During the summer of 1966 I ran into a girl I knew from elementary school. Turns out she applied and was accepted to the same school I was going to start in that September.
We were having a chat. I remember thinking to myself: Compared to her I know everything… why am I going to school?
We both graduated. I am sure she still thinks she knows everything. My experience is that I know less and less as time goes by.
Whether you can identify with my 19 year old person, or my 69 year old person, and to what degree will be important, so jot it down.
This article will attempt to answer truth value.
What is the opposite of truth? I have no idea. I am certain that it’s not lying. I am also certain that it is not falsehood as David Hawkins indicates in his best-seller. Especially because the truth value of that book was only seven percent.
Seven percent compared to what?
The example of the pie chart is all over the internet… the whole pie is everything that could be known. With the limited perspective of the human mind, the instruments, the seers… etc.
We all know just a tiny bit of what could be known. Why only a tiny bit?
Partially because we are looking at the whole through a keyhole.
Our keyhole limits our view, and we can’t see connections, we can’t see causality, and we can’t see what is a law, what is accidental, what is arbitrary.
Based on that limited view, we make far fetching predictions, construct rules and laws, only to be proven wrong.
Like the tiny bird that got scared while drinking from the birdbath on my deck. Muscletest says she got scared for life… There was no danger, as far as I could see… but we both look through a keyhole that are as different as they can be.
My trap caught a mouse overnight. When I took it outside and opened the trap, you could see the hope in the mouse’s eyes. Our keyholes are so different.
I started a worm farm… yet another view of the world… me, food, life, night and day. Very different from mine.
Thinking that what you see is even part of the truth is what we are looking at when we are looking at truth value.
When you read a book, when you read an article, when you listen to a lecture, you, given your level of awareness, your cone of vision, your level of general knowledge, you can’t tell which things are true and which things are made up.
You don’t know that. You, for the most part, have either an overly trusting relationship to the world (it is predictable from your soul correction) or an overly resistant relationship to the world.
Either way you won’t be able to glean the truth value, or tell the truth from the b.s., and that is very disturbing.
You’d want to spend your precious brain cells on something worth spending on. You want to be sure, you want to be certain.
Certainty is a cognitive bias… makes you stupid.
But you want to be sure. You don’t like to experiment, you want only what’s predictable, while you hope for an interesting life, spontaneity and fun.
You can have anything, but not at the same time… Certainty is for this reason is a limiting desire…
“…the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that (the amount of knowledge) has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people—and this is true whether or not they are well-educated—is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.”
~ Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer
and
Which path do you intend to take, Nell?” said the Constable, sounding very interested. “Conformity or rebellion?”
Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded– they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.”
Now, why did I quote from Neal Stephenson’s book so extensively? Because it cuts to the heart of the matter of truth value.
Truth and the world is neither straight forward nor simple. It is both ambiguous and full of contradiction.
Depending on the author’s level of intelligence, the writing, the speaking, expresses that.
And depending on your level of intelligence you’ll be able to deal with the contradiction.
I remember when I could not. If I could change, you can change.
It takes work, but it’s worth it.
One of the best ways is to be exposed to varied influences, with a level of intensity that is not easy to bear, but not too high to make you incoherent.
My 67 step coaching program is a great environment… even though the second step, with Tai sounded grating and insistent, and self-righteous, and talking too harshly. It would have stopped me years ago.
Then someone told him to behave, and he toned it down, and that horrid self-righteous tone never came back.
People say: I don’t care how much you know until I find out how much you care… He made his tone of voice, after step 2, the voice of someone who at least doesn’t talk down at you.
Neutral. Like the weather… the weather doesn’t root for you, but neither does it pray that you fail.
For me being neutral would be a pretense. I care too much… So I get angry, impatient and frustrated… because I care.
So, on one hand you get the filtered waterfall of the wisdom of the ages from Tai, and the overly caring mother goose from me.
Nudging you, fearful, naive, unaware little duck through the maze of life that is happening at least in this program… bam, bam bam…
Guiding you do not want certainty, to allow yourself to get wet by the waterfall… and not resist it.
Most students start to see a lot more by step 40 in the first round. And it is seriously better from that point on.
The beginning is hard, because you’ve never had something as intense as this. And honestly, you can’t get it anywhere else.
Here is another quote I love from the same book:
1Ordering matter was the sole endeavor of Life, whether it was a jumble of self-replicating molecules in the primordial ocean, or a steam-powered English mill turning weeds into clothing, or Fiona lying in her bed turning air into Fiona.
By the same token, all the 67 steps, some 100 principles can be ordered and turned into as useful a substance for you, as air is for Fiona… life sustaining. In spite of the truth value being only 10%.
You could do the 67 steps if you want to go from simple minded to intelligent, from narrow minded to someone who can deal with controversy, contradiction and ambiguity.
We have limited access to the whole truth of the Universe, of Life, but we can maneuver it all intelligently… by not being neither ignorant nor unduly self-righteous about anything.
This morning a pregnant raccoon climbed up to my deck. She was looking for a safe place to give birth to her soon to be born babies.
Her interest and my interest conflicted. I communicated to the racoon… and she left looking for an unclaimed spot for her litter.
I remember a few years ago how frightened, frantic, and upset I was when the same raccoon came to visit… I was so riled up I talked to everyone about it.
Just another sign that I have gotten more intelligent…
About Neal Stephenson and the book I am quoting extensively in this article: the book is fiction. Its truth value is 30%. Not because the story happened, but because the accuracy of the view of the world… Incredibly enlightening book.
OK… just one more quote: There are only two industries. This has always been true….There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment….After people have the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything.
With that said: The 67 step coaching program qualifies as entertainment because it does not deal with things, it deals with principles, insights, dreams, and aspiration, character and capacities.
Sign up here… or if you want more time to ponder, or ask some questions, I’ll have a Talk to Me webinar on July 27 for subscribers only (subscription means that you give me your real name and your real email address so I can stay in touch with you). Click the link to sign up… you’ll be automatically added to the webinar and you’ll get the link to attend it in your email… Use an email you actually check… duh.
OK… if you can see that becoming intelligent is a priority for you:
Or you can get a lifetime deal for $700… if you prefer. And if I take you… I’ll look at your starting point measurements, and your track record…
Bonus: You get two free weeks on the Reclaim site… and, of course, the 67 step program is yours to keep.
Write to me if you want to be in this program.
PS: Here is another quote… essential for your self-knowledge that will make you sign up or not sign up…
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy… Because they were hypocrites, the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none.”
“The universe was a disorderly mess, the only interesting bits being the organised anomalies. Hackworth had once taken his family out rowing on the pond in the park, and the ends of the yellow oars spun off compact vortices, and Fiona, who had taught herself the physics of liquids through numerous experimental beverage spills and in the bathtub, demanded an explanation for these holes in water. She leaned over the gunwale, Gwendolyn holding the sash of her dress, and felt those vortices with her hands, wanting to understand them. The rest of the pond, simply water in no particular order, was uninteresting.”
“…he liked his transcendence out in plain sight where he could keep an eye on it — say, in a nice stained-glass window — not woven through the fabric of life like gold threads through a brocade.”
“But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost — swallowed up in the ocean—unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward.”
“Bud’s relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition.”
“One of the great virtues of Confucianism was its suppleness. Western political thought tended to be rather brittle; as soon as the state became corrupt, everything ceased to make sense. Confucianism always retained its equilibrium, like a cork that could float as well in spring water or raw sewage.” (my comment: Confucianism had a number of principles… much similar to laws of physics that work no matter what the environment is. Whereas Western thought is void of principles… hm. interesting)
here is an example of principle based Confucian thinking:
“These were rice paddies before they were parking lots. Rice was the basis for our society. Peasants planted the seeds and had highest status in the Confucian hierarchy. As the Master said, “Let the producers be many and the consumers few.’ When the Feed came in from Atlantis, from Nippon, we no longer had to plant, because the rice now came from the matter compiler. It was the destruction of our society. When our society was based upon planting, it could truly be said, as the Master did, “Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.‘ But under the Western ti, wealth comes not from virtue but from cleverness. So the filial relationships became deranged. Chaos,” Dr. X said regretfully, then looked up from his tea and nodded out the window. “Parking lots and chaos.”
“In your Primer (book) you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all the experience you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences. If you don’t think about them, you’ll be psychologically unwell. If you do think about them, you will become not merely educated but intelligent.”
