for me the detailed outline of how various epistimological opearting systems construct the experiences that comprise the tasks that modern life gives us, provided me with a means to cognitively assimilate these structures of knowing, these ways of being in the world, into my interior and hence call upon at least the idea (usually an idealized version) of them in times when such things as self-authorship (fourth order consciousness) or inter-individuation is called for…

When we see that we are not made up by the other’s experience, we then have the capacity not to take responsibility for what is now genuinely and for the first time not ours. And as a result, we can get just as close to the other’s experience (even the other’s experience of how dissapointing, enraging, or disapprovable we are!) without any need to react defensively to it or be guiltily compliant with it.

What we mean by maturity in people’s thinking is not a matter of how smart they are, but it is a matter of the order of consciousness in which they exercise their smartness or their lack of it.