Be Gnostic

Clarity comes from engagement, not thought.

— Marie Forleo

Practice to feed your thinking.

Relate to Reality

Conventional thinking and discourse tend toward something akin to an attempt to own Truth. We want to understand ideas so that we’ll be correct. We want to be right in a way that we can simply state and defend. For some purposes this works alright. For important things, it mostly doesn’t. What is better is to think clearly to the end that we understand what to do in order to come to greater understanding.

Thinking is not a very effective way to find a sufficient answer to most difficult questions. Thinking is an excellent way to figure out what to do in order to understand difficult questions. And, no amount of back and forth between thinking and acting will necessarily derive an articulable solution, sort of. Frequently, an articulation may be arrived at which is functional for dialog between those who have practiced similar methods, had similar experiences, been initiated through the same rites. Such articulations are entirely unfathomable to those who have not done the work.

We cannot contain reality. We cannot own truth. Our strongest approach to life is to relate to reality. At our best we are lovers of Truth — actively. A lover does not possess the beloved, not in the crude sense. And yet, the beloved is held. This is philosophy.

Reality never stops moving, so trying to know things in any fixed way is a fool’s errand. Now, look at the immediately previous sentence and notice how it could be read as an opinion to be believed or as a field note to act on. This whole book is a book of methodology — not of facts and information.

Consider Art as a Template for Relating to Reality

As far as I know, the humanities are the most approachable tools for entering into relationship with reality. And, the classical humanities offer the most direct and reliable frameworks.

When talking about classical disciplines in the humanities, we’re not talking about Greco-Roman imitations. I’m talking about timeless practices in which all three components of art are practiced with ambition toward mastery. Those three components are representation, formalism, and expression. So, any discipline that seeks to present reality in a way that generates clarity, that studies and practices the creation of good shape, and that facilitates human expression is, in this sense, classical. So, yes, this includes Greco-Roman art, but not because it is Greek or Roman.

In such disciplines it is apparent when someone is succeeding and to what degree. Aspiring to succeed representationally, formally, and expressively is classical discipline. Even it is isn’t old it’s still timeless. Consider break dancing. If you could present and expression anywhere, and any when, and expect that people could identify the stated elements and perceive degrees of mastery. If Epicurus was presented works a novice graffito and works by Rok2 or Saber, he wouldn’t have to know anything about hip hop to come to the same conclusion as anyone else as to who is the master and who is the novice.

A Note on Post-Modernism The guys over at Freakonomics did a little study to see if there was any truth to the idea that artists are more prone to mental illness. What they found was that modernists and post-modernists do have poorer mental health. Classicists tend to have a lower incidence of mental illness than the general population. This is not to say that there is no place for post-modernism. I was raised on a diet of David Carson and Terry Gilliam. There’s greatness there. This too is a relationship to reality. But, it’s more akin to the relationship between people who can go on a wild roadtrip together but could never be roommates. It is the passionate and destructive fling. There is madness on the fringes. Frontier mathematicians encounter similar hazards. Here be dragons.

Finding Your Discipline As I see it, classical humanities are for everyone who wants to perceive human existence increasingly clearly. And, I do not include here only the humanities for which one can receive an MFA. I’ve already mentioned graffiti. There are also deeply human and universally appreciable arts like gardening, cooking, carpentry, and the like which we sometimes fail to treat as high arts because of their practicality. This is an error. Being practical has never diminished the qualities of representation, form, or expression in any work.

For far fewer people, there are more difficult initiations into deep relationship with reality: mysticism, warriorship, and monasticism. Of course, some relate to reality through deep travel in the wilderness, though meditation, and other ascetic practices. These practices carry a similar risk to that of the post-modernist, but on the other side of the pendulum. The ascetic often creates an impenetrable identity. This is how we get people whose morning cold plunge and kale smoothy becomes their entire identity. Chögyam Trungpa wrote about it in his book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.

The point of all this is that if you can find a way of getting away from treating thinking, and talking, and reading, and discussing as the way to know things. Instead, you can learn to treat all of the activities of cognition as an intimate corollary to practices. The things you do provide immersion into relationship with reality. This is how we can develop our perception and our cognition, conditioning ourselves to stop thinking that our words can ever be correct in the absolute.

Having a fulfilling relationship with reality is better than being right about stuff — if for no other reason than that the former is possible and the latter is not.

All of the difficult problems which vex society now are of this nature. We’re not going to get to a place where we know the correct answer to school shootings. There is no such answer. You can have a great answer to the question, “What is a woman?” But, what’s step two? How does your answer help someone struggling to understand the mixed messages they receive about their body and their place in society? What do we do about sexual predators who game the system? They competing dogmas are leaving real casualties in their wake, and for what?

We have largely solved the biggest problems of our ancestors: calorie deficit, death in childbirth, occupational mortality, et cetera. All of these issues still exist, but nothing like they used to. The pressing problems which remain: inequity, alienation, nihilism, identitarianism (now in both the right and the left), et cetera. And they are all the more pronounced for the decline of the blunt force material concerns of our predecessors. These problems cannot be sensibly approached by the uncultivated mind. They cannot be deliberated about by people who lack common experiences, capacities, language, and frameworks. And these factors which need to be common to said interlocutors are not easily come by.

We are currently attempting to solve all of the most perplexing problems humanity has ever faced through juvenile squabbling alone. The discourse around every major social issue has descended into senseless and directionless conflict for the sake of each party reinforcing its own identity and sense of superiority.

The solutions (plural) will only be found in action. In relationship to reality. In gnosis.

In the sections of this chapter which follow, we will discuss three of the eight forms of capital in some detail, showing how the cultivation of holistic economic methodologies can leverage gnostic cognition into social solutions. All eight forms of capital are discussed thoroughly in book three, along with other economic concerns.

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