As I explain in Learn To Think, the grave depravity of reason stems from the confounding of cause and consequence (Nietzsche), a hierarchy of thought instrumental in understanding, seeking, and conveying truth. A truth that will set you free.
Trouble On The way
In short, a causal truth can lead to many consequences, and by nature’s asymmetry, not in reverse. Remember the high school statistics class lesson as correlation, not inferring causation. The existence of an action does not imply the causation of that action.
For example. You may crash into another car when you ignore traffic rules and run a red light. Disobeying traffic rules and then running a red light as cause, the crash as a consequence. A person walking by and seeing only the rubbish cannot infer running the red light was the uniquely identifiable cause. Many situations could have caused the accident. Take two cars driving through a green light in opposite directions, each turning left at the intersection. Kaboom.
Disobey Rules –> Run Red Light –> Crash
In summary, when you comprehend the highest-order cause, you can reason its many consequences. When you merely observe a consequence, you wonder what “on earth” caused it. That difference is called asymmetry.
Grave depravity of reason rears its ugly head with the ominous reversal of cause and consequence or the lazy or deliberate ignorance of causation. In the car example suggesting the red light caused the accident rather than the driver ignoring it.
Run Red Light –> Crash
Your car insurance company will not let you get away with the latter, as they will seek to provide evidence you disobeyed the traffic rules. Thus, and this is important, the righteousness of consequence depends on the highest-order identification of causal truth.
Incriminating circumstances may have made you disobey the rules. For example, you could have been drunk. Not an excuse, but a reason why you broke the rules.
Inebriated –> Disobey Rules –> Run Red Light –> Crash
The court will find you guilty not just for disobeying the rules and causing the crash but on the more serious charge of being inebriated. Depending on your state, the law will suspend your driver’s license based on the highest proxy of truth they have conclusively established. The level of truth defines the punishment of its ignorance.
Integrity
A person’s integrity and reliability can be measured and relied upon based on how well they understand the dynamics of cause and consequence. Because the recidivism rate of ignorance is exceptionally high, a person who, in the above example, admits they were drunk when they ran the red light is more easily forgiven than a person denying their causal responsibility.
I have exposed and written about many infractions in our guiding economic constructs that systematically confound cause and consequence or fail to traverse the pursuit of truth. As a society, we systemically fail because we lie within the realm of cause and consequence I just described. And that failure causes its population to lose its integrity too.
Fault Line
Just recently, I watched a woman I fell deeply in love with and depended on to assist the recovery of my mountain bike accident drown herself repeatedly in grave depravity of reason I sadly had to evacuate myself from to maintain my sanity.
You see, my morals tell me that the pursuit of love builds the trust to enter into a life story through which you protect and promote the interests of the newly-formed team in the following multi-level order of cause and consequence.
Love Story –> Build Trust –> Life Story –> Share Assets And Liabilities
On the other hand, she suddenly proposed to get married while “living in the moment” and requested to become a beneficiary on a life insurance policy I currently do not have. A stance that made me doubt the integrity of the love story I thought we had. Doing this to cause and consequence:
Love Story –> Share Assets and Liabilities –> Life Story –> Build Trust
Or worse, if the love story wasn’t real and I was just a vehicle or a stepping-stone for her safety:
Share Assets and Liabilities –> Love Story –> Life Story –> Build Trust
The depravity of reason stemming from this confounding of cause and consequence, combined with debatable devotion and loyalty, I had to decline. I was also threatened with departure if I didn’t submit to the out-of-the-blue demand of getting married. I recognized the pattern from my first marriage.
I was too busy then, head down, building startups in Silicon Valley, to decline that “attractive” offer. It took me twenty years of marital devotion and a wonderful daughter (no regrets there) to get from under a rock that served the long of my then-partner more than me.
This time I will play my cards differently.
I Love Real Women
My point is not to tarnish women or any one woman specifically. On the contrary, I am concerned about and deeply empathize with the fragility and false representation of womanhood renowned clinical psychologists Esther Perel and Jordan Peterson talk about so eloquently.
Especially in the United States of America, a country proclaiming to be free and without a safety net, producing fear, nervousness, and depression of untold caliber. It is sad to witness the always-on smiles in the freest country in the world be so desperately enslaved by the lack of freedom to survive.
Desperate women then flock to Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Bikram yoga-style internet self-help gurus who mislead them by ignoring the development of self -in actuality- is a relativity theory, highly subject to and shaped by the skills they deploy in a relationship, uncorrelated to the infinite “wisdom” of isolation.
The proof of your character is in the pudding of a relationship. The consistent overcoming of relationship problems, yes, a struggle at times, shaping and improving its value.
Grow Together
I understand the urgency for women to look for a new lease on life. An urgency I would have responded more proactively to when preceded by genuine loyalty, unquestionable devotion, and authentic love.
The value of a relationship is in the beauty of the complementary differences between partners, more so than in the collusion of commonalities. But there is no redeeming value in a relationship when the hierarchy of confabulated cause and consequence, yielding the depravity above, deems one person’s priorities, timing, and interests more important than the other.
Lay It Down
The hierarchy of cause and consequence must be firmly established and communicated to build vibrant societies and flourishing relationships. By better sharing my expectations in relationships upfront, I reject the depravity that sneaks in under the name of love.
We must all evacuate from depravity to free ourselves by learning how to think and agree on the order and asymmetry of cause and consequence, for depravity ignored is depravity multiplied.
It is time to dust off the paradox of freedom.
