the 13 precepts of erudite

The 13th card in the Major Arcana is Death, the most misunderstood in the deck. It is a card of change, of thresholds, of connective tissues, of liminality, of inevitability. Change is often just in trickles, but when history happens all at once, it seems as harrowing as Death. ERUDITE is a thing of in-betweenness. It is a product of a time when the World demands rebirth and metamorphosis. As terrifying as such confrontation can be, change is a cleansing and purifying force, inescapable and indestructible. The following 13 precepts form the overarching structure of our worldview, spanning the World, Culture, Aesthetics, the Individual Mind, and the Cosmic and Ethical domains. Click on each to display their 7 sub-precepts for further clarification.

1. The world is at the beginning of an Interregnum.

1. Interregnum is a time outside stable orders, dynasties, and paradigms;
2. And so we are stuck between moribund pasts and stillborn futures;
3. And so during an Interregnum, the past comes back to life in ways that inhibit our ability to imagine a way out, a way forward, keeping us stuck in chaos, unrest, and uncertainty;
4. And so we cannot stop looking over our shoulders, we hardly pay attention to the winding path ahead;
5. And so an Interregnum is felt before seen, swimming in our hearts and our guts before our minds;
6. Always in hindsight, such times are neat and tidy, yet they are anything but discrete. They rack those who live through them with dread and anxiety, as once invincible truths and institutions wither and die. Interregnum promises everything and nothing;
7. And so it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of this era, and we fetishize the catharsis of Calamity and Dystopia.

2. The dominant cultural mode is metamodernist.

1. Modernism was naïve and ideological, yet full of sincerity, hope, romanticism, and the potential for universal Truth;
2. Postmodernism was built around irony, nihilism, cynicism, relativism, deconstruction, and the rejection of grand Narratives;
3. Despite and because of the postmodernist mode, a renewed and forceful desire for progression and expression has arisen;
4. And so our culture once again yearns for transcendence, yet our vast exposure to knowledge of the World’s ills make a return to Modernism impossible;
5. And so the dominant cultural mode is metamodernist — an “informed naivety, a pragmatic idealism, a moderate fanaticism,” simultaneously sincere and ironic, empathetic and apathetic, hopelessly Romantic and utterly Empty;
6. Most of us would not actually burn the world down, but are simultaneously disgusted with the anti-politics of centrism;
7. And so we aspire to utopia, “as if such a thing were within our grasp.”

3. The substance of things is untangleable from their aesthetic.

1. Media technologies alter the objects of our thought, provide the tools with which we think and discuss those objects, and reconstitute the arena where thoughts and discussion take place;
2. An oral culture is situational, for knowledge cannot be untied from the embodied human from whom it arises;
3. The invention of writing, literacy, and printing allowed humans to detach information from lived experience and manipulate ideas as logical abstractions;
4. With television and social media, now the visual and auditory stimulation of a piece of information is arguably more important than the information itself;
5. And so this has created a culture that seeks entertainment everywhere, including in serious news and topics, and thus important things must either become pleasurable or else ignored;
6. In its worst state, visual media teaches that brevity is best, complexity is bad, nuance is unnecessary, and visual stimulation is a substitute for thought;
7. However, we seek to prove that the substance of a thing and the beauty of a thing need not rival one another, but can be complementary.

4. Attention and attitude are valuable possessions and inalienable freedoms.

1. In English, we use the verb “pay” for attention, and we pay attention to interesting things;
2. Yet it is the opposite: nothing in the Universe is interesting, but it is only our attention that suffuses the Universe and its objects with interest;
3. And so it is extremely valuable, and powerful forces seek to frack you for it;
4. For once you stop paying attention to something, it might as well cease to exist;
5. It is imperative that you use your attention for worthwhile ends, to the people and issues that need it most;
6. Attitude is the innermost and most sacrosanct of your freedoms, that gap between an external stimulus and your response to it;
7. While painful and pleasurable sensations are inevitable, suffering and joy are well within the control of a disciplined mind.

5. It is what you know, not how much you know, that is important.

1. In our time of information abundance, it is easy to mistake the possession of much knowledge with much wisdom;
2. And it is not the volume of one’s output, but the discipline over one’s speech that is necessary;
3. Knowledge nowadays is too often trivia, unmoored bits of information with no bearing on the present moment, thus powerless to change anything;
4. We are purposefully prevented from seeing the bigger picture;
5. Inversely, Context is knowledge that is continuous;
6. Context is empowering because it shapes present understanding and ability;
7. And so we must revive Context.

6. Psychoactive drugs are useful for perspective, empathy, and ego-dissolution, promoting communion with Unseen and Instinctual things.

1. We are inhibited by the narrow horizons, brutish needs, and selfish tendencies of the bodily form;
2. Compassion is born from experience in alternative perspectives, from seeing the World as a stranger might;
3. Psychoactive substances — MDMA, LSD, but most importantly Psilocybin — offer you radically different frames of mind and thus contextualize sober perspective;
4. Psychoactive substances can enhance our sensory, emotional, intuitive, and cerebral capabilities;
5. Psychoactive substances amplify neuroplasticity, and can permanently alter your view of the World and Others;
6. Psychoactive substances can force constructive confrontations with your past, plunge you fully into the present moment, and aid in contemplating your future;
7. Psychoactive substances make you realize your bodily form is simply on loan to you, that from soil you come and to soil you will return.

7. Your interiority and the vast exteriority of the Universe are inseparable.

1. Imagine perceiving everything, everywhere, all at once. Infinitely divisible, it is the utter loss of Context because there is only totality and NOTHING particular;
2. Imagine perceiving a singular, indivisible unit, a monad, an infinitesimally small sliver of the Cosmos. Isolated from absolutely ANYTHING else, it is utterly decontextualized;
3. Neither observation means anything to us, because meaning is derived from Context, its relation to other things;
4. And so our connection to one another, to ourselves, and to the Cosmos is shaped by our perception and pursuit of context;
5. Even if All This is not designed at all, we will never stop imbuing the Universe with architecture and meaning and rhapsody;
6. No matter whether you look out into the unfathomable night sky or down into the murk of your own mind, you are looking at the same thing;
7. Interface with the vast and the infinite provokes in us feelings of the Sublime, a pleasurable pain, a delightful terror that stretches our comprehension beyond its limits. Pursue the Sublime.

8. Humans are born relational, dependent, and vulnerable.

1. We are creatures of networks and tribes;
2. We come after and before others in a continuous chain of existence;
3. Thinking runs on language, and language is inherited and communal: no mind can be self-made;
4. For a solitary mind has no way of anchoring the meaning of its own thoughts, and so individuality depends on participation in a larger community;
5. We are born helpless and we will likely die helpless;
6. The stage of life that is independent and rational is a stage in a lifecycle that begins and ends in dependence and irrationality;
7. We must accept our mutual need to give and receive care within local communities.

9. The soul is made valuable through disciplined curiosity.

1. When you learn, watch, read, or consume, ask yourself: is this knowledge/spectacle worth knowing about?
2. Ask yourself: what are the forces trying to profit off my curiosity and why?
3. Curiosity pushes us to grow and learn, transforming the Unknown from something to be feared to something to be explored;
4. Yet it can be our greatest weakness, exploited by tyrants, profiteers, and fascists;
5. And so our curiosity must be ordered and disciplined;
6. Curiosity cannot be restless or greedy for the new and superficial;
7. It must be intentional and explicit, and dwell in its findings as a hermit crab does in a beautiful shell.

10. The soul retains its value through healthy autonomy.

1. We must always have the freedom to look inward;
2. We must always have the freedom to resist systemic conformity, to prioritize deep personal connections over social dogmas;
3. Yet autonomy does not mean isolation, nor extreme self-accommodation;
4. And so autonomy demands a rigorous self-examination not just of your beliefs, but your wants, asking who or what shaped them;
5. Do not abandon the path, but instead do the labor to clear its obstacles;
6. Do not shelter yourself from any all voices you did not choose to hear;
7. Exercise and refine your autonomy by thinking aloud in front of an audience of other thinkers who can verify and legitimize your reasoning.

11. Discernment, like erudition, is undeniable; yet it must entail conviction and risk.

1. Discernment is the act of grasping what is obscure, hidden, or fine-grained that the untrained mind might miss;
2. Discernment separates truth from falsehood, what is important from what is trivial;
3. We reject the use of unalterable characteristics (color, caste, or creed) to deny access to discernment;
4. And so anyone may engage in discernment, but that does not mean the bar is not high, art is not comfortable, or fashion is not easy;
5. Discernment, in this way, resembles an alpine trail, for the choice of scaling the mountain is free to anyone who chooses, but the slope is no less rugged;
6. Just as the alchemist takes great pains to transmute lead into gold, so too does the poet sacrifice much to turn suffering into art;
7. You need not abandon low things, but must always know why you love what you love and be able to defend your tastes to others.

12. Belief in humanity must be maintained even in systems designed to destroy it.

1. Tyranny depends on a population stripped of the social bonds that foster trust and communal belief;
2. An atomized populace with dismal expectations of fellow humanity prophesies their reality;
3. Belief in humanity is not a passive observation but a contribution to the outcome;
4. Optimism is born not out of blind faith but active and passionate participation in future-building;
5. Those with seemingly the least evidence for belief in humanity are the ones most filled with hope and conviction;
6. See and appreciate the messiness and mortality and disability and queerness and plurality of our species;
7. Believe in humanity, not despite, but because of how tiresome it can be.

13. A Renewed and Sacred Humanism must protect and cherish our cognition and creativity.

1. Remember that you are human, remember that you must live;
2. Resist the forces that undermine your dignity, pollute your memory, corrupt your perception, and subvert your agency;
3. Do not neglect, ignore, or be ashamed of the messy parts of being human;
4. Build futures that find something sacred in our abstract nakedness;
5. Understand your own multiplicity, your own connectivity;
6. Do not mire yourself in questions of eternal purpose, but experience life as intensely and consciously as possible;
7. Remember that you are human, remember that you must live.