Louis Vigo > Recent Status Updates

Reason is not necessarily seeking for knowledge of reality, which might be passively waiting to be discovered. But in the human world reality and discovery are dynamic forces and processes not independent of each other.

Primitive societies fail to distinguish between thoughts and realities. Philosophy helps to establish the nature and existence of reality, (ontology) and explain how it can be known (epistemology).

The Correspondence Theory of Truth. Facts must be independent of statements that refer to them. Facts are the criteria by which the statements are to be judged. Facts are true regardless of statements.

Ch 1 - Thinking & Reality. Open Society is based upon the idea that our understanding of the world is inherently imperfect. If we recognize our fallibility we gain a better understanding of reality without ever attaining perfect knowledge.

We look for similarities between our stories and the stories we hear. Dystopian literature is ripe for the gospel and the resolution it brings. Most gospel proponents either fail to recognize it, or else it gets buried in the institutionalization of the church, and it falls short in capturing the imagination

Take time to meditate deeply in answers. This may take days, weeks, or even years before a deeper truth might emerge

Your job, after you have empties your mind, is to a low down and think. What’s important to you? What’s actually going on? What might be hidden from view? What might the rest of the chessboard look like? What is the meaning of life?

Slow Down, Think Deeply. Fred Rogers framed a print, “L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux”. What’s essential is invisible to the eye

The mind is an important and sacred space. Keep it clean and clear with a kind of gentle and persistent sweeping. Protect it from yourself, from your own thoughts. Don’t just guard your mind from what goes it it, but also from what goes on in it. “Chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water”. Don’t over analyze. Do the work. Don’t think. Hit the ball.

Man is a thinking reed. ...But his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. ‘Childlikeness’ has to be restored with long years of training in the art is self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think. — DT Suzuki

Be still. Be still... and be in charge of your own information diet

Walker Percy in book Lancelot. “Yes. It was possible to stand. Nothing happened. I listened. There was no sound: no boats on the river, no trucks on the road, not even cicadas. What if I didn’t listen to the news? I didn’t. Nothing happened. I realized I had been afraid of silence”

The way you feel when you wake early in the morning and your mind is fresh and is yet unsoiled by the noise of the outside world—that’s space worth protecting. So too is the zone you lock into when you’re really working well. Don’t let intrusions bounce you out of it. Put up barriers. Put up the proper chuting to direct what’s urgent and unimportant to the right people

We do not live in this moment. We, in fact, try desperately to get out of it—by thinking, doing, talking, worrying, remembering, hoping, whatever. We pay thousands of dollars to have a device in our pocket to ensure that we are never bored. We sign up for endless activities and obligations, chase money and accomplishments, all with the naive belief that at the end of it will be happiness

The lesson [of JFK and Khrushchev] was not one of force but of the power of patience, alternating confidence and humility, foresight and presence, empathy and unbending conviction, restraint and toughness, and quiet solitude combined with wise counsel.

JFK quotes nuclear strategist BH Liddell Hart, “Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding”

5 deadly D’s of defeat. Disappointment, discouragement, disillusionment, defeat. No Christian ever can afford to be disappointed about anything because disappointment is an insult to Hod. Disappointment sad, “If Hod were what I thought He was going to be, this never Wod have happened.” So disappointment is a moral sin to your spiritual health and vigor

The final chapter to the backstory is in the initial and final word of all our stories is that life is a gift. That is the backstory to all the biblical back stories, a simple celebration of the miracle that we were born at all. An emphatic affirmation that “to be” is better than “not to be”

The window stories remind Jews and Christians that somethings are out of our control, that sometimes all we can do is to let go and drop to the ground. These window stories are one of the many places where the West opens its orderly, busy house to allow the breezy truth of nonattachment of letting go, to below where it listeth

The habits of mind characteristic of cultures shaped by Judaism and Christianity inspire a work ethic and hyper-achievement. They build off the truths of the seven back stories, that God calls him humans to actively partner in the struggle against chaos. This emphasis on virtuous good works also, at the same time, breeds the seductive illusion of control.

The special mark of biblical heroes is not the time when they are strong, but the time when they are weak.

But there are times when the chaos is, or seems to be, overwhelming. Apocalyptic was born in such a time. According to its story, the only hope the faithful have during such tribulation is that God, as in the beginning, as in the old stories about divine heroes and dragons, can subdue chaos. The backstories have come full circle and the canon ends where it began, with creation

Through good works and worship, through vigilant maintenance of the firmament of justice and peace that restrains the chaotic violence ever ready to irrupt, the faithful servant as helpers corresponding to their Creator.

Both Persian & Israelite prophets had already made innovations, merging myth and history, those early attempts in the 7th to 5th century BCE that fuse Morning Stars with the King of Babylon, as thus spoke Zarathustra, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zachariah.

The apocalyptic epic took its protagonist from the spate of ancient divine combat stories about hero versus monster, shoreline versus sea, and levee versus river—all variations on the theme of order vs chaos.

In Envy of Adam, Satan did not fall at the time of the flood, but back around DAY6 of creation week, after the Lord God created Adam. Satan refuses to cater to the new member of the family

Satan, also called Semihazah in Enoch, Azazel in Apocalypse of Abraham, Belial in Qumran, Mastima in Jubilees, Beelzebul in the Gospels, and Lucifer in early Christian literature

Satan is the personification of evil, the supreme opponent Of God in the almost eternal battle between order and chaos that takes place in chronological time.