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.
Sometimes when you're younger, you have not been tested. You don't trust yourself, because you haven't been pushed and pulled. You haven't seen the terror of death and survived. You haven't seen yourself in the midst of temptation -- you doubt that you could walk through the room without slipping the gems in your pocket.
Then you are tested. You are hacked at by temptations, fears, the desire to die, opposition from other people, or whatever else, and your flesh is broken and reformed. Until then, you live in tension, closing yourself up and craving to be changed. Some of what you think are your desires for other things or other people are really just that craving to be changed.
Having been tested, you might think that you have arrived. Or you might think that the process of being tested itself is something to arrive at, something to think of as "the answer" for the rest of your life.
Sometimes I think of people as "flesh" and "spirit". The "flesh" is like muscles, is strong and thick. The vivid and obvious parts of human psychology are "fleshly". Also there is "spirit". The "spirit" is lightweight and thus can connect with the quiet, subtle, gentle world. The spirit can be easily blown about, can see all sorts of different angles. The spirit is under a person's control, it is free but weak. But the flesh has inertia out of its very strength.
The spirit can truly intend what the flesh can't bring out in the visible world. We tend to judge each other by what we bring out in the visible world. We even judge ourselves so.
The silver cation is a unique ion, different from all other silver ions. It slides chaotically in the water, electrostatically unfulfilled. It entered the solution with a nitrate anion, which is similarly lost.
But after a time, the silver cation found a bromide anion, which resolved its tension. They fall out of solution.
Things are ideal: There is a silver cation for every bromide anion. Things work out for all the silver ions and all the bromide ions: there are none left in solution.
When we do not believe in God, do not trust God, who is going to save the world? We have to. We have to be God. We have to be good, we have to be effective. We have to be responsible. We have to know best what to do.
This sounds good.
Except that when we do not believe in God, do not trust God, we set up ourselves as gods. We take responsibility for other people's lives, we take over their lives. We interfere with other people's development. We see things from our point of view -- who could be wiser than us? We attack other people's developing points of view and self-trust, attack their trust in God. We insert ourselves in people's lives, as though we want them to worship us, for them to give us glory, so that we can be acknowledged as trustworthy. We want other people to see the error of their ways. We think we have facts, we act like we know things beyond any doubt -- unless someone else can make themselves god over us, beat us down and dethrone us. We do not choose to give glory to the God who doesn't tend to beat us down and dethrone us, the true God.
People want to be considered trustworthy by other people. They have a point of view on reality, on well-being, and want the other person to both have their values and also trust in their path toward realizing those values.
We point toward things that are trustworthy, make a public noise about it. We say "This movie is deep", will stir deep things. Depth is good. This movie is effective in bringing it to us. It is trustworthy. We are impressed and wish to make others be impressed in the same way that we are.
This rendering of "this is trustworthy" toward something, about something, can be called "glory".
We have a tendency to think that things that all of us can see are more real than things that only one person can see. This protects us from wild ideas and claims about reality, and also from the insights of sensitive people.
Sometimes as part of a drama on a stage, you want there to be sword-fighting. A more realistic drama (a drama with more reality), requires a metal sword. You can blunt the edge to some extent, but you can still do a lot of damage with it. Or you can use a wooden or plastic sword, if it's not as important to be realistic.
What is the real self? Is it the self that we choose? We choose images.
If you would prefer to be someone, you might try to be that person, and project that image. But you may not be able to be that person. You can't live in this world as that image. So then you just are yourself -- but are you really yourself? Or is the real you the one that you would choose if there were no other constraints, the ideal image?
Max Stirner made the point that you don't know what a slave wants until they get freedom.
Sometimes it's a relief to see that you're part of a bigger battle. The enemy soldier close at hand can fill your gaze, can make you feel like there's nothing but you and them, all risk to you and nothing else to fight for.
Sometimes literally lifting up your head takes you out of the mindset of narrowmindedness.
Skills and anti-skills are both learned. A skill is something that helps you to enact your will in the world. Magic, technology, taking charge. An anti-skill is a lesson learned which is about something outside of you taking charge of your life, or is you not enacting your will. Prayer, waiting, making space, can all be skills that aspire to be anti-skills. But true anti-skills are not part of the order of Law, doing what you have to to survive. They happen to you apart from instrumental or even, sometimes, epistemic rationality, are orthogonal to human goals, even, sometimes, human perspectives. Coming to see things properly is less often a skill, is more often an anti-skill. When you see things properly, you are not more powerful than reality. It is affecting you.
We like to be born with the right anti-skills, because acquiring them is often beyond our ability, no matter how hard we try. Some anti-skills may never be learned through our own strivings.
Skills and anti-skills work together, and both are components of wisdom, spiritual and practical maturity.
Law is what you have to do to survive. Knowing the facts can be Law, doing the right thing can be Law, being cynical can be Law.
Once we understand Law, understand what is needed to survive, we feel like we have the right to enforce Law, to push it on other people and fit ourselves into it. We can lean hard on it.
"Make God your God", says the Bible. "Love God with all of your being", says Jesus, "and love your neighbor as yourself". God comes first, before humans.
But what does God want? God is love, is the God of love. So can't we just reduce "love God with all of your being" to "love humanity"?
If you make God your God, you trust him and obey him as well as work for his interests. If you make "the love of humanity" your God, you don't trust the same way, or obey the same way. You run on different fuel and listen with different ears.
