessary habits” [JAM 96, pp. 86–87].

Thus, quoting a second maxim from Bain, he says: “Do not suffer a single exception until the new habit is undoubtedly rooted in your life”⁸, then, extending the two principles, he proposes a third (and then two others):

“Take the earliest opportunity to act in accordance with each resolution you form and each emotional impulse you feel tending to the habits you wish to take” ⁹.

Freud and James produced concepts and theories consistent with their natural modes of operation. This fruitful production, angled by a natural inclination, responded to a utility as much as it was potentiated by and in the historical “crossing” configuration. These, in turn, influenced many other researchers (such as Jung and Vygotsky). Freudian psychoanalysis is useful for people in whom analysis “speaks”, “suggests” and promotes “balanced” understandings. Freudian psychoanalysis cannot “speak” to those whose ears and eyes are directed towards the exteriority of the world. Hence, Williams James remained relatively indifferent to Freudian teachings, preferring to work on a practical and active psychology, which, for its part, left Freud indifferent to his ideas. James defines psychology as: “the science of the finite individual mind, taking thoughts and feelings into account as data of study, as well as a physical world with which he coexists in time and space, and which he knows” [MEU 10, p. 146]. Let us note that in the philosophernaturalist, the correlation of a study between the (emotional) interiority of the person and the (perceptive) exteriority of the physical world integrates time and space, in other words, the process by and in which thoughts and feelings are organized so that the person can succeed in a “positive” way in life.

As soon as these fundamentals have been laid down, the intrapersonal MO.O.N. can then apprehend multiple operating dynamics, such as:

• – frustration control, in other words, assessing the gap between what is expected and the reality, and adjusting one’s behavior in a positive way;
• – the ability to maintain long periods of concentration without being overwhelmed by negative forces (deviating from the expected result) leading to doubt, fear or demotivation;
• – the ability to postpone a gain, that is, to accept to lose (in appearance) immediately in order to win later;
• – the ability to let oneself not be won over by forces such as regret, resentment, revenge and bitterness, but to be able to forgive, that is, to no longer establish a negative force (anger, hatred, sadness) on a past image;
• – the ability to capitalize knowledge resulting from experienced situations, in other words, produce a memory that is accurate, can be reactivated and is adjustable (proximity to the extra-personal MO.O.N.’s ability to conject) to similar situations to come;
• – the ability to accurately assess (ji) one’s abilities, in other words, to evaluate one’s skills and abilities by observing variations in one’s situation in relation to the skills of others, whether human or animal, in order to derive useful and reusable principles and maxims. This ability makes it possible to revisit modesty and humility, no longer from a social (modest = do not value oneself) and moral point of view, but from the viewpoint of an observable reality: “I know how to do this and that gives that; I (naturally) do not know how to do that and this is the way things are”. Modesty thus designates the positioning of “I” in front of others, where humility is the positioning of “I” in front of reality: “I” lean towards this situation for which I neither “know” nor “can” do anything, and this is the way things are; for all that, I withdraw what will be useful (to me) for next time, without “being” hurt or belittled. This ability does not lead to an “imposture complex” or a long-term inferiority complex;

• – the ability to detach oneself from moral and projective judgments, in other words, the subjectivity of others, whether individual or social. This ability thus makes it possible to divide, on the one hand, the critical and “malicious” intention (aimed at belittling, at harming), and on the other hand, what is useful in criticism (likely to progress, capitalize). This skill thus offers a particular viewpoint to the popular maxim “what does not kill me, makes me stronger”, that is, as soon as “I” withdraw what is useful in the malicious, then, on the one hand, I dissolve the negative forces produced by the intention, and on the other hand, I settle my skills that are adapted to everyday situations;
• – the ability to innovate in one’s practices, in other words, to adjust, modify, deploy and explore new habits (habitus) acquired through repetition, before they become routines and are fixed to the comfortable loop perimeter of secure thoughts;
• –the ability to be positive in any situation (even when delayed), in other words, to identify that with potential, the future is still positive.

15.4. Churchill, Woods, Ouimet and Lowery, Mauduit, etc.

“My job: which one? Three jobs attract me, especially one of them, being a detective. I’ll make a chart to see which is advantageous” – Chantal Mauduit (then 10 years old) [DUY 16, p. 18].

Randolph Churchill, to his 18-year-old son, Winston – “If you can’t help but lead an idle, vain and useless existence like you did during your schooling and in the last few months, you will become a mere scum of society, one of those countless failures that come out of public schools, and you will slump into a miserable, unhappy and futile existence”.

Winston’s response – “I’m really sorry I upset you. I will strive to change your opinion of me through my work and conduct at Sandhurst” [KER 09, p. 40].

The study of people such as Edward Lowery, such as Winston Churchill or those less-known like Chantal Mauduit, makes it possible to note a specificity common to the intrapersonal MO.O.N.: the ability to conduct oneself independently over the course of one’s life, in other words, the ability to embrace the process of daily life, to anticipate many years of one’s life in advance, as well as to conduct oneself in such a way that the image of an expected future of the self becomes reality. This amounts to the key principle of autonomy (autonomos) “which is governed by its own laws”. However, let us adjust this meaning to the intrapersonal

MO.O.N. by saying “whoever so conducts themselves according to experienced knowledge, whether their own or that of others”.

Whether they are known or not, the constant is observable in people deploying this MO.O.N. which, we believe, allows us to say that the sole environment (often associated with the “social”) of a person does not guarantee their success in life. Hence, we briefly recall the theoretical principle of the C.U.P. The latter favors the actualization of a specific natural operating mode, in other words, for a MO.O.N. to initiate its activity or its deployment, it needs potential, utility and configuration, without which it has no “reason” to start. However, the very nature of the operating modes can make them active in almost any C.U.P.

The scientific, naturalistic, extra-personal and intrapersonal MO.O.N., by their operating principle in direct link with reality, are part of it. Indeed, their core component allows them to develop an ability to adapt to situations and to consciously draw knowledge from them, not by pure intellectualization, but by what is useful and favorable to them. It is, perhaps, what contributes to giving them an individualist, arrogant, autonomous, independent or solitary image, among other moral and social qualifiers.

Let us take the example of Winston Churchill. He who was considered by the French magazine, Historia, as “the Man of the Century” defines himself to his future wife, Clementine Hozier, as “self-sufficient”: “I am naturally self-sufficient and very uncommunicative” he wrote to her (and yet she was wooed…). Although he defined himself as “very uncommunicative”, he remained a communicator who was isolated from others, whose speeches, said Herbert Henry Asquith, “would go down in history”, before offering him the post of Home Secretary. In 1914, Asquith said:

“I very much regretted that there was no stenographer nearby, because some of his improvised remarks were really priceless […] He said that a political career meant nothing to him compared to military glory. He’s a wonderful creature, with the curious simplicity of a schoolboy [...] and something that resembles a description of a genius [...] of lightning flashes that strike the brain” [KER 09, p. 132].

Churchill, 2 years later, wrote to his former second-in-command:

“I do not want a ministry, but only the direction of war... I feel deeply disturbed, for I cannot make use of my talents; as to the reality of the latter, I have no doubt” [KER 11, p. 21].

Churchill accumulated a sum of “talents”, whose rare combination ultimately made him as improbable as a platypus. As a strategist (multiple-tentacular), a fine fencer and precise with a brush (material-corporal), pencil-sharp (phonologicalfigurative), as well as an important historical figure (autonomous-assertive) and fundamentally empathic (empathic-interactive), he was in the field of war, politics and literature, just as Leonardo da Vinci was in the field of painting, sculpture, the physical sciences, anatomy and botany. Yet Winston’s father had a deep contempt for Winston’s. He considered Winston as a “fool”, as “stupid”, and Winston sought not to please him, but to make his skills visible to his glance, which were indeed “remarkable”, in the sense we already discussed, thanking him:

“For years I thought that my father, with his experience and intuition, had discerned the qualities of a military genius in me. But I was later told that he had only concluded that I wasn’t smart enough to become a lawyer”.

Randolph Winston wrote to him:

“How stupid of you not to stick to ‘my dear father’, and to come back to ‘my dear dad’. It’s so stupid [...] What you’re writing is stupid […] I’ll send your letter back to you so you can revise your pretentious schoolboy style from time to time”¹⁰.

Considered as frail in health, a temperamental and capricious child at work, in short, “unmanageable”, Winston was dead last regarding conduct at his Brighton boarding school. His academic results in the master subjects did not help: he was “pitiful” in mathematics and “lousy” in Latin and Greek. However, the young redhead, the one said to be “the meanest in his class [...] the meanest child in the world” and even an insolent and rude fighter, would later be a solid ally for the pupils who were considered “stupid”, in difficulty at school and to whom he would teach to write English. Winston was not 20 years old when he had already almost died three times: from pneumonia twice, and a fall from a 9 meter bridge which caused a 3-day coma, while wanting to join the boat, in the middle of a lake, where he was swimming with a comrade and found itself pushed away by strong winds. He also saved his swimming companion at the same time. He was whipped for these “challenges to authority”, despised as much by his father as by his grandmother, who called him a “little bulldog with red hair”, and developed a lucidity of himself and, in particular, an ability to appreciate his aptitudes:

“We are all worms; but I do believe that I am a glow worm!”¹¹

Caught in a timeline of several years, Winston Churchill collected stamps, took care of his roses and dogs as well as bred silkworms. He was an excellent fencer, shot, rider, swimmer and painter. His so-called “remarkable” memory and his skill in language earned him an honorary prize for reciting 1,200 verses of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome at the age of 13, without error¹², and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. These intrapersonal skills, combined with language skills, would later enable him to finance his political career. A fine strategist and eloquent speaker, he was a fair-play man with his opponents.

The dual perceptive (autonomous)-emotional (assertive) component allowed Churchill to let himself be “affected" by a sense of perception available from an early age, regardless of his mother’s virtual absence or his father’s disrepute. This does not mean that he did not “feel” anything; it means that what he felt did not “infect” him, in the sense of a disease that would spread. Continuing on this medical image, these intrapersonal skills produced antibodies to resist social infections and somehow promoted “resilience”. This MO.O.N. continuously learned and memorized anything that may have been useful or harmful to him. The expression of “being vaccinated” is therefore quite eloquent here. The memorization of the “consequences” related to the situations brings a sense of “mastery” of the particular “I”.

In his book, La décision, Alain Berthoz says:

“Perception is decision. Perception is decision and emotion is the supreme judge. We have seen that, from the first sensory relays, important decisions are taken [...] To make a decision is literally to make a capturing gesture oriented towards a goal in space. This analogy between the spatialized gesture and the cognitive process of the decision only designates the final phase of the decision, the very moment when it is ‘taken’” [BER 03a, pp. 288–316].

The intrapersonal MO.O.N. does not intellectualize, that is, it does not set out to produce pure thought, as the linguistic or mathematical MO.O.N.s can produce. What echoes from James’ writings can be found here:

“There is nothing in intellectual skill alone that would make us act, and therefore nothing that would make us believe” [MAD 08, p. 189].

This is a fundamental aspect of the so-called intrapersonal skill, which is not found in the linguistic operating mode. Indeed, although the linguistic MO.O.N. uses personal experience to produce the “familiar” and concepts through analysis, the intrapersonal MO.O.N., as for it, produces knowledge “at ground level”, in other words, what is meant can occur without meaning, that is, there is no need for an explanation or word to act, but, as expressed in the “catchphrase” of a certain famous sports brand, “just do it” [WIK 18].

The simple image that the mind remembers, by emulating an experienced (spatialized) situation, or by perceiving immediate spatiality, is enough to decide. Therefore, there are no more intermediaries between the situation and the action. The term “perception” used by Berthoz, finds a proximity with Jullien’s term perceptive, since both concern the “landscape”: “there is landscape when the perceptive reveals itself at the same time as emotion” [JUL 14, p. 90]. This perceptive skill of the intrapersonal MO.O.N. contributes to two major skills. The first is to amplify, in the sense of amplitude, the current reality, that is, to return the multitude of available options to perceptive, what Jullien calls compossibility, which can be translated by the skill to maintain “all possible equality” so that each of them becomes a potential to be actualized. The perceptive thus potentiates the options that deliberation makes dynamic for the emotional. One of the skills of the intrapersonal operating mode favors the voluntary and natural movement of the person, because they represent the gain (the result) before it is even actualized. This “belief”, in Alexander Bain’s sense, is “the developed form that, under certain conditions, our spontaneous tendency to act takes” [MAD 08, p. 188]. It makes us act for a certain purpose. If we replace the word “goal” (eidos), whose Greek consonance obstructs the idea’s resource, with “result”, then we can find an acceptable coherence with the works stemming from neurosciences offered, for example, by Alain Berthoz, those by the psychologist-philosopher William James and those by the philosopher, sinologist and Hellenist, François Jullien.

At this stage of this part, it would be possible to say that the people who “advance” in life, according to the popular formula, are the ones who neither congest themselves nor obstruct themselves with useless intellectual analyses. The famous “intelligence”, which analyzes by analysis (logos), “understands” by filling the mind and ends up engulfing it with ideas and concepts to the point where it shows itself available-perceptive to what reality offers. This skill of analysis becomes the brake of life’s movements. Indeed, the movement does not suffer from a thought or an addition of thoughts that one puts together in order to “understand” everything about the situation. The movement embraces the smallest circumvolutions of the trend. It thus remains glued-adjusted to the course of things. In some hairpin turns of life, it is advised not to brake in the curve, but to accelerate gradually, steering the wheel ever so slightly so that the wheels maintain their grip on the road.

Thus, the work “on oneself” would become more cumbersome than useful; as soon as “I” comes out of the movement, it produces an abundance of knowledge about the “self”, and consequently obstructs the compossibility (the multiple possibilities) that can be offered to “I”. Wanting to analyze (everything), then weighing up multiple tools to help analysis and many interesting but useless questions (without practical advantage), then I waste my time and my path. The intrapersonal MO.O.N. spatializes reality and, like the extra-personal MO.O.N., can mobilize the skill of conjecture to decide. Supported by memory, as well as by the immediate reality available, action takes place through the most coherent decision (without deviation), not because it is reflected (analyzed as an object of thought), but because it does not deviate from the current trend. The perception of situations, in other words, the available trend indications, becomes the primary source of reflection. It is not an abstract reflection fed by the Being (the self), but a deliberative reflection whose intention, that is, the thought guided by internal forces (emotions), is to actualize the result considered closest to the current process. Thus, the emotional (Jullien) link to the intrapersonal MO.O.N. would be the functional and dynamic ability to use internal forces, commonly called “emotions”, to drive our global movement without drifting or deviating from the trend flow.

Gardner refers to “self-awareness” as the stage of maturity that individuals can reach who have “clearly understood much about themselves and their society, and have successfully accommodated the weaknesses of the human condition [GAR 97, p. 263]”. If this definition “spoke” to us almost 15 years ago, we would make it evolve to this day in the following way: a person deploying a natural skill of an intrapersonal type, settling a sum of data with the capacity to affect thought in a processual way, from the perceptive (in other words, that which makes itself available to perception without being completely actualized¹³). This, by appropriate adjustment and intention, draws what is useful and adapted to situations and people from their forms of memory. In doing so, it preserves an inner integrity, not integrity in the moral sense, but that in the sense of being intact (integritas). Maturity would then no longer be a question of age (even less precocity), but a question of translation accuracy, by perception of reality (configuration, shi wei, and potential, che) and of forces (or tones, to use Jullien’s term) from which it is possible to adjust as much as to deploy by constant actualization. Churchill was 11 when he wrote to his father: “I hope your Bradford speech will be as successful as Dartford’s”¹⁴.

It is possible to find these modes of operation in another figure, Edward E. Lowery, known as Eddie Lowery, whom cinema brought to the big screen in the film, The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005).

In 1913, at the dawn of the first worst war of the century, Eddie Lowery was 10 years old. Although he did not know it yet, the latter would play a historical role with Francis Ouimet, a young man of 20 and the future “Father of American Golf”.

The US Golf Open was taking place soon in the USA. Harry Vardon, put on the big screen by Stephen Dillane, was already considered the possible winner with Ted Ray. Opposite the Brookline Country Club golf course, a Massachusetts town with a population of less than 30,000 in 1910 lived 20-year-old Francis Ouimet. The latter, of modest social condition, was a salesman in a sports shop, amateur golf player and caddie. From his room on the second floor, Francis watched the competitions. He dreamed of participating. He elevated this sport to a rank of nobility that he inhabited and led in his everyday life. If Winston Churchill was “inhabited” by war and politics, Francis Ouimet was “inhabited” by golf, its values and soul. MO.O.N.s thusly seem to embrace potential and configurations.

Francis would enter in the History of Golf, but Eddie Lowery, with the role of a “little caddie”, would be the potential by which Francis Ouimet’s kinesthetic abilities and interpersonal skills would give history an improbable, even “impossible” tendency. Indeed, facing the then gods of golf Harry Vardon and Ted Ray and because he had, statistically, no chance of winning, Francis Ouimet presented himself with Eddie Lowery, the equally improbable caddie, who he accepted a few minutes before the start of the competition. The latter provided unconditional support to Francis, as well as constant “emotional” control in the face of pressure on the situation. Having arrived at the play-offs, Francis’ entourage tried to convince him to change caddie for a more experienced one. They did not think that Eddie was up to it. Francis remained faithful to the 11-year-old boy, and together, in the rain, they won the 1913 US Open. The Boston Traveler newspaper headlined on Saturday, September 1913: “FRANCIS OUIMET, BOSTON AMATEUR, WINS OPEN GOLF TITLE ON PLAY OFF, after the Greatest Battle in the History of American Golf” [SIL 18].

Francis said the following of Eddie:

“My little caddie, not much bigger than a peanut, was a veritable inspiration all around […] and a brighter or headier chap it would be hard to find. His influence on my game I cannot overestimate” [SHI 13].

Eddie Lowery, who was from a poor Irish immigrant family, was the second of seven children. That day, Jack, Eddie’s brother, was supposed to be Francis’ caddie, but he got caught up at school. Eddie, for his part, managed to escape and offered his support to Francis. Eddie’s sharp advice, a boy considered as courageous as he was cheerful, allowed Francis to embrace the trend towards victory. But the story of this young boy did not end there. In 1919 and 1920, he won the Massachusetts Junior Championship. Like Churchill, he took up his quill and wrote for the Boston Traveler and narrated golf chronicles while continuing to play. And although he did not win a Nobel Prize, he became rich¹⁵.

In 1937, he moved to California. He founded the Lincoln-Mercury Dealership that same year. It would become one of the largest in the USA, making him a multimillionaire. Like his friend Francis Ouimet, he put himself at the service of his passion and promoted golf. He later became President of the Northern California Golf Association and was elected to the USGA Executive Committee. Mentor of the young Ken Venturi, he was called the “Prince of all Golfers” by Jim Baffico.

Edward E. Lowery’s intrapersonal mode of operation suggests, like Churchill, as well as Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela or lesser-known people like the mountaineer Chantal Mauduit, present several similarities. One of them is the natural ability to act without obstructing abstract conceptual “analyses”. “Understanding” it is not useful, since reality offers the resource to act. The second is the ability to memorize the so-called decision-making situations, in other words, those where spatiality linked to configuration permeates the memory of the most coherent and reusable options. The third is the ability to be “affected” by what the perceptive offers as potential growth, without letting internal forces slow down, obstruct or block their movement. Is this not what the term “self-confidence” suggests? Indeed, trust (confidencia) means “to be assured of one’s strengths”; or how can one be so, if not by the “affective” recollection of tried, outdated and capitalized situations? I have confidence in myself when, if a new situation occurs or a similar to one already experienced, I decide on the action, on the one hand, by remobilization of what was decided by deliberation at another time, or on the other hand, by the perception of the gain available in the configuration. My ability to assess (through evaluation) my skills and my natural and intentional operating modes (skills) allows me to adjust them to the trend. That does not mean I do not have stage fright or the inner force called “fear”; this means that before this “force” obstructs, overwhelms, determines and dominates me with an influx of useless and cumbersome questions, I apprehend the useful information, so that the decision, emulated by my representation of the situation, leads to the most inevitably “obvious” action, that is, the action for which reason no longer has to think. Therefore, I dissolve the forces that can become negative. Finally, another possible similarity, although not the last, is the ability, from an early age, to draw “useful” matter from all situations and consequently, in order to settle a perceptive-emotional memory, by which the concept of “trust” becomes denser, just like myelin that wraps around a neuron with time and activity.

When Chantal Mauduit attempted to climb the Dhaulagiri, known as the “white mountain”, in October 1996, conditions were not favorable. Her “brother” from the Himalayas, Ang Tsering, analyzed the conditions as dangerous. She wrote:

“Sometimes, one should not approach such a beautiful goddess, because then danger arises, she becomes a viper. Climbing with a belly of fear is not a sign of beauty”¹⁶.

She backed out. She “knew” how to perceive the force of fear “rising” within her. Knowing how to give up, in order to delay success, is one of the fundamental components of this operating method.

The poetry through which she makes the precision and accuracy of her perceptive-emotional available, to herself, and (perhaps) to others, is enough to apprehend the skills of this extraordinary adventurer (ordinarius, sorted by order, in conformity with the rule). Chantal Mauduit was a person who evolved outside of conformity¹⁷. She who thought she was “metamorphosing into a moon and star climber”¹⁸ and had learned and deployed her own rules:

“I wait, I do not rush, alone, on the mountain as I did in my early youth, crossing the crevasses flat on my stomach (Oh good star, thank you!). Everything is training, now I am waiting, I have learned, I am learning to learn. I’m not rushing on the glacier, the right moment, a sign of harmony, I’m waiting and I’m happy, I finally know how to wait”¹⁹.

It would be a mistake to seek explanations relating to the concept of Being for each of these characters. It is true that it is “tempting”. How can we resist 2,400 years of identity concepts? How to “think” without slipping into the field of personality or a cumbersome psychological “I”? Indeed, “I”, apparently the only point of view to Being: I think, I am, I sense, I feel, I know, I can, I have, I am afraid, I am angry, I like, I am intelligent, I am gifted, I am bad (prove it...), etc. I, I, I, I, how, asking ourselves the question again, can such a small word be so cumbersome and obstructive...? Me, I, myself, whatever the phonetics, the idea always seems the same: me (autos-kratos) is worth 1 – except perhaps “myself”, for which there are a few others.

NOTE.– The intrapersonal MO.O.N. (and the word intrapersonal already bores us by what it induces) is indifferent to what the all too egotistical, too self-centered I, which is too many “autos” and “self” at once. The people met, assessed and observed deploying this skill are indifferent to this “I”. Their ability to be optimistic, that is, to look and observe what is favorable around them and a little further along in the trend, contributes to their autonomy (autonomos). The reason why they do not “give up” in the face of life’s trials can be understood by this ability of constant adjustment, between this processual perception and this skill to let themselves be affected without ever letting themselves be “infected”. They know, in the sense of experimentation, the internal forces (the so-called classical “emotions”) and lead them according to the utility, the situation and the expected result.

At the completion of this great part, let us slide our quills towards a lighter side of writing and let us express what the people with the ability to deploy the intrapersonal operating mode inspire in us:

There are a few people in the human world in whom dreams dissolve the limits of reason. They are their own evidence of life to conquer; that which there is neither anything to say nor to think. These few of us discover a mountain, a golf player, a cartoon, and their eyes emulate and shape some extraordinary adventure, of which they are already the heroes. At the dawn of their history, they seem to perceive the path of time for which they are confident explorers. This time whispered an incredible coming, and left a trail of tiny clues for them to follow, that only they perceive. Oh, it’s not madness to explore the incredible, it’s just a way for them to overcome the obstructive conformities from a majority attached to old views of the mind. Neither alone nor self-centered, they embrace what the Grand Process offers in a most salutary fashion: the world as a playground. Because their hearts cannot let unnecessary emotions get in their way, they are like a spring breeze that will never cool down. Impetuous, mischievous, audacious, they slip between happiness and appeasement, so that their life grows without being exhausted.

They have the smile of the oceans, where the wave surges without ever breaking on the shore. Like the greatest number, they know the internal forces of fear, anger and love among the many that exist, but unlike the greatest number, each of these forces, like a thoroughbred, is tamed. Their mount mastered, they put themselves at the service of that what animates them. And what drives them is the idea that every thought is one possibility in their lives.