by Ben Spatz
Problem: How do you reconcile self-pride with the continual quest for improvement? Solution: Consider yourself to be on a schedule. At any given moment, you are exactly on schedule, so you should feel good about yourself. However, you are expected to be constantly improving, so that is no excuse for being self-content. If you rest on your laurels, you suck.
Problem: How do you reconcile investment in the future with not having a paralyzing fear of death? Solution: Believe in honor. The only thing that sucks is not using your time well. Dying young is just as good as living a long life. This is a two-pronged fork of honor, with dishonor only in between the prongs, in a long life which is not well-lived.
Problem: How do you not be jealous of people? Solution: Conceptualize the human race as a team trying to win in some universal competition. Every person adds glory to our overall score. The best is if we all reach out in different directions to add to the combined glory of our team. I want my teammates to be great so that we can win against other teams, or against chaos, or whatever.
Problem: How do you reconcile the helpful illusion of a greater purpose with the secular revelation? Solution: This problem traces back to the fundamental doublethink inconsistancy of having morals while grokking the complexity of the physical world. Any stated goals are inconsistant with the true secular revelation. But after the secular revelation comes the humanist revelation. The idea of "working for the sky" can be protected by the humanist revelation if it is interpreted as "working for my culture." In this case, "my culture" is not the general culture of America with all its problems, but just my specific life-environment which has led be to believe in what I believe. I am working for the matrix of influences that has led me to my Seven Pillars and my personality. I speak for that matrix, like the Lorax speaks for the trees. Generalization of this Solution: All of these solutions seem to involve some kind of doublethink. None of them are good theory. But I am not looking for the right theory, I am looking for the right attitude. The above solutions do not quite make rational "sense," but they work.
General Case of the Previous Problem: It seems that sometimes it is better for people to believe falsehoods. That is, when it helps people to believe in gods or justice or anything metaphysical at all. I am going for complexity and I believe in that, so how can it be that sometimes it's better to oversimplify? Solution: In these cases, the oversimplification is a struggle concept, and if people need to use it to get through their lives or to fight in their struggles, then that's okay. However, it should be noted that there is always a third option which is neither the delusion of the struggle concept nor the despair that seems to come with the truth. There is always a trancendent view of the situation which includes the truth but still provides hope. If a person can't reach that more complex view, then they should use the struggle concept. But my goal in general is to not need any struggle concepts, that is to have a fully complex view of things, that is to accept the truth without despairing at the loss of my illusions. In other words, I need to figure out how to live in the real world.
Problem: How do you reconcile a strong moral stance with a generally skeptical outlook? How do you balance between morality and skepticism in any given situation? Solution: "... [A] sentence from J. Robert Oppenheimer: 'Style is the deference that action pays to uncertainty.' I took that to mean that in a world without certain foundations for action you avoid the Scylla of prideful self-assertion, on the one hand, and the Charybdis of paralysis, on the other hand, by stepping out provisionally, with a sense of limitation, with a sense of style." (There's No Such Thing As Free Speech, by Stanley Fish, p. 293)
The price paid for a life well lived is a library of sweetly painful memories, that price being also its reward.
You don't have to have faith, as long as you never give up.
Living on the possibility that there is something more to be seen. We are all warriors. This is not goodbye.
The only thing that unites all fresh people is that they do fresh things.
It's better to be stupid than cruel.
If you ever need a revelation, just stay up all night watching great movies and then, without sleeping or eating, go out into the world and meet the sun.