When you look at an eye you do not see its sight; to know what a thinker thinks is not the same as knowing his thought.

To many, epiphanies seem impossible because they can’t foresee what they’ll be. But this is one essential quality of an epiphany.

*

An imminent epiphany is not dark; it is invisible.

An imminent epiphany is not indistinct or fuzzy; it is nothing.

An imminent epiphany is not tiny in the distance; it is nowhere.

An imminent epiphany does not announce its impending arrival; it is not in transit.

*

In the world of epiphanies, “fuzzy front end” happens late in the process, after the hardest work has been done.

Inspired people make inspired things. Inspired things tends to inspire people who work on them. Inspiration begets inspiration.

Often people think of duty as a person does in the absence of inspiration. But with problems demanding inspired solutions it is one’s duty to find, generate, protect and transmit inspiration. Doing one’s duty dutifully won’t do.

To be persuaded of something is not the same as being compelled to accept it.

Reason persuades.

Logic compels. Logic is the law of thought.

Reason is lawful, and it honors logic’s laws. But reason honors more than logic, and it has resources that extend far beyond logic.

*

Logic is a courtroom, and it judges what goes on beyond its walls. The court cannot predict or determine the possibilities of life or the cases that might be brought before it.

*

Logic can be abused.

It can be brandished and used as an instrument of intimidation. Used skillfully it can show the limits of another man’s intelligence. And it can also be used to wear a person down. It can detain and exhaust and irritate, like a filibuster.

*

Being sued and taken to court is a painful process. Even if you think you are right, it can interrupt your life, strain your patience, drain your resources, and grip you with anxiety, because, despite your convictions, you might lose. The lawyer will do his best to make you settle out of court…

*

Next time someone tries to persuade you, pay attention: Is this using reason to show you a way to understand in a new way? Or is this person brandishing logic (or its cousin mathematics) to get you to settle for something?

If you think reality has the last laugh on an ostrich who dies with its head still buried, you do not understand ostrich logic.

It is very hard to think clearly about problems, and it is for this reason — and this reason alone — that people so industriously focus on solutions.

*

Muddling: trying to answer unasked questions or resolve undefined problems.

Muddling is the great vice of large organizations who have tons of resources to waste. Big groups of people get together and decide what to do without clarifying why something needs to be done.

People act like the sense that a problem exists and needs solving. Everyone kinds of agrees something needs to be done. Good enough!: what is that something, so we can get to work doing it? Let’s ideate on what to do, and make a plan!

*

When I hear someone generalize about “ideas”, assessing the value of ideas versus things, or groups, or actions, or plans, etc., I immediately know that person has an impoverished sense of ideas.

For such people, ideas are just anticipations of things that can be made, groups that can be formed, actions that can be performed, plans that can be executed, etc. Ideas are mere mental images of entities that can be brought into other kinds of existence.

Yet, people like this call themselves “idea people” — and have no idea how wrong they are.

*

What is true of “idea people” is doubly true of visionaries.

The world is stuffed with “visionaries” who imagine things, actions, plans, organizations, goals (and other stuff you can picture in your mind) — who then mentally sketch out what they imagine, so that others can picture it in their minds, too. The whole group sees the same image, now.

That’s what a visionary does, right? This is, at best, half right.

But what else could a visionary be?

Are you unable to envision anything beyond that? There it is: that beyond that you cannot envision until the moment you finally glimpse it — that beyond is the visionary’s element.

It would be difficult enough if the ocean bottom were just deep. However, it is also dark, heavy, ambiguous with debris, silt and vegetation, and populated with ferocious eyeless creatures that bite, grab and crush anything that lives.

*

Monophonic or harmonious difficulties rarely occur outside the domain of games. In real life, there’s nothing, nothing… then deafening cacophony of trouble.

Some people listen to other people because they are genuinely kind. They want to allow the other person to feel heard and to experience dignity and belonging. What is experienced is charity.

Some people listen to other people because they’re trying to be good listeners. They imitate the genuinely kind. Occasionally they seem kind. Others listen in order to flatter. Occasionally they seem respectful.

Some people listen to other people in order to learn the things other people have to teach them. Such people are curious.

Some people listen to other people in order to be liberated from themselves: they want an alternative truth to escape into. They run into the front door, through the house, and straight out the back door.

Some people listen to other people, even to people who are clearly deluded and confused, not in order to enter their delusion or confusion, but to learn just enough to find their way out of their own old truth. Even to you, they listen intently, only for the silences.

Some people listen to other people as an ascetic discipline: the vacuum that stands between understandings hurts us. Steadfast suffering of perplexity makes a soul strong and clean. Perplexity is a desert, and listening leads us there.

Some people listen to other people because they can find a seminal idea hidden in any mind, of any kind, and in their fertile soul grow this insight into an unprecedented idea.

Outrageous: a rebel can no longer expect to be rewarded for refusal to cooperate.

*

In a glut, nothing is better than something.

*

Diets are counter-natural. Yet nature demands them.

Some people need to be given tasks to do.

Other people need to be given things to make.

Other people need problems to solve.

And finally, some people are only happy finding new problems.

*

Each of the four types of worker will turn whatever work they have into the kind of work they do.

A task-oriented person (whether that person is a fry-cook or CEO) faced with the requirement to make a thing, or the need to solve a problem, or a chaotic situation pregnant with opportunity, will play a matching game. He will look for cases that resemble the one he is facing. Then he will find processes (“best practices”) meant to bring that category of case to a successful conclusion. Only when he has strung together a series of algorithmic steps and begun executing them will he feel in his element, and feel like he is really working. For the task-oriented worker, working is executing techniques.

A craftsperson (again, this could be any role ranging from custodian to executive) will try to turn whatever situation he faces into the need for some kind of artifact. It might be a product, or a slogan, or a presentation… whatever it is, it will require him to roll up his sleeves and start carving, sanding, tweaking, polishing — and now he is working. For the craftsman, working is making.

A problem-solver (of whatever role) wants to understand the end-goal, the clear objective, of what he is doing. All his efforts are trained on “moving the needle” and accomplishing what he has set out to do. To this end, he will use processes and he will use the crafting of things to get him there, only feels like he is working when he sees progress toward a goal. For the problem-solver, working is accomplishing.

A problem-finder is unlikely to be anything other than an entrepreneur or a hermit, and is not really worth discussing.

What a great quote!:

“Our age’s good fortune. — There are two respects in which our age may be called fortunate. With respect to the past we have enjoyment of all the cultures there have ever been and of their productions, and nourish ourselves with the noblest blood of every age; we still stand sufficiently close to the magical forces of the power out of whose womb they were born to be able to subject ourselves to them in passing with joy and awe: whereas earlier cultures were capable of enjoying only themselves, with no view of what lay outside — it was as though they lay beneath a vaulted dome, of greater or less extent, which, though light streamed down upon them from it, was itself impenetrable to their gaze. In respect to the future there opens out before us, for the first time in history, the tremendous far-flung prospect of human-ecumenical goals embracing the entire inhabited earth. At the same time we feel conscious of possessing the strength to be allowed without presumption to take this new task in hand ourselves without requiring supernatural assistance; indeed, let our undertaking eventuate as it may, even if we have overestimated our strength, there is in any case no one to whom we owe a reckoning except ourselves: henceforth mankind can do with itself whatever it wishes.”

You can’t lose with a quote like this. Whether or not it is factually true, it is morally true: it reveals a hope worth cultivating: a pluralist interpretation of e pluribus unum.

He came, rested and prospered, and went on,
Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,
And over each one its own particular sky,
Not the great rounded sky through which he journeyed,
That went with him but when he rested changed.
His mind was full of names
Learned from strange peoples speaking alien tongues,
And all that was theirs one day he would inherit…

On the continuum of quantities, myriad stands closer to one than to infinity.

And a pluralist who believes in myriad truths stands closer to the absolutist with his one Truth than to the relativist who believes in an infinite number of truths.

But nobody is forcing us to chose between inferior conceptions — unless we are not up to a superior conception.

*

Be careful when presenting an either/or, and especially when it is obvious that only two options exist: You are putting your intellectual limitations on display.

*

Are you wise to philosophy? Then don’t do philosophy. Avoiding philosophical thought is the best strategy for honoring and preserving your miraculous inborn wisdom.

*

Many have confusion, and many have answers. Only an elite few have questions.

Most people are simply too naive to recognize that a clearly posed question is an enormous accomplishment.

They think a question is only a means to an answer, and that if you already have an answer, questions are regressive or superfluous.

So in situations where questions need to be understood, confused people are ready with techniques, plans of action, goals, examples — anything to fill up the void of confusion. But voids of confusion do not need filling, they need clearing. Filling them only adds more confusion. And that’s where the confusion came from in the first place: from other confused minds.

*

Only equals can collaborate as equals. Non-equals need hierarchy — with those who would prefer equality at the top.

*

Four categories of people:

1. “I do not understand it; I can neither explain nor intuit it.”
2. “I know intuitively, but I can’t explain it.”
3. “I can explain it, but I don’t intuit it.”
4. “I understand it intuitively, and I can explain it.”

Some people get so used to not fully understanding, that they come to think of understanding as just intuitive knowing, or just producing an explanation.

Some people split the world up into different domains, and have different standards of understanding for each: Some things can only be intuited, other things can only be explained. Such people are naive.

*

We have names for permanent naivety.

Studying etymologies, the world turns elemental — up and down, over and under, toward and away, turning and going, climbing and jumping, throwing and putting and taking, together and apart, before and after, mother and father and child, authority and public, trade and credit.

*

When I was being taught to paint, the teacher limited my palette to titanium white, cadmium red medium, cadmium yellow light and ultramarine blue.

In one corner of the ring, a trainer is telling a boxer that he is completely blowing this fight, that he’s worked and worked and come this far only to piss it away. Where is his will to win? He’d better find it fast. In the opposite corner another trainer is telling a boxer that it’s all ok, that he only needs to remember the three things they’ve worked on together. It’s second nature, now. Stay focused and positive. The bell rings and the two boxers meet again — fists, heads, hearts, bodies and coaching. It is spiritual heterogeneity against a backdrop of purified trauma.

One note on quitting Facebook. There seems to be three basic attitudes on quitting:

• It is a good, spiritually wholesome thing to do.
• It is too hard and you’ll never pull it off once you start discovering the social and technical (through Facebook Connect) repercussions.
• To quit is an extremely hipstery, “douchey” thing to do.

What does it mean to be a “douche”? (And I will never stop putting that term in a plastic bag of quote-marks, to prevent accidental skin contact.) I believe a “douche” is someone who enjoys a state of petty arrogance. *

I see no incompatibility between these three attitudes. It’s good to do, it’s hard to do and getting off does indicate some degree of arrogance, not necessarily exceeding the minimums to escape the category of “petty”. *

(* NOTE: the last two paragraphs are examples of “douchey”, as I understand it, and so is this note.)

I’ve deleted all my Google Reader feeds.

For a variety of reasons I’ve quit facebook.

Now is a small town.

Working in my wiki this morning, I found myself tagging this passage from Martin Buber with the theme “tragedy“:

If a man were only guilty toward himself, in order to satisfy the demanding summons that meets him at the height of conscience, he would only need to take this one road from the gate of self-illumination, that of persevering. But a man is always guilty toward other beings as well, toward the world, toward the being that exists over against him. From self-illumination he must, in order to do justice to the summons, take not one road but two roads, of which the second is that of reconciliation. By reconciliation is understood here that action from the height of conscience that corresponds on the plane of the law to the customary act of reparation. In the realm of existential guilt one cannot, of course, ‘make reparation’ in the strict sense — as if the guilt with its consequences could thereby be recalled, as it were. Reconciliation means here, first of all, that I approach the man toward whom I am guilty in the light of my self-illumination (in so far as I can still reach him on earth) acknowledge to his face my existential guilt and help him, in so far as possible, to overcome the consequences of my guilty action. But such a deed can be valid here only as reconciliation if it is done not out of a premeditated resolution, but in the unarbitrary working of the existence I have achieved. And this can happen, naturally, only out of the core of a transformed relationship to the world, a new service to the world with the renewed forces of the renewed man.

This is not the place to speak of the events in the sphere of faith that correspond to the events in the sphere of the high conscience that we have just discussed. For the sincere man of faith, the two spheres are so referred to each other in the practice of his life, and most especially when he has gone through existential guilt, that he cannot entrust himself exclusively to either of them. Both, the human faith not less than the human conscience, can err and err again. And knowing about this their erring, both — conscience not less than faith — must place themselves in the hands of grace. It is not for me to speak in general terms of the inner reality of him who refuses to believe in a transcendent being with whom he can communicate. I have only this to report: that I have met many men in the course of my life who have told me how, acting from the high conscience as men who had become guilty, they experienced themselves as seized by a higher power. These men grew into an existential state to which the name of rebirth is due.

Here is a tragic synthesis that cancels both Pharisaic/fundamentalist dogmatism and antinomianism.

*

As an experiment, I’ve tried reading three quotes from Nietzsche as if they agree with Buber’s view on guilt (setting aside the question of whether Nietzsche’s quotes on Jesus even agree with one another), to see what insights arise:

1.) From Birth of Tragedy:

It is an unimpeachable tradition that in its earliest form Greek tragedy records only the sufferings of Dionysus, and that he was the only actor. But it may be claimed with equal justice that, up to Euripides, Dionysus remains the sole dramatic protagonist and that all the famous characters of the Greek stage, Prometheus, Oedipus, etc., are only masks of that original hero. The fact that a god hides behind all these masks accounts for the much-admired “ideal” character of those celebrated figures. … If we wished to use Plato’s terminology we might speak of the tragic characters of the Greek stage somewhat as follows: the one true Dionysus appears in a multiplicity of characters, in the mask of warrior hero, and enmeshed in the web of individual will. The god ascends the stage in the likeness of a striving and suffering individual. That he can appear at all with this clarity and precision is due to dream interpreter Apollo, who projects before the chorus its Dionysian condition in this analogical figure. Yet in truth that hero is the suffering Dionysus of the mysteries.

2) From Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

[Jesus] died too early; he himself would have recanted his teaching, had he reached my age. Noble enough was he to recant. But he was not yet mature. Immature is the love of the youth, and immature his hatred of man and earth. His mind and the wings of his spirit are still tied down and heavy. But in the man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less melancholy: he knows better how to die and to live. Free to die and free in death, able to say a holy No when the time for Yes has passed; thus he knows how to die and to live.

3) From The Antichrist:

Until [the crucifixion] this warlike, this No-saying, No-doing trait had been lacking in [Jesus’s] image; even more, he had been its opposite. Evidently the small community did not understand the main point, the exemplary character of this kind of death, the freedom, the superiority over any feeling of ressentiment: — a token of how little they understood him altogether! After all, Jesus could not intend anything with his death except to give publicly the strongest exhibition, the proof of his doctrine … But his disciples were far from forgiving this death — which would have been evangelic in the highest sense; or even from offering themselves for a like death in gentle and lovely repose of the heart … Precisely the most unevangelical feeling, revenge, came to the fore again.