Stamina

One of the things they don't tell you is that while appearances do matter (affecting how you relate to yourself, how others relate to you), what also matters is strength, stamina, strength of mind as well as body. If you are a beautiful person, do you have the strength to deliver on your beauty? Or will your stamina give out? -- you'll snap at someone you were gentle toward.

So virtue involves the building-up of wealth, while somehow not compromising a spirit of poverty. This presents a puzzle for which there is at least one answer I can think of -- how can these two aims be reconciled?

Mental Health

Everything we experience is spoken to us by God. God does not like all the things he has to say (reality is not the way he would most like it to be). But, like Job, we can see that God gives and takes away, gives blessings and takes them away, gives afflictions and takes them away. What Job really wanted and got in the end, apart from blessings and relief from affliction, was God himself.

God speaks to us our experience. So mental illness is an expression of dysfunction in an aspect of our relationship with God. Likewise the effort and process of rehabilitating mental health (or "habilitating" what was never there) is a process of restoring or discovering an aspect of good relationship with God.

A smooth and trusting experience of the moment, repeated over the long term, is the goal of much mental health-seeking. To an extent, this pursuit can be a school for learning to trust God. But there is more to God than just the provider of smooth and trusting experience, just as there is more to a mother than her milk.

Fear of What?

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge" (source).

Or is it "the fear of death is the beginning of knowledge"? A lot of our criteria for why we should consider real what we do consider real boil down to "if you don't abide by these criteria consistently, you will be at greatest risk of physical death in the long run."

Or is it "the fear of shame" or "the fear of a particular human's opinion, or group of humans' opinions"? As opposed to the fear of the LORD's opinion.

Is fearlessness the beginning of knowledge? Or the full growth of it? There is a certain kind of fearlessness which comes from not caring. Experience is most real when there is fear, for a certain meaning of "real". Wealth enables us to not live in reality.

Knowledge has different flavors, different tonalities and physical expressions, depending on whether it is begun by the fear of death, the fear of shame, the fear of people's opinions, or whatever else, or the fear of the LORD.

Flavors

Some old notes on "flavors":

Ethical Flavors

An ethical dilemma: do the right thing now vs. trust the less immediate thing which is better in the long run. Probably everyone leans on both the former and the latter, in other words, balancing deontology (the former) and consequentialism (the latter).

But which right things do we do now? Which less immediate things which are better in the long run?

Ethics has a structure (virtue, deontology, consequentialism) and a flavor. (Virtue ethics: Be the kind of person who does (which?) right thing now and trusts the (which?) less immediate thing which is better in the long run.)

With belief in God, your heart needs to be right, and you believe, trust, know that everything will be right in the long run, every dark part of a person will be exposed to truth, the timeline is long enough to do the right thing in the long run.

Without belief in God, you do what feels moral now, or not, and you don't expect justice or truth to win, you might not have a firm belief in or even a concept of justice or truth, everything is uncertain, you need to make tradeoffs, your heart doesn't need to be right if you get results, the timeline is uncertain and may not be long enough to do the right thing in the long run.

That's more virtue-ethical (in that the flavor of trust or non-trust in God affects the kind of person you are in approaching deontology or consequentialism).

A question you could ask: "What would be a really theistic thing to do right now? Or to trust in the long run?"

Without belief in God, it doesn't make as much sense to go against societal norms. Maybe the norm just is moral.

Holiness (being set apart, especially for, or to God) is an ethical flavor. Trust is an ethical flavor.

Social relativism (it's important to index yourself to your society) is a set of ethical flavors (one for each society). "Human well-being" (the concept) is decided on by humans. Related: human relativism (it's important to index yourself to what humans want).

Flavors in Capitalism and Democracy

Liberalism's two children (capitalism and democracy) both forms of "democracy", broadly/literally taken. Capitalism is about the will of the people: the consumers and those who lead the consumers. Same with democracy: the will of the voters and those who lead the voters.

Both capitalism and democracy are self-regulating competitive systems. We might want a cooperative self-regulating economy. Then we might also want a cooperative self-regulating political system. Society has a structure (or structures) and a flavor (or flavors), in parallel with ethical flavors, above.

While He is Near

"Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near."

If you want to develop a discipline, get up at 5 AM every morning and do it.

If you want to develop a habit, taste, or delight, catch yourself at a receptive moment and reward it.

If you want to meet a friend in person, you have to do it when they're in town.

You listen to a friend out of discipline and delight, but it is better when there is delight.

You speak to your friend when you do, and say what you say -- that is how he comes to know you. You are not in control of your relationship with God.

Knowing Others Better

It's dangerous to think that you know someone better than they know themselves.

First, it's dangerous if you're wrong. You may see certain aspects of a person clearly, but it's unlikely that you have all the data. So you can possess a distorted view of someone which is very compelling to you. Then, you reflect that view back to them, directly or indirectly.

But also, it's dangerous if you're right. You have a lot of power if you understand someone better than they understand themselves. You'll know better how to defeat them in arguments. You'll approach them with a settled confidence about who they are which they can't contradict -- after all, you're the one with a better command of the facts of who they are. You set yourself up as the trustworthy, wise one, and the wise are those whose decision-making has legitimacy, and thus social power.

When in possession of this power, you can put the other person in a dependent state, setting their horizons within the bounds of your vision. This can prevent them from being the person that God wants them to be.

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Which is better, to know someone accurately, or to share the same reality as them? People who share the same reality can be friends. So you make the choice (or life makes it for you): to see things your way (to see the facts) or to share a journey with someone else.

If you know someone better than they do, you don't need to listen to them anymore. Speech is how we create reality, how we express ourselves.

Horizons

I was talking to someone once about life choices. Should he marry a particular woman? He said she would affect his horizons. He could still be a Christian but he couldn't become a preacher.

Becoming a preacher was far off, not something his self at the time was too visibly interested in doing. But horizons limit the person you might become as well as the person you are.