The independence of the curious spirit

The way in which we see a situation, the way we describe it, what stands out to us, is unique to each person alone. The desire to see situations as everyone else does can be the sign of a spirit undertaking its great education - recognizing our own ignorance, we desire to understand what others see, what the best wisdom of the world has come up with hitherto. In other souls, this desire speaks to wanting to fit in, to huddle close to those in society, and to live protected in the warmth of the mass. Thus it sacrifices independence for safety, for "getting along with ones equals", for being a part of "polite society".

Where this tendency is the first step in the general education of the spirit, of the spirit that desires to know and craves knowledge and understanding (this type of organism has found its advantage in knowing reality), value judgements will begin to be made as to the worth of these different opinions and to the nature of the spirit that espouses them. The curious one will begin to find specific minds it wishes to model itself upon, as it sees a species of truth contained in those minds that it wishes to model, to live within, to adapt its own thinking around - and if one is lucky, to grow beyond.

Each mind that likes to try on a variety of different modes of thought is consciously or unconsciously building a network of relations between ideas - it tries to model the world, drawing and building connections of the best ideas that have ever been thought, in order to grasp what is. Anyone who has grown their spirit within a particular worldview understands the daunting nature of this task - one always stands before world views as before vast forests of dense ideas - ones that harbour more than one hidden nook, more often than not replete with a hidden beast or two to slay. It is a long journey to build a worldview, with few guides to help you on the way.

It is surprising, perhaps, for this type of spirit to recognize (ever so slowly), that his is the business of very few - to him, the intoxicating feelings of love and hatred engage his energies so much towards his task that he can barely understand why others don't do the same. The differences in personality and rank of spirit begin to become facts that he begins to know - and yet how poorly they are understood!

Yes or No? or...?

To honour something by evaluating, to give it your seal of approval with a human Yes, a human No - this art is practiced by few, and practiced well by fewer. It is the case that most people refuse to publicly evaluate something - either as a result of timidity or inability - and instead of taking the decisive action, the Yes, the No, they dress up their inability as a lofty adherence to philosophical veracity in the form of epistemological skepticism.

It is true that no entity can fully be known, but moving from mere acknowledgement to actual adherence to this school of thought is an essentially nihilistic position to take. If full knowledge of everything that ever was and everything that ever will be were required information for life and for action, how could anything happen? How could humans make any decisions? Here we see rationality in all its insecurity - wanting to do the "right thing", and demanding like an impertinent child to have everything that it wants before it is content - all data, all relations between things, and all possible consequences of a certain decision, all laid out for the insecure and domineering analysis and decision making of the rational mind.

Is life not fuller than rationality? Is the relatively immature, rational part of our brains really the master? Or is the master really the ancient, older, more evolutionarily groomed aspects of our bodies and our brains - our passions, instincts, and desires. Is rationality, and our ability to see, understand, judge, and compare, not the servant of our desires, the spiritual means through which we conquer and order the world in a way no other animal can? And you're willing to deny this? For the sake of a "truth"? Or rather, timidity?