The Four Rules of Life

Definition leads to clarity.  Clarity leads to understanding, Understanding lead to wisdom.  Wisdom leads to good decision making.

 By Rich Kozlovich

Over the years I've read extensively, especially history and science fiction.  Science fiction writers see things differently than most people stimulating new directions of thought.  While I no longer read fiction I found as a young person science fiction triggered questions that molded the direction my thinking over the years.  As a result I tried to pay attention to things questioned, and the answers given, making observations, and gathering a list of rules, which I think are profound and provocative.  Two hundred of them actually.  

But there are a lot of rules for specific situations, such as the seven rules used to  promote junk science, all false narratives.  Many years ago Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D. noted there are seven steps to the unscientific process activists use to get products off the market and usually follow this pattern: 

1. Create a "scientific" study that predicts a public health disaster. 
2. Release the study to the media, before scientists can review it. 
3. Generate an intense emotional public reaction. 
4. Develop a government-enforced solution. 
5. Intimidate Congress into passing it into law.
6. Coerce manufacturers to stop making the product. 
7. Bully users to replace it, or obliterate it. 

This kind of claptrap has been going on for decades. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring made this "science" manipulation popular, however, the first real first test for creating these false scientific narratives was the the great cranberry scare of 1959, which led to the even worse promotion of junk science that caused ban on DDT.

Then there are, My Seven Rules of Geopolitics:

1. First Rule of Geopolitics: All geopolitics is about four factors, geographics, demographics, economics, and that most elusive factor of all, the happiness factor.  
   
2. Second Rule of Geopolitics:  Everything is about the basics.  You have to be able to see issues at their foundational root levels in order to understand and fix complex problems.
   
3. Third Rule of Geopolitics: History is everything since historical events lay the foundation for the social paradigms of nations, which have been in effect for centuries in most areas of the world. In short, culture is king. 
4. Fourth Rule of Geopolitics:  People are like nations, and will act in their own best interests, unless they don't.  
5. Fifth Rule of Geopolitics: Nothing is ever as it appears.  Look behind the curtain, there's always something hidden. 
6. Sixth Rule of Geopolitics:  The patterns of life keep repeating over and over again. 
   
7. Seventh Rule of Geopolitics:  Everyone lies.    
   

While some of these rules are listed in My Two Hundred, the fact is no matter how profound or provocative they may be, 200 hundred rules are a bit daunting for practical application, so I realized there were four foundational rules that simplify all of the Two Hundred, as well as all the rest, and they are:

1. People will always be people
2. The patterns of life keep repeating over and over again.   
3. Culture is king.
4. Everything is the basics.

But no list of rules will work if we don't read.  If we don't think.  If we don't pay attention to the consequences of people's actions.  If we don't challenge the conventional wisdom.   

In order to see the patterns of life, and know what people do and why, to understand the cultures were dealing with, and know and understand what basic things we need to know requires the willingness to put in the effort to achieve clarity.  That's the power behind any group of rules.  

De Omnibus Dubitandum is supposed to be the motto of science, "everything is to be questioned", but since science has now abandoned that in favor of grant money, I've made it my personal motto.  A motto that should be embraced by every thinking person on the planet.