Dyslexic Wisdom

Dyslexia was my handicap in my youth but once I overcame it through sheer hard work, dyslexia has become a gift to me.  Because, unlike so many others, I never actually ridded myself of it, I constantly see the opposite sides of everything I think about, and seeing this I see connections that others miss.  You see that's what my form of dyslexia is, a mind that must see addition and subtraction at the same time, or any other set of opposites, and thus must answer two questions for every one that is posed, but more importantly must see the two answers as part of the same thing.

Now I'm familiar with the common conclusions people jump to when I describe this, and no, I'm not saying I merely see what opposite sides of a cause have in common.  One wouldn't need a different mental wiring to see that.  What I see is the actual toggle, so to speak, or I could say the hinge the sides turn on, and their connection to that hinge is frequently quite enlightening.

Some opposites, like many philosophers have claimed through the millenia, need each other, but that's not true of all of them.  The Jedeo-Christian God for example has absolutely no need of the devil.  In fact they simply aren't opposites at all.  Other apparent opposites on the other hand are inseperable.  We human's are apt to mix these things up, and to our detrement.

Here are some proverbs, so to speak, that have grown out of my brain's unusual wiring.

1: A child can't really learn to share until they first know what it means to own something and not share it.
-- You can't share what isn't yours to share, and you also aren't really sharing something if you're being forced to.
-- The option not to share must be real, or their can never be a choice to share and thus can never be true sharing.
-- It's more important to teach a child ownership than sharing, if you must teach only one, since the latter is impossible without the former.
 

2: Show me a truly greedy man and I'll show you someone who doesn't understand ownership.
-- If you own something, you care about it and you want others to respect your property.  If you want others to respect your property you understand how others will want the same for their property.  While it's possible someone may be so self-centered that they don't see the relationship between respecting others' property and the respect they want for there own, this level of self-centeredness borders on being a sociopath.  Yes, it's that unlikely.  The more likely cause by far is they never came to see anything as actually being anyone's property, including their own.  They're greed is that of someone wanting to dominate a buffet.  They have an irrational insecurity, most likely the result of parenting that failed to teach them a sense of ownership, and so they strive irrationally to get things before others do.
-- The absolute best government policies for countering greed is to protect and respect property rights, nothing less.
 

3: You can't have non-violence or even life without violence.
-- Violence is an inescapable part of life.  It's how organisms sustain themselves.  Even photosynthesis involves a violent bombardment by the Sun of the Earth.  Instead of teaching a child non-violence only we should teach them the difference between appropriate and inappropriate uses of violence.  The anti-spanking movement is raising generations of people who simply can't cope with reality.  It's only through a massive co-enabling that these unfortunate victims of warped child-raising are able to avoid becoming quivering balls of disturbed confusion the first time they're confronted with a situation requiring violence.  And as for those who still become violent in sheer nature, they lack any guidance that might tend to limit the degree of of their sociopathic behavior.
-- Show a child that tends towards violence what appropriate violence is and you show them a path to being a functional part of society.  Show a child that doesn't tend towards violence the same thing and you prepare them for those inevitable moments in life that might otherwise destroy them.
-- There is nothing nurturing about teaching zero tolerance of violence.
 

4: The individualist will usually be less selfish than the collectivist.
-- If you don't fully appreciate the value of your own individual dignity, liberty, or aspirations then you'll ignore those things in the lives of others as well.  It is easy to convince yourself that the greater good just so happens to work in your favor as you proceed to be very selfish.  On the other hand it is relatively difficult to convince yourself that you are being less than selfish when the pursuit of your benefit runs over someone else's individual liberty or dignity.  That is, if you first appreciate and value your own liberty and dignity.
-- I think this is one of the most difficult of the proverbs to grasp.  It's just seems to make so much sense that if we emphasize groups over individuals, we are being unselfish.  We miss the logical subtlety that groups verses individuals is not the same as others verses self.  We miss that others are individuals just as we ourselves are, and thus there is no equivalent relationship to groups and individuals.  We only understand others by understanding ourselves.
-- Once one grasps this important distinction between groups and others one will also begin to see why social justice is such a wrong concept, and how much harm it does.
 

5: Humility leads to greater command of one's talents as well as command of one's immediate environment.
-- A humble person sees both what things can be done and which of those things will be most advantageous to do.  Over time humble people will be more effective in their endeavors than those who are not humble.
 

6: Humility can maximize confidence.
-- Knowing one's limits teaches the full extent of one's capabilities, and knowing that makes one confident in what they do.  To know if someone is humble, you need to get to know them. A humble person could come off as cocky because they will tend to be confident.