Purposive actions have a doubtful status since we can never know how freely they are determined, whether the purposes they appear to promote are essential or merely rationalisations. Nonetheless they have consequences and place us in an inescapable causal nexus which is often far removed from what we intended. The self is bound up in the internal meaning of our acts while their consequences stem from an external meaning which places a dialectical constraint on our apparent self-determination. If it were a matter of reality tapping you on the shoulder and showing you as in a mirror what it was that you were really up to, that would be fine, but more often the external meaning of your acts is only an underside of their internal meaning and it is only your own alienated selfhood that appears to show you a truth which turns out to be no more than a further twist in the dream. Still, it is this kind of inner conflict which forms a large part of what you suffer. Is there any meaning to this? Perhaps only in forcing you to tread more lightly out of respect for an ever-present and undomesticable propensity to destroy yourself.