Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“The post-sacrificial, or omnicentric social order makes us all centers—we have last names, ID numbers, histories in public institutions, credit cards, and much more—all of which requires a center around which all this “orbits.” The work you must put into making yourself a functional center involves managing attention—constituting yourself so that people pay attention to you in the “right” ways, which also means paying attention to them in the “right” ways. We might think of self-centering as a network of attentional exchanges: words and gestures through which we reciprocally confirm (and, of course compete over) each other’s centrality. Finally, you have to become, and to some extent already are, a center for yourself—Peirce himself endorsed the classical notion of the “self” as the dialogue of the soul with itself, while modifying this formulation into the dialogue of the self with the self that is presently coming into being as a result of this very dialogue (and which is also apparent in what someone says and does). He also saw the enhancing of self-control as the purpose of inquiry (and all sign use, for Peirce, is inquiry), and self-control is simply strengthening the self as center in relation to its margins.”

— Adam Katz, Total Semiotics, or Exteriorizing the Interiors · Apr 2019 · GABlog