In describing how the actor’s attention works Konstantin Stanislavski comes up with a relative but extremely useful division of the space around us, through which we can distinguish the main areas of our outer attention, i.e. the attention we direct to the outer world. These areas are the ones we “light up” by directing our senses towards them. Calling them “circles of attention”, he arranges these areas in a hierarchy of importance to the person acting on stage, and gives each of them a very specific role in the successful fulfillment of her intentions. (more…)

The more integrated we are in society, the higher position our sense of morality occupies within the hierarchy of our self-perception. Being per se our signature under the contract with our community, our morality has the supreme power to elevate or sink any circumstance in our perception of the environment. The people from that poor neighborhood (chapter IV.1.) – no matter what their count was – would have acted differently, were their sense of morality strong enough to put the gangsters’ crime at the top of their personal perception of the environment. (more…)

A very common deviation from the harmonious model of individual moral development is the opposite syndrome to the one described in the previous chapter: that of the deflated ego. It occurs simply because in the process of discovering our convergence with the rest of humanity we lose the grounds for our sense of uniqueness; we feel disappointed, defenseless, as well as overwhelmed by having to compete with everyone else. (more…)

We all cultivate the ability to distinguish “right” from “wrong”. It develops along with our growing up. As we get older, our interaction with the environment becomes more and more complex, enriching our knowledge about both the outer world and ourselves. The first accession of this knowledge is our self-awareness. At a certain early stage of our lives we discover that we are just an entity among many others, and that the world exists independently of us. (more…)

In order to truly start belonging to a community it is not enough to adjust our actions to its morality. If we don’t go beyond this stage, we will be justifiably considered conformists – not fought off, but not respected either. Since morality determines the very identity of any social group, community always makes sure to “implant” its morality not only into our perception of the environment, but into our self-perception as well, and from a very early age at that. This means that if we intend to be embraced by our fellow community members we have to embrace their morality first, turning it into our own. (more…)