Core precepts #

Gravity points in our thinking, behavior, and actions #

Core precepts are the primary beliefs of a person that are applied as a grounding step to any experience, whether quietly reading a book alone or dancing in a crowd. It’s their where-ness that is agnostic to actual, physical place — abstract viewpoints into sundry matters and potential trailheads for any new path.

They are more like gravitational pulls than outright, simply defined beliefs. They can be hard to suss out, and people have to do deep-dive thinking over a long period of time to get to them, and usually have to pay attention to behavior and the subtle internal patter of thinking.

They can be understood. It takes time, self-awareness, and brutal self honesty. Core precepts can be part of any agreement made with a group of people, including on cultural and social levels.

When cultures define them (e.g., justice for all) they help to shortcut people’s experiential agreement — but they can also be co-opted and mean something different in spirit than in word.

Look to any organized religion and the various iterations of interpretation, whether the spirit or the text has more credence, and how the behavior will still skew. Even though ‘love thy neighbor’ will be a stated core precept, the interpretation shifts. The practice of loving a neighbor can shift from concrete, to abstract, to a nice thing to believe until some asshole takes your parking space (they weren’t loving me, damn them!!).

Then there is narrative context. “Love thy neighbor” is still a stated principle of the Bible read and leveraged by the Westboro church. But it’s less important — a lesser priority — than heeding God’s word, which they’ve gone to the effort to interpret for us and provide very clear, simple edicts. Per that interpretation, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is defined.

Those who are not ‘right’ are not heeding God’s word, so they are not a neighbor. There’s no human there to love, so they hate. It’s simple, in their minds. It’s hierarchical, explicit, leaves no room for dissent, and considered anyone outside the definition as non-human and not worthy of God’s sight.

Like I mentioned, core precepts take both behavior and thought, self-awareness and brutal self honesty to suss out. Westboro is looking for reasons to dehumanize, and they’ll bend concepts and words to fit the real core precept. 

The same thing happened as the fascism rose in Europe before the second world war. Actually, in all the places fascism has risen; Europe isn't the only place, not by a long shot.

It happens in little ways all the time; ideas feel right, or at least better than the earlier interpretation. They get hyperbolized, and the meaning skews without changing the words. It’s the same underlying concept as The Funky I. 

A more nuanced example is in our judicial system, with our various interpretations according to text, spirit, constitutional, etc. The goal of these documents and cultural interpretation is to get everyone on the same page. From the outside looking it, law looks and smells like a core precept, writ large and with lots of agreement as to the final form. When it comes to interpretation, though, core precepts shift the underlying meaning of the language.

All the interpretations purport to adhere to “Justice for All.” Some see “all” as “all those who are in charge,” reading in their interpretations of what they believe the Founders meant. Some see “all” as “all.” The ones who focus on those 'in charge' are implicitly assuming a top-down information structure. The ones who focus on 'all' are assuming either bottom-up or network information structures.

The belief that binds statements and actions together is the core precept, not the acknowledgement of the words being used. When the doing and the stated precept differ, the doing has more weight; the person has decontextualize the action from the accepted information architecture, using a variation of the Funky I.

The goal of core precepts is not in decontextualization, but in contextualizing most actions and behavior against a backdrop of central theories of existence.

Some people could focus on method or process, some on following provided frameworks and ideas. Some people might get it down to a few, some might have a handful or a bursting armload that they can barely make sense of. The possibilities are as vast as people. 

Look for gravity points — in ideas, in methodologies, in support, in actions, in words.

Everything is fair game, anything is possible.