There is no truth, and there is no knowledge.

All the things we know are things which we have decided, and we have decided them from a position of gross ignorance.

There was a time when we knew of the great and terrible fire god in the sky.

It was wise that we knew of him thus. To know of him thus was to understand that our lives sprung from him, that without his presence we would die. It was to understand his terrible power and be wary of it, lest he burn you to death. It was to understand that there was a pattern to his actions, and that we could build patterns among ourselves that were supported by the resolute and predictable nature of his actions. We could create time and history where once there was only timeless story and myth and the endless now.

This was not the truth. It was an arbitrary decision that we believe this, and that decision withstood the test of time because it was useful to view things in this fashion. It was a viewpoint that let you do things that you couldn't do before. Those savages who didn't believe were defeated by the weaknesses of their perspective.

There was a time when we knew that the earth was a round globe that the sun revolved around.

It was wise that we knew the sun thus. We spent so long worrying about offending that thing, ascribing motives to it that didn't exist, being blinded to the inconsistencies of our view.

Now we could predict its motion around the earth as we travelled its survace. We could do all sorts of useful things with this knowledge that we couldn't do before. Those who didn't believe as we did were defeated by the weaknesses of their perspective. Those who believed as we believed thrived and multiplied. This was knowledge.

Except that it was an arbitrary truth. It wasn't true. But it was useful. So it was good. This was knowledge.

Now we know that the earth revolves around the sun, and so do the rest of the planets. This is a useful perspective. It has empowered us.

The truth is, we see glimpses of the nature of the universe. We make a bunch of things up, and the more useful those made up things prove to be in helping us continue to exist, the more you see them among us as knowledge and truth.

Now, we have scientists contemplating the microscale of the universe, the macroscale of the universe.

Can you consider the effects your actions when you get up in the morning on the microscale? Or how what's happening on the microscale at the moment should influence what it's wise to do? What it's good or evil to do?

Could you consider how what's happening on the macroscale relates to the morality of your existance and your actions?

You can't.

You can't consider these things.

You're floating along with a whole bunch of made up rules that are there because they're empowering. Inevitably, the falseness of them will come along to bite you on the ass as you struggle to make some sense of the universe with these crude tools that are our truths and perspectives and knowledge.

At the end of the day, you must not get too caught up in defending the truths of things.

You must look around you.

Look at what truths you see bandied about, and try to understand what the purpose of those truths is.

Understand that none of this is really the truth, but every bit of it has some utility that is the reason for its existance.

Try to understand what that utility is.

This will help you deal with the ugliness in the world.

Every ugly evil thing you see has a reason why it is there, that is why its evil ugliness is tolerated.

It serves a moral purpose. It allows us to be.

Reconcile with it. Understand that it has an inherent goodness that is larger than the ugliness of what you can see.

Then look for a new truth that can serve the moral purpose of the ugly one you have reconciled yourself with.

It is in this way that you will find your truth.

It will be a truth that you have chosen. It will not be an inherently true truth, but it will be a useful truth.

It is up to you what you do with the truth you have chosen.

But for it to be a good and moral truth, it must ultimately serve the purpose of continuing to allow us to be.

If it does not serve that purpose, it will ultimately destroy those who choose it as the truth, and thus destroy itself.

What are your truths doing?

In the beginning, language is spoken.

It is communicated from one person to another with the accompaniment of cues like body language, pitch and intonation, even pheromones communicating fear or excitement. It is intended to be used together with these cues.

And so it is for many years.

Then written language is created.

Written language is tough, because you have to deal with the fact that language is meant to be accompanied by many cues which you no longer have at your disposal.

It's also tough to be precise, because the language is very flexible and meant to be suitable for a great many other expressive pursuits whose needs are contrary to the goal of precision.

Writing is intended to be done once and distributed to an audience to stand as it is written, and so it is treated as an art. A writer is expected to put effort into making it just right before releasing it.

And so it is for many years.

Writing is used to codify laws.

Societies get more complex, the limitations of the common language are met, and new languages are created with new syntax, based around old ones.

Legal language is created to express such things as rules and contracts.

We are all systematically bound by what is expressed in these languages, and irrespective of our personal opinions or even our ignorance, we materially put our support behind these expressions by our participation.

Most people don't understand this language, and its meanings are often unintuitive and convoluted. Unless you have access to great wealth, you can't even learn it.

If you do have access to great wealth, you can hire teams of experts who have dedicated their lives to exploiting the convolutions of this language.

And so it is for many years.

Technologies arrive that allow the written word to be communicated broadly with great speed and great ease.

Speed enough that it can be used for a casual conversation.

Ease enough that you can casually reach a world audience during any 5 minute break in your schedule.

Language starts to break down.

Emails and instant messages are misunderstood more often than not.

People attempt to inform themselves, and they encounter linguistic constructs that exist for the higher purpose of eliciting emotional responses when used by artists.

They are manipulated and misled with misdirection and emotive imagery.

People are unable to concisely specify their agreements with their fellows without the assistance of a professional, but they are bound by them in ways they do not understand.

They are unable to understand the agreements that they make with commercial interests, but they are bound by them in ways they do not understand. These agreements are crafted by teams of people who dedicate their lives to being skilled in exploit your lack of understanding to their advantage.

Most people are unable to walk into a courthouse and express for themselves why they should not be punished.

If the attention of the system is ever placed upon them, their fate lies in their capacity to find someone who understands the language and rules of the law well enough to compete on their behalf.

It leads a person to think... shouldn't the language we use to make our agreements and our laws be straightforward enough that everyone can learn and understand it?

Shouldn't we insist that it not only be understandable, but understandable in a timely enough fashion to make all our decisions from an informed position?

Shouldn't every single human being on earth be capable of communicating with precision?

How would you do it?

My mind drifts to the book 1984.

Language is stripped down, shorn of the capacity to communicate things which disadvantage the state. Extraneous words are discarded. A standard is made, everyone is taught and kept up to date, and it is impossible to communicate outside of a very rigid framework.

It is put forth as a nightmare vision. The ultimate control of the population by the state.

But what if everyone was bilingual?

What if there was one language that was very precise, and it was engineered to be easy to understand.

Imagine if it was utterly devoid of the sorts of communications that could elicit emotional responses in people and make them choose something because the language made them feel good.

Now, if that was the only language that you knew, it would be very easy to organize with precision, but there would be no room for creativity, or expressions about the human experience, or creating things that were appealing to the primitive side of what we as humans are.

So you'd need a second language. One that was rich with multiple interconnected meanings, flexible, emotive, organic. A romantic language.

Two modes of communication, understood by all, with a social structure that indicated by decorum which mode should be used for which purpose.

This would still allow for that decorum to be broken when important things that fall outside the realm of tradition need to be said.

This would mean we could get rid of both lawyers and advertising.

We would have a civilization where every one of us understands what is going on well enough to participate, well enough to put transparency to purpose when we demand it, well enough not to be bamboozled and swindled anymore.

If you were going to pursue it as an agenda, you might choose something like English, which has strong representation as the language of business, then have an engineering team skilled in information theory create a suitable subset of the language, and go about the developing world educating people in that subset of it, allowing them to be advantaged by participating in world business.

Then choose a romantic language well represented in the developing world, Spanish perhaps, and take the two pronged approach of providing easy access to education in the romantic language to children in the English speaking world, while investing heavily in the creation of cultural works in that language. These children would end up thinking of English as the language for serious things and Spanish as the language for creativity and expressions of feeling and passion.

Inside of a couple of generations of spreading bilingualism in this fashion, such a structure could be realized across the globe.

Peoples cultural languages would end up being folded into the Romantic language over time, making it an increasingly rich means of expression and preserving history.

Malicia is the art of a slave.

That is to say, it was evolved in Brazil by African slaves, preserved in the art of Capoeira, and roughly translates as "deceptive tricks".

It is the art of appearing weak when you are strong, as practiced and evolved by those who are helpless to prevent their own death at an enemies whim.

Cringing as though afraid, standing on ones face as though awkwardly fallen, feigning injuries, these are all tactics practiced by master Capoeiristas.

These become even more apparent when you watch the Angola mestres.

It is an interesting look through the eyes of an oppressed people.

To rule is to create a system. A system is by nature inflexible. Any flexibility it exhibits should be of a preconcieved nature, because the value of a system is in its reliability.

It must suit its participants. The less it suits its participants, the more enforcement cost will be imposed upon the system, and the less effective it will be.

It should be minimal in scope. A system should exist to protect specific needs in a reliable fashion.

In an ideal system, any person should be able to fill any role, and every person should be exposed to each of them.

Adhering to such ideals in designing systems ensures that every person understands intimately how the needs of their life are met, and cannot argue for change or discontinuation from a position of ignorance.

It also ensures that the needs that the system are fulfilling are met in a resilient fashion.

The system should not be able to lose coherency because of the loss of any person. People are too dynamic and transient in their nature to be depended upon as individuals within a design.

No person should have such heavy responsibilities laid upon them as would be imposed if it were designed otherwise.

No reasonable person should live in a system where their needs rely on the continuing competency and goodwill of an individual without making efforts to escape that situation.

The trick to leading is to use people well.

If you can use people well, they will love you for it. If you can make people believe that you will use them better than they will use themselves, they will give themselves to you.

To use people well, you must understand and know them. If you cannot know them, you cannot use them in a subtle fashion.

To use people well, you must love them. If you cannot love them, you will use them frivolously, rudely and in a fashion that does not respect them.

You must understand them, tax them without asking more than they can give, make them feel that their efforts further their own personal goals and will benefit other people at the same time.

If you ask more of a person than they can give, they will fail, and what they could have achieved will be wasted. They will develop habits and practices that lead to failure, and they will be shamed. If they do not escape you, they will be ruined by what you have done to them.

You must never ask people to do what they cannot do.

If you ask less of a person than they can give, their potential will be wasted. They will not grow, but will instead be stunted and destroyed. If they do not escape you, they will be ruined by what you have done to them.

You must always find a way to exploit what a person has to offer.

Lead in this way and you will be beloved, and all mankind will lift you on their shoulders.