Trust30 – #19 – Trust and Authority

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in a society of advice columns, experts and make-over shows. Without even knowing it, you can begin to believe someone knows better than you how to live your life. Someone might know a particular something better – like how to bake a three-layer molten coconut chocolate cake or how to build a website – but nobody else on the planet knows how to live your life better than you. (Although one or two people may think they do.) For today, trying asking yourself often, especially before you make a choice, "What do I know about this?"

(Author: Jen Louden)

Yes, I'm passing judgment on these discussion questions, and I deem this one… all right. IF we're willing to accept some basic premises that some people in today's post-modern, deconstructionalist, semiotics-obsessed culture may not be very happy with. 

SO. What are your starting premises? Are you aware of them? I know I've mentioned some of my own starting premises before, but let me state a couple of them here so they're explicit. If we're willing to accept these as being true, and I think Emerson might have agreed in principle with at least some of this, then I'm willing to accept Emerson's statement.

1. I believe in objective reality. That there is an objective universe. I am not a brain in a jar. The world is not some sort of illusion. Yes, I'm perfectly aware of Plato's parable of the cave, and there are probably some people out there shaking their heads at my lack of enlightenment and not understanding that everyone's viewpoint is equally valid. (That is, if anyone was actually READING this, there quite possibly would be.) I understand that there are people who don't accept that. I might humbly point out that in so doing they invalidate their assertion that everyone's viewpoint is equally valid – because my viewpoint is held as invalid. We're all equal, but some are more equal than others, I suppose. It's the old canard "We need to be tolerant of everyone. Except the intolerant." And then the definition of tolerance / intolerance becomes meaningless because of postmodernism and everyone decides what words mean on their own and suddenly we've lost language and no one can communicate with anyone else and… and now I'm ranting about the nature of objective reality. Go read The Gods of the Copybook Headings. I'm with Kipling. Water will certainly wet us, and Fire will certainly burn, and I don't care what your perspective is on that – those are objectively true things.

2. Because there is objective reality, I choose to believe that I can observe it with a reasonable degree of certainty. The cup I'm drinking out of is blue. I call it blue, but the wavelength of the light can be measured and described with  a reasonable degree of mathematical certainty. What I'm drinking is water. It has a chemical formula. Observation, description, with a reasonable degree of accuracy. It's the basis of science. Once you deny objective reality, you deny science. (Getting back to me being more of a Newtonian than a quantum mechanics guy, but… you know… in my defense, I am pretty big. Ha! Physics jokes.) And if there is objective reality for the tangible, I take a leap of faith and say that there is an objective reality for the spiritual also. That there is such a thing as honor, integrity, valor, and that these things are to be desired. (Maybe I am a little quantum in that regard. I'm a little bit quantum… I'm a little bit rocks that roll… Ha! Donnie and Marie jokes.)

3. So, because I believe that there is an objective reality, and I believe that I can observe it with a reasonable degree of certainty, I believe that I am capable of discovering if things are true or not.

And THAT is where I think I agree with Emerson. No one else can live my life, and I'm the one who's going to decide what to do. HOW do I decide? I observe. I test. I try things out. Not everything I try will be true.

BUT that doesn't mean that I immediately therefore must reject anyone else's viewpoint and only go off of what's in my head. Not building on the knowledge of those who've come before us is (not to put too fine a point on it) stupid. If there's literature out there that tells me how to be happier, more successful, more able, more whatever it is I want to be, I'm going to go out there and look for it. I don't have to invent trigonometry. I can study it, test to see if it works, and then start using it. Same with chemistry. Same with physics. Same, I might argue, for some of the arts. And part of that includes writing. I'm going to study what other people have done and said, and maybe I'm not studying the people who you're studying. So what? At the end of the day, the one who decides if it fits has to be me. What do I base that "fit" on? Simple. Does It Match Up With Reality, and Does It Work? Not to say that there aren't intangible considerations to make like Is it honest, honorable, etc. (I am so refraining from running through all eight virtues of the Avatar right now – Ultima IV, peeps. Next to Chrono Trigger, one of the best games ever.)

Now, one of the things that the people shaking their heads up there are going to point at and say "Ah HA! We knew he was a (pick your intelligence denigrating remark and insert it HERE)" is that I happen to be a pretty big fan of Glenn Beck. Yes, That Glenn Beck. And one thing that Glenn always says as he's talking about the end of the world as we know it is "Don't Take My Word For Any Of This. Don't trust me. Go Do Your Own Homework." And that in and of itself is probably the best advice anyone could give. Trust, but verify. (Here's where I would normally say that there are things Glenn says that drive me up the frickin' wall. Like the time he went off about Machine of Death? Not really knowing what it was? Yeah. That was a little embarrassing for me as a listener and a fan.)

I've been reading The Secret Knowledge, by David Mamet, and yes that is an Amazon Affiliate Link, and Mr. Mamet has not very nice things to say about Life Coaches. In that regard, I think he and Emerson would probably pretty much agree. But I don't for an instant think that Emerson would say you throw out Aristotle. Emerson would probably say "It doesn't matter that everyone else is throwing out Aristotle. The only one who decides if YOU are throwing away Aristotle is YOU." Which brings me back to the tree. (That's #11 again.)

I've said a couple of times that we get to the tree – we reach that which is desirable to make one happy – but we still have to face Resistance. What Resistance? We're there! We're at the tree, and we're eating the fruit. What's the Resistance now? Sartre was not quite right. Hell isn't other people. Resistance is other people.

And Pressfield points it out. In Do the Work, Pressfield says that one of the biggest obstacles you have to overcome to Do Your Work (besides rational thought – we'll get to that later, I imagine) is your own family and friends. You're going to have people who want you to do other things – who want you to conform to their image of what your work is and what you should be doing. Perhaps that person is a life coach. (I still don't understand what a life coach does. Stand by you and say… "LIVE! Good job. Now take a lap"?) There will be people who mock and belittle and put pressure on you to conform to them. You can only listen to that for so long before it starts to wear on you. And if you pay too much attention to it, eventually you toss the fruit, go wandering off, and then what?

When Emerson says to hold the integrity of your mind sacred, I think he at least in part is saying "Don't let anyone make up your mind for you. Make up your own mind, and once it's made up, stick with it." Or as Churchill said, "Never give in. Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in, save to convictions of honor and good sense." (emphasis mine. And I'm paraphrasing).

Trust that you have the ability to discern good from evil. It's a synthesis of those three starting premises I outlined above. Incidentally, I use the word evil on purpose. It's another word those head shakers don't like, but it's just as real as good. And letting yourself not do your work because of Resistance or whatever? I think that qualifies. It doesn't have to be Big Evil. Small evil is still evil.

Listen. Explore. Study. Press Forward. And don't pay attention to the head shakers. I'm not going to say anything more than that. If you're Doing It, don't pay attention to the naysayers, the critics, and others who say you're doing it wrong. Is It Working? Is It Honorable? Go Then And Do That Thing Which Works And Is Honorable.

O be wise, what can I say more?