We have a natural drive towards it. And it’s how we can make uncertainty a home. But rationalism, scientism and the maleducation system suppress it and supplant it with semantic Fakehood. It is of the timeless way.
Ἦθος.
I’ve mentioned it, but I shan’t explain it. This missive ought to demonstrate, more than anything, how words fail most spectacularly at describing it. This is why, to your frustration, I keep using the Attic word ἦθος. It’s not to annoy you or be fanciful, although aggravating you into action and curiosity would come as a bonus. I don’t even use the transliteration ēthos (long sound “e”) because it alone constrains and diminishes.
4) “You are what you do.”
ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων
This is the Foundation and the Firmament.
— sᴛᴀʀᴛᴜᴘ ᴅᴀᴇᴍᴏɴ (@startupdaemon) April 18, 2018
It is much better to show you – if only glimpses at a time – ἦθος in context, experience and action. And an opportunity has presented itself.
In the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying Alex J. A. Cortes’s periscopes as part of my relaxation & contemplation. (I don’t pass up on a free supply of extra energy.) I’ve even tweeted direct quotes from him for authentic effect. But the one thing that made an impression over time was how frequently his rants touched on different aspects of ἦθος, as both notion and practice. Perhaps without realizing it, this one time he tried to describe it, to deliver a sense of it. And what an opportunity to show you ἦθος while it’s also being grasped at with the spoken word.
Why say that you’ll see ἦθος and not just get a faulty word-description? If you’ve followed Alex’s exploits online or off, you will have noticed that he is very extroverted, and says so himself. He is also probably better at speaking than the average person and perhaps ever-so-slightly more intelligent. You may have been led to believe that such “gifts” are just the outcome of another Jenetyx hair product. And you would be very, very wrong.
What follows is not a definition, as there isn’t one. There’s only “getting it” in authentic knowledge, through action. This is not about Alex being “correct” in what he says (he can’t be). I’m not quoting it as advice either, although there is use aplenty one can find. I surely take advantage myself. But I don’t give advice – your circumstances are yours.
Nor is this about masculinity or femininity. It’s not even so much about people in general. It’s about you more than anything.
To get beyond the literal words, think bigger. When you read and hear “movement”, sense direction, decision, deliberation. Sense that, at a higher level, one can move the world with stillness. Forget the semantics for unfettered power and understanding.
First read through to the end of this missive. Then enjoy the first few minutes of the periscope where Alex says all this (it’s definitely worth it to do both). Make no mistake – it’s his public persona – but let go of prejudice and expectation. Hear the tone of his voice, feel the direction of his body language, see the depth of his movement, experience the becoming.
Here we go.
For every person I’ve known, for everyone I’ve worked with, for everyone I’ve studied, for every case study, for every individual I’ve seen rise to the top of something, whether it be modern or historical, everyone has the same thing in common – they don’t stop.
And I don’t know that I can put that into a single quality: well, it’s dedication, or it’s persistence, or it’s responsibility, or it’s self-belief, or it’s mindset, or it’s confidence. It supersedes all those things. You can put all those umbrella qualities together and they all click with each other, they all are complementary, they all speak to the same, shall I say, transcendent universal principle that the way forward is the way to create. If you don’t stop moving, if you keep going, if you keep getting up, if everything about your way of being is that there is continuous action to you, you get what you want. You do. It doesn’t matter the domain, it doesn’t matter the subject, it doesn’t matter the field, it doesn’t matter the profession, it doesn’t matter what it is. It only matters that you stay moving, that there is some essence of movement about you. What is your practice? Movement. Progression? Movement. Evolution – is movement. Time goes forward. In a way, in a transcendent way, in such a way that you are aligning yourself with the way of the universe. The nature of the universe is forward. The nature of time is forward. If you want to work with that, if you want that to work for you, you have to BE that. You cannot stay still. You’ll die – you can’t.
Death is the only thing that stops.
Move.
That’s it.
Move.
That’s the “secret”.
Move.
If you move, it falls upon you that you should want to be better at moving. If you stay moving, it will come naturally to you that you want to wise yourself up, that you wanna get smarter, that you wanna refine the process, that you wanna learn systems. If you want to stay moving, you’re going to have to learn the principles that sustain that. If you want to stay moving within any given environment, you’re gonna have to study that environment. If you want to stay moving in the face of adversity, you’re gonna have to change the way you see adversity. Movement is the sub-structural quality of everything. Movement is time. So if you are that and that is your way of being, what stops you? Nothing. Only death. Only death.
And you get to pick and choose how you die. That’s why when you guys ask me the questions “I’m in a rut, how do I get out of it?” I have no idea. How do you wanna die? Seriously, though. How do you want to die?
Heraclitus put worlds more than this in five words.
πάντα ῥεῖ
ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων
More to come.
The Only Secret I’ve Learned in 29 Years https://t.co/rXjiaD4Qta
— Alexander J.A Cortes (@AJA_Cortes) April 5, 2018