Becoming Sane: Part 2 - Early Lessons in Truth

I just read an article about how all mathematic proofs are “social compacts,” an agreement among a community. Our sanity and our strategic positions are also social compacts. The methods of strategy arise from how we orient ourselves in the world of others, improving our positions over time. In creating these positions, we learn our places in the world. Our identity starts with two major learning experiences: childhood and romance. Our sanity emerges from these early interactions.

We are meaning-seeking creatures. We seek meaning in order to survive. Even when we make our inevitable missteps, we seek the meaning of our mistakes. If we follow our instincts to seek the truth, we can correct our course. Childhood and romance where we first learn this. They are the realms of the deepest truths just as they are the realms of pure humor.

Humor is the key to the pleasures of childhood and romance, but it is also necessary for truth. Humor is truth dancing. Humor allows us to state truths that are too painful to face head on. Truth, humor, childhood, and romance are all the same thing, working in different ways. If we can laugh, we are seeing a larger truth. But aren’t childhood and romance the realms of fantasy more than truth? Fantasy, yes, but our fantasies can contain more truth than any fact.

Negotiation

We are what we practice. Our identity arises both in ourselves and others by what we do. Does what we do arise from within us, from our characters and our imaginations? Not at all. Our characters and imaginations arise from our emulations of what we see around us.

Our unique identity starts from the negotiations that allow us to play with others at about the age of three. We play only because we agree on what to play, on the roles we take, and on how to take turns. To play hide and seek, we must agree on who is to hide, where we can hide, how we seek and how to take turns. All play in voluntary. We play by consensus. Those who don’t learn this by the age of four are never quite sane.

Imagination

Our negotiations to play are our first lessons in strategy. Our childish minds must uncover shared missions. We envision the desires of others, but we model our visions on what we desire for ourselves. The “tit for tat” method is hard-wired into our brains. This seeing of others as a reflection of ourselves is the beginning of our search for identity, meaning, and sanity.