This internal issue, this realization that my beliefs or values were disconnected from my actions, led to the sense that I was separate from myself, it was kind of like I was on the outside of myself, watching a movie of my life and it was quite disconcerting. As I began asking myself questions about my beliefs and values, I tried to look at my current beliefs and ask, "If 'this' belief is not healthy or good, then what is?" The response I came up with was countered with, "Well, how do you know that's better or right?" So...that drove me to begin looking at the fundamentals of Epistemology. I mean, I'm an all or nothing kind of guy...might as well get as far into the weeds as I can. So, I worked through the different ways in which we can and do learn things, how we process things, and how we filter what we learn. It pretty much started with the question of, "If 'this' behavior is wrong, why is it wrong? If there is no good or evil, then there is no right or wrong...right?"
The first conclusion I came to is that I had to take responsibility for myself, my behavior, and my growth...from here on out. No matter what, I had to own myself...it was all on me. The second conclusion was that there is such a thing as absolute truth...let me break that down a bit. We have been indoctrinated by Postmodernists that absolute truth, objective truth, does not exist. They argue that only subjective truth, the truth that you create or determine, is the only truth. What I mean by that, is objective truth is/can be defined as, "That which is true, regardless of whether or not a person believes it to be true." For example, the Earth's gravity is true, the sun rises in the general direction of East and sets in the general direction of the West, and that there are some objective moral truths (murder, being defined as the arbitrary taking of a life, for which there was no reason, is morally wrong). On these two conclusions, personal responsibility and the search for truth (either subjective or objective), would hang the rest of my growth process. If you ever doubt whether the idea that absolute truth exists, write this down and ask yourself if you agree, "There is no such thing as absolute truth." If you agree, then you are affirming a logical contradictory statement, and nothing can both be and not be at the same time in the same way. Did I mention that I reread Plato and Aristotle around this time and used the four basic laws of logic as part of my framework? Ya, I tried to strip everything down to it's most basic components...to the point that it was self-evident.
It was about this time (around 1997) I met my first "mentor," I think he was a catholic priest or something. He was also an inmate and was teaching a class about critical thinking skills. I was taking classes on anger management (I always argued that I didn't need that damned class, I managed to get angry a lot and didn't need a class on how to do it), relationship building, and I was involved in a 12 step group (ACODF). I thought I had a decent idea of philosophy, but this priest ran circles around me. When we talked, he wasn't obtuse, nor did he generalize things. His attitude wasn't flippant, and he didn't talk to me like whatever I wanted to believe was ok. Nope, when we talked, he challenged my thoughts with questions. He never tried to tell me what to think, but the questions he asked (like he was a student of my thought process) helped me to sharpen my focus on what I was trying to figure out. See, a question serves two purposes; One is to make the questioner look into his own assumptions, and two, it creates a starting point for the conversation...and his questions were sharp. They weren't accusatory or demeaning, they weren't meant to make me feel stupid or less than (which I didn't feel, btw), they were meant to challenge my thought process and help me drill down on what I was trying to resolve. What was I trying to resolve? I had no fucking clue at the time, I just knew I had a lot of questions and uncertainty about who I was, what I believed, and about life in general.
I pled guilty to my offense, and I was, but a part of me kept making excuses and justifying my actions. That lasted until mid 1997, when I finally acknowledged to myself that I was truly guilty...no more excuses, no more justifications. Through all of this I was also slowly dismantling Nietzsche's philosophy that I had adopted as my own. Nietzsche was an atheist, and as I read his works,understood him to argue that there was no good or evil, no moral right or wrong...perhaps I read him wrong and he was just foretelling the future and the consequences of the death of God. Anyway, one by one I was discovering his philosophy, the pillars of my beliefs, held no solid foundation and I had nothing to replace it with. For some damned reason, amidst all of this psychological torture (I think this is why I'm a bit of a sadist), I wrote both obituaries...
Continued to Part 3...yep, this is going to be a little long. sorry if it's boring.