This is a distillation of my explorations, as well as general guidelines I live by.
Abstract
There is philosophical truth, and the most meaningful truths veer into the religious, but this will never be popular because most people don’t like conflict or death.
Bitterness and conceit are the two most destructive forces to the human soul, and they’re often connected.
Understanding
Knowledge is power, but wisdom uses that power for good purposes.
All perception begins with feelings, but are refined by good principles.
All perception is a biased, interwoven superset of stories. Facts are the stories with plenty of references. Data are lobotomized stories heaped into ordered piles.
“Now” is all that exists. Tomorrow is a concept, and the past is a memory.
If the past hurts, thoroughly capture and accept it.
Only compare yourself to yourself.
Find things to be grateful for, then focus solely on Who provided it.
Every attempt is messy at first, but typically better than nothing. Expand, and don’t reinvent until you have to.
What you don’t know right now is more important than what you do.
What we consume shapes us.
When you don’t know something’s value, it probably has value you can’t see.
When something doesn’t make sense, you don’t have all the information.
Beyond the domain of the religious, nothing is truly permanent or endless.
Action/Purpose
Be as precise and brief as possible, and only prioritize precision when it needs it.
Only leave an idea alone when you fully know how true it is.
Action is longer-lasting than the action’s image, but we can only judge the image.
Success requires focus, failure, accepting failure, learning from failure, forgiving yourself, fixing what you broke, and trying again.
Specific, small things determine kindness and success. Thus, small things determine what matters.
While fear shouldn’t deter us, we should take risks as safely as possible.
Details define all results, and theories never fully capture details.
Even when they’re small, well-done things are never unimportant when they serve others.
Opportunities exist if there is hurting or irresponsibility.
Life’s only constant is change, which requires endless rework, which is always humbling.
The deepest meaning we can find comes from loving God, others, and ourselves, in that order. This is much harder than it sounds.
Things have meaning through us liking something about it, even if it’s its absence.
Utility and complexity are at odds with one another. We need utility for life, but complexity for safety.
Interaction
Treat yourself like others, and others like yourself, except when personalities differ.
Stay honest, both with yourself and others, even if it hurts.
All conflicts start in the mind, so good conflicts always resolve with self-awareness, reasonable expectations, and clear communication.
Praise and criticize as precisely as possible.
People are always more important than things, and your information shortage makes other people’s thoughts more important than yours.
Everyone else knows things you don’t.
When you’re not sure what other people think, bet on goodness. It’s the moral high ground, provokes them to their best selves, and you won’t usually get in trouble for it.
Those who live by litigation die by litigation.
If it looks or says “free”, the payment is in another form.
The large print gives what the small print takes.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Family/Friends
To make others significant, trust them: ask them to do small favors for you.
Healthy conflicts resolve in two possible ways: open disagreement or avoidance toward a greater purpose.
Friends are volatile, but are always worth the experience, and good friends are always worth preserving.
Expecting injustice increases its chances, and good preparedness stops when it obstructs pro-social behavior and expectations.
Children are merely fragile, highly inexperienced, highly curious adults.
Don’t let others cross your boundaries, and empower everyone to do the same.
Society
Before working on society, work on yourself.
Feelings frame understanding, and we can’t feel large events accurately, so we can’t understand large events.
Civilization improves life, which makes everyone weaker.
All things require faith, and living well is trusting correctly. The alternative is to perform desperate, dangerous actions.
Contact institutions before condemning them, and only condemn if you know the institution does absolutely no good in the world.
Everyone should do what is right, which is loving others. Everyone should be free to act, until it hurts others. Most people want freedom, but don’t care who they hurt.
In a conflict between the elite and the unwashed masses, choose the unwashed.
People lie proportionally to how much something may affect them. Thus, truth is hard to find in proportion to its political effect.
More money and power means more risk aversion.
Make few rules, enforce them well. If they’re hard to enforce, remove rules.
About 3-10% of people destroy everything for everyone else.
The faster a trend grows, the quicker it’s abused, the quicker it phases out.
Don’t count your thieves before they’ve snatched.
Nothing is new under the sun, so all creations are well-veiled plagiarism.