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Something Deeperism: The Way Forward

Something Deeperism: The Way Forward

Note to editorial team:
You need to explain the error of blind faith and blind skepticism and how Something Deeperism avoids both errors (though not all self-supposed Something Deeperists do Something Deeperism as well as some self-supposed Non-Something Deeperists), and then you need to relate those errors and that solution to groups, governments, and etc.
There’s probably other things you need to do to make this essay useful.

[Editors’ Note: OK, another longish essay on Something Deeperism. So we’ve taken the bottom and put it at the top, giving readers the option of satisfying themselves on less detailed outline:]

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the individual? Even without all our above [now below] sketches, they are this simple rule to which any philosopher or believer can readily assent: The only hope for human beings is to put a constant full-being (ideas, feelings, and whatever else is within the conscious moment all working meaningfully together) engagement with the joy within which alone knows that and how human life truly Matters ahead of all our ideas and feelings about life’s meaning: The only hope is to put such an engagement ahead of our ideas and feelings about what Matters, or how nothing Matters, or how we don’t know if anything Matters or Not. Because only through that engagement can we humans find a path that is meaningful/interesting/followable/believable/standable to us.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the group?
OK!
I can answer that.
We won’t get everyone to agree that Something Deeperism is an awesome rule of thumb for thought and action–a nice sketch of a workable worldview, which of course will never be perfect and which only has meaning to the degree it points us towards fully knowing and living the gentle joy that passes but does not completely blow off human understanding. Different people have different notions, and we get super attached to them sometimes, and whatever.
But we should be able to eke out this minimal concession:
Any philosophy or religion will only be meaningful/livable to human beings to the degree that philosophy or religion respects, encourages, and fosters the following:

1) Awareness, clarity, honesty in thought (to the degree one fails in these goals, one’s thought confuses and/or mistrusts itself: you dissolve into a fog of equally-believable, and thus equally-meaningless possibilities; and within this fog the old hopes and fears clamor to the forefront, take over the ship and sink it like a pack of wild ultimately-directionless drives would have to).

2) A belief that other human beings are all fundamentally like we are, and that we can communicate meaningfully to ourselves and with other human beings, and that what we say and do actually matters; that is to say: we are all in this together and must treat ourselves and everyone else with respect and kindness (to the degree one fails to think, feel, and act in accordance with the sense-of-things here sketched [again: imperfectly, but not therefore necessarily inadequately], one’s focus turns away from one’s own conscious moment (which has become meaningless/boring/hopeless to it); and again into the chaos arising from this lack of meaningful conscious engagement, slip the demondogs of push-away/pull-towards, and the ship is again overrun by ultimate-directionlessness and sunk [maybe not irretrievably: indeed, the sooner you see water crashing in all around, the better!]).

3) A commitment to working to improve honesty, efficiency, decency/justice/kindness (all smushed together to highlight how decency requires justice and neither work for anyone unless everything is undergirded by kindness: not “decency” as in “burn sinner burn!” and not “justice” as in “revenge”, but “decency” as “fostering a place where we are given the space to explore in life with open-hearts and -minds” and “justice” as in “equal treatment under the law within a constant push for policies and procedures that help everyone find and live the Light in a way that is meaningful to them and helpful to all”) in private and public groups (including government). Just as an individual’s thought is more meaningful to that individual’s ideas and feelings and her thought-as-a-whole to the degree he thinks aware, clear … kind, a group’s thought is more meaningful to the individuals within the group and the group-as-a-whole to the degree that group demands, pursues, and improves honesty, efficiency, and the kind of fair play that allows everyone to participate in building a more open, caring, wise, helpful, uncorrupt government. Both mindless flag-waving and pouty-quitting go too far: they cause us to look away from what our government is up to and prevent us from doing our fundamental duty as citizens: working together to act as a final check on corruption and madness in government.

Addendum: What is corruption? What is madness? They’re both, like all human things, things of degrees.

The more corrupt a human conscious moment, group of humans, or government is, the easier it is for evil (dishonesty, cruelty, vanity, meanness, greed, pettyiness, egotism: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within an individual, group, and/or government/political-entity) to rule, which victory allows evil to thus push the whole (individual, … government/political-entity) towards its foolish, self-defeating (because corruption = wisdom is not steering = that within which deserves to rule our thoughts and actions is losing control) ends; the less corrupt xyz human-entity is, the easier it is for goodness (honesty, kindness, selflessness, win-win, shared joy, Love: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within xyz human-entity) to rule, which victory allows goodness to push the whole towards better, more coherent, internally-meaningful and spiritually/emotionally/intellectually/actionably acceptable.

Insanity has the same basic effect: making evil win and goodness lose; but whereas corruption seeks confusion in order to mask its evil intentions and ruthlessly selfish and pathetically boring/limited/unimaginative worldview; madness (whether organic or to some appreciable degree caused by corruption’s self-undermining of a human-entity) more starts with chaos and flails about less purposely, perhaps even being on occasion nudged in a better direction by a better impulse, though ultimately–being without adequate levels of clear self-aware conscious engagement–tends like corruption to the worse and worse and worse worse worse.

The above writing was found painstakingkly etched into the glossy marine-gray paint job of a well-kept toilet stall’s door by an earnest citizen, who duly reported the finding to the proper authorities at WAP’s Department of Unexpected Spiritual Reflections. The above transcript was created by Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson, in cooperation with the reigning WAP archivist, Buddy McBusy Boddy.

Original Text begins here:

Too long has humankind, blinded by dreams of safest landings and grand victories, allowed itself to fracture and spin, cutting itself like a mad dog attacking itself: now viciously gnawing off its own legs; now frantically ramming its own eye onto a spike; now desperately bashing and scraping its own head into sharp coral, now finding a piece of broken glass along which to run its very own wolfy hide.

Too long.

The mistakes are many, but they reduce to one basic error: a crisis of identity. We think we are distinct from one another, that our wishlists conflict, that some humans are allies and others are enemies. This is not the path of wisdom. It is not the way forward. We’ve gotten away with it until now, blundering along, with our left eye taking advantage of our right, our pinky extracting a terrible revenge on our index finger: with Tribal Association A slaughtering Tribal Association B, until, after a great deal of burning blood and lonely boredom, the two associations merge into Tribal Association C, which in turn pats itself on its broad back and soon settles upon Tribal Association D to punish for crimes real and/or imagined. The crimes will be x degree real and x degree imagined, but the associations are always imagined. There is only one soul and we are all children of that one Light. To the degree we fail to Know (be “hip to”) and move in accordance with (be “cool”) that Light, we hurt ourself, we waste waste our time, we miss out on wonderful opportunities to explore, play, and dance as Light reflected through mind/matter.

I’ve been here now on this lonely overlooking outcrop a long lonely time. I’ve watched our armies rally, stand, fall, scatter, form again. I’ve felt the heart clench, open, quibble, falter, move, die, rise again.

I’m turning now to go back home. There’s a little pool beneath a tall thin waterfall and surrounded by trees, grasses, grey stones. I can go there, slip into the cool shadowy waters, and emerge on the other side of the waterfall. What I’ll find there, only The God knows, but that I must head there now, I’ve always known.

In purpling evening light, dark sky descending on soft blue clarity, a gentle coolness takes the air.

But, people, yes, people. People and their structures of mind and matter. People. What do I say to people?

Something Deeperism is nothing new, nor is it complicated, esoteric, only for the enlightened few.

Something Deeperism is simply the notion that:

1. YES!, there is a Reality that we can and should follow, and YES, the way to follow that Reality is by following our inborn rules for thinking and acting in a way that is meaningful to us: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, decent, kind, selfless; with open-heart and -mind seeking to better and better Know that and in what way it really is True that loving kindness is the Way–that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together.

&

2. NO!, our feelings, ideas, words, and deeds cannot understand/follow/believe-in that Reality in a literal, 1:1, definitive, or otherwise perfect way.

Something Deeperism’s goal is adequate poetic insight into the Light within that alone knows how we should truly think, feel, act, live.

Think of a poem about a walk along the creek on a carefree youthful afternoon.
Does the poem perfectly recreate the author’s experience and sense-of-the-moment within even the most attentive reader? No. But is it therefore fair to say that no communication of the gist of conscious moment A experienced by human-being M is meaningfully reexamined by A in M in the poem, and then, via the reading of the poem by conscious moment B in human-being N, meaningfully communicated to B in N? No. Indeed, a good poem read by a sympathetic and attentive reader can in many cases communicate conscious experiences meaningfully both within the author and between the author and her reader.

Think of thinking about feelings in terms of ideas.
Feelings are in a sense wider, deeper, and vaguer than ideas. But with awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, competence, and an open heart and mind, a human being can meaningfully think about her feelings in terms of ideas, and can even speak meaningfully of her feelings with other human beings.

Recall quickly the problem plaguing human ideas and feelings: they can always be wrong. Philosophers have long noted that if all we have are ideas and feelings, we can have no firm foundation for knowledge: ideas/feelings cannot stand outside of their interplay and assess themselves against some irrefutable standard of Truth. Even if God seized your heart and told you that xyz dogmas is True so forcefully and clearly that you Knew it to be True and were not wrong and Knew you were not wrong–still, in the next moment there would be the matter of interpreting that dogma in terms of your human ideas and feelings, which would still be liable to both general error (fundamentally misunderstanding how they relate to Reality) and specific errors (getting the gist of Reality and their relationship to It correct, but still biffing xyz specific interpretation of what Reality in xyz specific moment bids them to do). There’s always this gap between ideas (ie: stories-about) and feelings (ie: reactions-to) and that which they are thinking and feeling about; and if what they are considering is Reality (what is really going on, as opposed to ideas and feelings about what is really going on), for all they know a miss is as good as a mile. Not only that, but we all know first hand the conniving treachery of our own ideas and feelings: how willfully they confuse their own little hopes and fears, lusts and lurches for !THE TRUTH!

Now consider the following hypothetical scenario:
Shining through everything, and thus shining through each human conscious moment is a Light (aka: Truth, God, etc: we’re pointing imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately towards what is prior to language; ie: we’re speaking poetically, but not therefore necessarily in a way that cannot fit meaningfully into an intellectual conversation) that is simultaneously True Knowledge and Absolute Reality, and thus has no gap wherein It might mistake Itself, and therefore no chance of error nor room for self-doubt.
As a human’s ideas and feelings take place inside the same conscious space as that Light, they can relate to It meaningfully. The Light is wider and deeper than they are; and It does not share their capability for error or penchant for self-deception; therefore, ideas and feelings will not be able literally/definitively/1:1 understand/follow/believe the Light, and to the degree they pretend they can, what they actually do is mislabel themselves for the Light, which of course causes no end of trouble. However, note, while we’re here anyway, that while mislabeling the Light causes all kinds of horrible oversteps, pretending that there is no Light and it doesn’t matter how one feels and thinks or what one does, also amounts to a grave and oft extremely destructive mislabeling of the true situation. Assuming, as we currently are, that there really is a Light and that It alone has the Goodness and Wisdom to adequately guide our ideas, feelings, words, and deeds.
We know how well we are following the Light by Its fruits, which are also Its path: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent thinking and feeling centered around the push to better understand and live the Light (not so much that idea as the inner sense of things to which it imperfectly though not therefore necessarily inadequately points), with this seeking and living guardrailed by our inner knowledge that if we are not respectful, kind, and deeply aware of other human beings–if we do not love the Light (aka: God / the Truth / Buddha Nature / etc: again: this is prior to our ideas and feelings: they will not reach It literally/definitively) with all our heart and soul and mind and our neighbors as ourselves, then we are full of shit, and we need to stop, drop all our nonsense egotripping, and start over again, pushing out from within, pushing for the Light within ourselves and within every other living creature.

You see? It could work. And if that above scenario is not True, nothing can work. Because if there’s no Truth or we cannot relate meaningfully to It or we don’t, then our ideas and feelings are free to twist and turn self-servingly, and, despite heroic speeches to the contrary, they will and they do. And also because if the Truth is supposed to be literally/definitively grasped by human beings, the most fundamental Should of our lives is incomprehensible to our ideas and feelings, which we must rely on to relate meaningfully to our lives.

[Note that you don’t have to believe in the Truth to follow It adequately; and that believing in It does not necessarily mean you will follow It adequately. We are pointing with language towards what is prior to language, so a reader might disagree with our poetry but still jive with the underlying poem. The point of this essay is not to demand uniformity of belief, but just to point towards a gist where we can meet and meaningfully grow together: Loving Kindness is the Way (to attempt a broader, less theophilosophical poetry).]

If the above sketch is correct, the way forward is constant spiritual, emotional, intellectual, moral and existential seeking, attempting, reexamining, reevaluating, refining–always in the spirit of selfless joy and humble diligence. You are never 100% right or 100% wrong, but can be much more heading towards right or much more heading towards wrong, and the task is to keep working to head in the right direction–a task which has as a fundamental component both constant spiritual effort and constant awareness of the tendency of ideas and feelings to trick one into taking them more seriously than the Light within which they are supposed to be translating as best they can, but which they can never perfectly translate.

If the Truth is either nonexistent or completely unknown, there is no way forward. Thinkers can build all the fancy theories about creating meaning out of meaningfulness that they want to: such theories don’t really make sense to human hearts and minds and are therefore not livable philosophies. I mean, sure, since most people don’t really pay all that much attention to their own stated philosophies and religious convictions, one might very well put together a workable life based on such a philosophy. But the point of this essay is to point us towards a more accurate understanding of how human thought/feeling works, what it needs to be meaningful to itself (and thus able to follow its own thinking/feeling to its own conclusions), and how it could realistically hope to find and progress in that meaningfulness. Human goodness and wisdom are always things of degrees: we’ll never get them perfect, but a more careful description of where we find ourselves (ie: how our thought works, what motivates us, what possibilities we find within ourselves) is helpful in the same way stopping and looking around you is a good tool for getting less lost. That’s what this essay is for. Not to get all huffy about how you have to think and feel. But to think and feel with you, with all of us–we band of brothers, we happy sisters, we lucky genderless, raceless, nationless, teamless soul-flow.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the individual? Even without all our above sketches, they are this simple rule to which any philosopher or believer can readily assent: The only hope for human beings is to put a constant full-being (ideas, feelings, and whatever else is within the conscious moment all working meaningfully together) engagement with the joy within which alone knows that and how human life truly Matters ahead of all our ideas and feelings: The only hope is to put such an engagement ahead of our ideas and feelings about what Matters, or how nothing Matters, or how we don’t know if anything Matters or Not. Because only through that engagement can we humans find a path that is meaningful/interesting/followable/believable/standable to us.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the group?
OK!
I can answer that.
We won’t get everyone to agree that Something Deeperism is an awesome rule of thumb for thought and action–a nice sketch of a workable worldview, which of course will never be perfect and which only has meaning to the degree it points us towards fully knowing and living the gentle joy that passes but does not completely blow off human understanding. Different people have different notions, and we get super attached to them sometimes, and whatever.
But we should be able to eke out this minimal concession:
Any philosophy or religion will only be meaningful/livable to human beings to the degree that philosophy or religion respects, encourages, and fosters the following:

1) Awareness, clarity, honesty in thought (to the degree one fails in these goals, one’s thought confuses and/or mistrusts itself: you dissolve into a fog of equally-believable, and thus equally-meaningless possibilities; and within this fog the old hopes and fears clamor to the forefront, take over the ship and sink it like a pack of wild ultimately-directionless drives would have to).

2) A belief that other human beings are all fundamentally like we are, and that we can communicate meaningfully to ourselves and with other human beings, and that what we say and do actually matters; that is to say: we are all in this together and must treat ourselves and everyone else with respect and kindness (to the degree one fails to think, feel, and act in accordance with the sense-of-things here sketched [again: imperfectly, but not therefore necessarily inadequately], one’s focus turns away from one’s own conscious moment (which has become meaningless/boring/hopeless to it); and again into the chaos arising from this lack of meaningful conscious engagement, slip the demondogs of push-away/pull-towards, and the ship is again overrun by ultimate-directionlessness and sunk [maybe not irretrievably: indeed, the sooner you see water crashing in all around, the better!]).

3) A commitment to working to improve honesty, efficiency, decency/justice/kindness (all smushed together to highlight how decency requires justice and neither work for anyone unless everything is undergirded by kindness: not “decency” as in “burn sinner burn!” and not “justice” as in “revenge”, but “decency” as “fostering a place where we are given the space to explore in life with open-hearts and -minds” and “justice” as in “equal treatment under the law within a constant push for policies and procedures that help everyone find and live the Light in a way that is meaningful to them and helpful to all”) in private and public groups (including government). Just as an individual’s thought is more meaningful to that individual’s ideas and feelings and her thought-as-a-whole to the degree he thinks aware, clear … kind, a group’s thought is more meaningful to the individuals within the group and the group-as-a-whole to the degree that group demands, pursues, and improves honesty, efficiency, and the kind of fair play that allows everyone to participate in building a more open, caring, wise, helpful, uncorrupt government. Both mindless flag-waving and pouty-quitting go too far: they cause us to look away from what our government is up to and prevent us from doing our fundamental duty as citizens: working together to act as a final check on corruption and madness in government.

Addendum: What is corruption? What is madness? They’re both, like all human things, things of degrees.

The more corrupt a human conscious moment, group of humans, or government is, the easier it is for evil (dishonesty, cruelty, vanity, meanness, greed, pettyiness, egotism: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within an individual, group, and/or government/political-entity) to rule, which victory allows evil to thus push the whole (individual, … government/political-entity) towards its foolish, self-defeating (because corruption = wisdom is not steering = that within which deserves to rule our thoughts and actions is losing control) ends; the less corrupt xyz human-entity is, the easier it is for goodness (honesty, kindness, selflessness, win-win, shared joy, Love: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within xyz human-entity) to rule, which victory allows goodness to push the whole towards better, more coherent, internally-meaningful and spiritually/emotionally/intellectually/actionably acceptable.

Insanity has the same basic effect: making evil win and goodness lose; but whereas corruption seeks confusion in order to mask its evil intentions and ruthlessly selfish and pathetically boring/limited/unimaginative worldview; madness (whether organic or to some appreciable degree caused by corruption’s self-undermining of a human-entity) more starts with chaos and flails about less purposely, perhaps even being on occasion nudged in a better direction by a better impulse, though ultimately–being without adequate levels of clear self-aware conscious engagement–tends like corruption to the worse and worse and worse worse worse.

The above writing was found painstakingkly etched into the glossy marine-gray paint job of a well-kept toilet stall’s door by an earnest citizen, who duly reported the finding to the proper authorities at WAP’s Department of Unexpected Spiritual Reflections. The above transcript was created by Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson, in cooperation with the reigning WAP archivist, Buddy McBusy Boddy.

Gender Non-Specific: Solved!

Gender Non-Specific: Solved!

Have you ever been to a get together, a function, an big-city event, whathaveyou–and someone hands you a name tag and a marker, explaining that you ought to indicate your name and your preferred pronouns? It can happen to anyone nowadays.

If your in your thirties or above, your third grade brain is most likely baffled. “What pronoun could there be but the one I’ve always used?”, it baffles. Of course, your larger mind knows about how some people don’t feel adequately served by either “he” or “she” and so want another option, which most likely is “they”, and, since here’s a fight not worth even contemplating, you shrug and write down your name and the pronoun you’re using these days.

It’s fine. Whatever, move on.

But at the same time, no one is a plural. 

Ask around and you’ll find that “they”, “them”, and “their” are just used for want of a better option. 

OK, well, it’s up to us. We can write whatever we want on the nametags. We’re preferring whatever pronouns we want to. So …

Why not have some fun with it?

And: look: no one’s a plural.

If the problem is the evolution of the language, let’s rewind it and reevolve it. Old English has a gender neutral case. And since no one’s spoken Old English in like ten thousand years, whatever association with thingness that case might have is no longer around: no associations exist in our modern minds with the vocab and grammar of Old English.

Accordingly, ladies, gentlemen, and esteemed nehads (“nay hades” = something like “no genders” in Old English, I think), I present to you the gender nonspecifics:

Nominative and accusative: hit

Genitive / Dative: his / him

Plural: hīe (accusative) / heora (genitive) / him (accusative)

OK! I see that. Turns out the singular genitive and dative and the plural accusative are all identical with the current masculine forms of those case. And the nominative and accusative case are pretty close to “it”, which we’d wanted to avoid.

So …

We tweak it. Who’s to say how that aspect of the language would have evolved since the eleventh century?

Nominative and accusative: het

Genitive / Dative: hes / hem

Plural: hīe (accusative) / heora (genitive) / hem (accusative)

Or for plural, we can just stick to they, their, and them. Let’s do that.

Examples: Instead of that boy or that girl, we say that nehad

Examples: Instead of She went to the store, we say Het went to the store.

Examples: Instead of The Truth occurred to her, we say The Truth occurred to het.

Examples: Instead of I gave it to her, we say I gave it to hem.

Examples: And we don’t need to change “They went to the corner store.”

There we go! 

It’s perfect. It is singular like people really are, without forcing one to identify with a specific gender, which is too tight a squeeze for some people.

I’ve done it!

Imagine what I could accomplish sober!

Tim Tom Trombone, a man from before / a good sport now

A Concerned Afterward:

Once again, Mr Trombone has blown town; he has slid out of sight; whatever pun you choose: he’s not here anymore, once more leaving us more careful thinkers to mop up his mess.

Three major errors leap to mind:

  1. In English, “it” is identical in nominative, accusative, and dative cases; but both “he” and “she” change in the accusative/dative case (“him”; “her”). Accordingly, “het” should become “hem” in both the accusative and dative cases (as opposed to remaining “het” in the accusative and changing to “hem” only in the dative–as Mr Trombone’s slapdash would have it).
  2. “nehad” is unnecessarily left with an unphonetic spelling. If we’re reevolving the language, why not make it easy to read? Thus: “neyhayd” to capture the long vowel sounds without losing the archaic luster of an Old-English loan-word.
  3. “neyhayd” or “no gender”, should replace not boy/girl, but man/woman.  As the Old English diminutive suffix “oc / uc” evolved into “ock” (with the original sense still preserved in “hillock”), the only logical course is to replace “boy/girl” with “neyhaydock”. 

Here, then, is our improved name tag:

Hello, my name is Puddintane.
My gender preference is neyhayd.
My preferred pronouns are:
Nominative: het / Accusative: hem / Dative: hem / Genitive: hes
Plurals: they / them / their.

Perhaps two name tags will be needed.

Some will argue that since many people lack a solid grasp of the theory and practice of grammar, the above conventions are too confusing. But such arguments are clearly madness, and their supporters either crazed or (what’s worse) depraved: One may debate the relative importance of adding a gender nonspecific singular pronoun to the language, but surely none will question the usefulness of increasing grammatical awareness throughout the English-speaking world.

Signed: Society of Concerned Linguistics, Trombone Watchdog Chapter, “40 PHDs trying to keep one wily Mr in check!” 

A Something Deeperist Writes To A Different-Ist, Trying to be friends

A Something Deeperist Writes To A Different-Ist, Trying to be friends

You asked what I believe.

Well,

I believe there’s more to this life than atoms, void, animal impulses and chance. I think there’s a Light that is the Truth shining through each conscious moment and we can and should follow our inborn push towards that Light and the awareness, honesty, respectful kindness and joyful sharing that the Light demands of us. In this way, we can get better and better and understanding and following the Light, at becoming Light in the world. However, the Light is prior to ideas and feelings, so we cannot have literal/direct/definitive insight into the Truth. We need to keep seeking as we keep working to live the Truth we’ve discovered. This operation should be safeguarded by the traditional mechanisms of religion: humility, selflessness, honest reflection and self-critique, personal decency, compassion, a community of fellow believers.

The impulse towards religious faith is good but goes too far when it puts ideas and feelings about why life matters ahead of engagement with the inner Light that alone knows how and why life matters. The impulse towards skepticism is good but goes too far when it puts the need to avoid intellectual and/or emotional errors ahead of the engagement with the Light within that alone knows that and why and how accuracy matters.

Voila what I believe! How much progress I’ve made down the path is another question.

I’m a Something Deeperist. I made up that name and precised-up the ideas, but it is basically the tradition I was raised in. We were raised Christian, but with the understanding that other religious traditions can also point towards the Truth. My grandfather, though an American Baptist minister, was a universal salvationist and my mom’s theology is also liberal. My father was raised fundamentalist Christian, but changed course as a young man and reads a lot of Sufiism and writings from other mystical traditions.

Maybe our spiritual notions are at a bit of an impasse. I mean, from my perspective, none of us really quite understand or care about our own dogmas–since they are just ideas and feelings, and, though ideas and feelings are important and necessary tools for humans to navigate life, they don’t quite make any sense to any of us–. Therefore, I don’t worry too much about what people think they believe as long as they forgive me my own human-sized delusions on that front and agree that the main thing is that within us all that knows that and how life matters, and that that inner something demands aware honest thinking and feeling and competent helpful selfless joyful communal living. Still, I’m not to be dissuaded from my general view of things and I understand if you think my notions are incompatible with yours. Also, I am aware of the gap between my beliefs and my wisdom. I think it is better to aim beyond your current wisdom-level than to avoid hypocrisy at all costs; but I still think I am a little too far from wise and don’t fault you for agreeing.

Anyway, that’s my impromptu essay.

Political Something Deeperism

Political Something Deeperism

As a private theophilosophical position, Something Deeperism suggests an individual work to get more and more insight into that and how the undoubtables are True.

With “undoubtables” I mean those beliefs and values without which human thought cannot make sense to itself:

we should think and act aware and clear (to the degree we don’t abide by these principles, we turn our thoughts to mush, and lose control over them);

we should be honest with ourselves and think logically and make progress towards our inner sense of “more preferable” (to the degree we don’t abide by these principles, we have no system for choosing one idea or action over another that makes any sense to us; we turn our thoughts to mush and lose control over them);

what we say and do actually matters, and other people are essentially like us and also matter, and we should all treat each other with kindness, respect, and mutual appreciation (to the degree we don’t believe in and abide by these principles, our life has no meaning we can believe in, understand, care about, or even stand; our feelings and thus our thoughts turn to mush and we lose control over them).

To these, you could arguably also add communication and Truth:
If our ideas and feelings cannot meaningfully communicate with one another, and/or there is no Truth within our conscious experience able to tell our ideas and feelings what is actually going on, what actually matters, and what is actually preferable; then how can we meaningfully steer our own thoughts and actions in a way that actually means anything to us?
And if we cannot communicate meaningfully with other human beings, who can stand the loneliness? And what meaning can we make out of everything we know–the bulk of which came from interactions with other human beings that we thought involved communication.

Naturally, just because a belief or value is undoubtable (ie: to the degree you doubt it, you doubt your own thought’s meaningfulness), doesn’t mean it is True; and just because you assent to a belief or value, doesn’t mean you know that it is true or True or understand what it means.

For this reason, Something Deeperism does not request blind faith in the undoubtables, but requires rather that one keep working to better and better understand that they are True and how they are True. Human thought is ideas, feelings, and etc all working together. The way forward is to assume a Truth shining through one’s conscious moment that one’s ideas and feelings can relate meaningfully, though of course not literally/definitively/1:1 to (the Truth is what is actually the case; not ideas and feelings about what is actually the case); and then to constantly work to discover, understand, accept, follow that Truth.

How to know how well one’s attaining that never-ending goal (never-ending because there will always be a mismatch between the Truth and our ideas and feelings about the Truth, and thus always some estimating/fudging/revising required)? Attached to the seed of wisdom within (the push towards awareness, clarity, honesty, decency, competency, loving kindness, shared joy), is knowledge of guardrails: “am I putting my lusts, greeds, vanities, fears ahead of treating others with respect and kindness? To the degree I answer ‘yes’, I’m going the wrong way”; “am I mean, am I cruel, do I get off on watching others suffers? To the degree I do, I’m going the wrong”; “am I doing this because it satisfies my greeds and/or ego; or am I doing it to help another person?”–things like that.

Something Deeperism is very compatible with the religious life. It is a philosophical argument for heading into a spiritual path and for keeping your spiritual path focused the Light that tells us we are all in this together and must be respectful and kind to ourselves and one another, the Light that alone knows that and how our life is meaningful: to keep fighting against our tendency to make Gods out of ideas and feelings: be they simple gimme-gimmes, or deeply-felt narratives about why our life is meaningful.

Something Deeperism seeks to keep dogmatism and skepticism in their proper places: in service of an ever-growing insight into that and in what way the undoubtables are actually True. Because that is the only path that allows for coherent thoughts and actions. Therefore, when thought-tools like dogmatism or skepticism are used in a way that undermines that path, they undermine their only possible meaningful purpose.

But what about for groups? What about for a political theory? Must we convince everyone of the preeminence of Something Deeperism before we set out a framework for shared government?

No! All we need to do is to make this point: whatever your belief system is, to the degree it is meaningful to yourself or anyone, it refuses to compromise on those values without which human thought is meaningless to itself (awareness, clarity, honesty-with-oneself, competency, kindness, shared joy, etc); and it also refuses to compromise on those values without which coherent public discussions and actions are impossible: accuracy, competency, honesty, and clarity in public debate; anti-corruption in politics and business.

People often agree to those values, but then let themselves and others set them aside in the name of some justifiable ends, or because they claim their opponents can’t or won’t abide by them, or simply because “you gotta be realistic”. Naturally, life is not perfectly clear-cut; however, the fate of all of us and the world depends upon how we humans manage ourselves; and while we don’t know everything and don’t share all the same beliefs, we should all be able to agree that to the degree a human is on the right track, that human shares certain basic values (obvious things like awareness, clarity, honesty, open-hearted/mindedness, decency, loving kindness; an honest search for accuracy, for competency, for what’s best for everyone; etc), and so it behooves us to keep working to at least protect those basic values that we do all share and that we can therefore all get on board with, and without which none of us can either understand our private lives or public discourses.

The more corrupt an individual or a state is, the easier it is for low impulses (greeds, lusts, vanities, lazinesses, delusions, cruelties, etc) to indulge their cravings and rule the moment, and the harder it is for high impulses (the ones we’ve been advocating for throughout this essay) to stand up for what is right and rule the moment. We want to always work to push against corruption in ourselves and in our state.

Ideas and feelings often tempt us; they want to count as Gods; and so they often fool us into supposing we are behaving well, or at least well-enough, when deep within we know we are heading down the wrong path. That is corruption in an individual. We can push against it by pursuing the basic spiritual values with an understanding that human insight into the Truth is an ongoing process of better and better organizing ideas and feelings around the Light within, and so requires constant effort and refinement.

But what about in the public sphere? How do we push back on the corruptions within the state? It seems like the starting point is to admit that they are a more fundamental issue than our personal political agendas because they create the framework within which our personal political agendas can be fairly tried. And we should only want our personal political agendas to be pursued if they are actually superior, and we should know that we cannot have successful long-term policies without building consensus. Therefore, we should all demand clear, honest, non-corrupt governing from everyone–not just those whose policies we disagree with. This is correct; but would it even be enough if everyone agreed to it? Most everyone is willing to nod at it, and that clearly isn’t enough. I don’t know what to do.

Here’s something: Recall that personal Something Deeperism has two main tenets: moral relativism is a hopeless slip-and-slide so you need to accept some basic spiritual values–the ones without which you cannot understand, believe-in, or care about your own thoughts and actions; however, blind faith just causes you to mindlessly clutch ideas you don’t understand, which also causes you to lose internal-meaning and traction within your own thoughts and actions. If we apply the same principles to political Something Deeperism, we’d have the demand for protecting our shared spiritual values (already made), but we’d also have the demand that we better understand and follow them, this time as a group. That would mean that part of what we’d discuss in public discourse would be “what is awareness, accuracy, honesty, decency, kindness? How to know they actually matter? How to know when we’re adequately aware, accurate, … ?”

Can we have that conversation in a productive way if some of us are atheists, some are fundamentalists of this or that religion, some are liberals of this or that religion, some are secular humanists, some think abstract ideas are unhelpful, etc? Or would this just invite chaos and discord? The political Something Deeperism was supposed to be less demanding than the individual Something Deeperism: we’re not asking everyone sign on to Something Deeperism, just that they agree that we can publicly share certain core values because, while we may feud about many details, we can still agree that we can and should demand valuing and pursuing honesty, accuracy, competency, kindness, and so on from ourselves and others in the public sphere. With political Something Deeperism, I was just trying to get us all to see that we have shared fundamental values, so we can all communicate with each other and work meaningfully together–to the degree we as a collective don’t jettison those values. OK, but wouldn’t everyone already agree to that? I don’t know; I feel like we slip away from it quite easily and I thought that if we were to all go through this logic together, we’d see that slipping away from our shared values is not acceptable: it causes each of us to betray our own individual values and to thus lose meaningful traction in our own ideas and feelings; and it causes us as a group to lose our ability to share meaning and thus coherently discuss ideas and make choices. In short, it invites confusion in at both the individual and the group level, and that invites corruption in, and that is bad for everyone. I thought if we would just go over this reasoning together, well then,
we’d,
we’d all agree to demand more and more clarity, honesty, accuracy, competency, kindness of our elected officials; we’d all ag

AMW/BW

Something Deeperism vs Literalism

Something Deeperism vs Literalism

From the point of view of an individual, Something Deeperism implies working to better and better learn that and in what way awareness, clarity, honesty, competency, kindness, and most of all selfless love are the Way; while simultaneously discovering and understanding the Truth this way leads to and that also leads to the Truth. Ie: there’s a seed of wisdom within each of us that one must unpack for themselves in order to live in a way that they can understand, believe in, care about, and, well, stand. A philosophy of Something Deeperism wouldn’t claim that the foregoing is true; merely that it is either True, and one can find a way to better and better understand that and how it is True, or we humans have no way to coherently choose one thought over another, one action over another (because unless awareness … is really onto something, as opposed to just being another ultimately perhaps-meaningless value judgement; what way of thinking and acting do we have that really means anything to any of us?).

When one tries to dispense with awareness … Truth … awareness, one runs into the problem of relativism. If as far as we know everything is just perhaps-pointless impulses mixed with logical conjectures that may or may not have any ultimate meaning, how can we say anything meaningful? How can you say, “everything I say may be ultimately meaningless” in a meaningful way? And how can you say, “everything I feel may be ultimately meaningless” in a way that feels meaningful to you? To the degree one assumes that things like awareness, clarity, honesty, competence, and selfless love; one ceases to be meaningful to oneself, and all of one’s thoughts, including that assumption turn to mush. Hence Something Deeperism’s suggestion: accept these undoubtable values: don’t pretend you can coherently doubt them; all that does is make you lie to yourself, confusing your thoughts further. And so you remove the only meaningful steering wheel your thought can have, which allows your thought and action to be hijacked by greeds, lusts, vainglories, and all the normal nonsense; plus, you feel all the time like your mouth’s stuffed with cotton balls.

However, when one claims literal knowledge of the Truth, one runs into many problems. We cannot stand outside of our own thoughts and assess how they measure up to some objective standard of Truth: for all they can reason to on their own, our ideas and feelings don’t relate to the Truth in any meaningful way, if there is a Truth at all. So then one offers the idea of faith: accept the literal Truth of, for example, the scriptures and go from there. But then you run into the same problem as the relativist: you’ve opened yourself up to turning off the only meaningful steering wheel your thought has. Indeed, the relativist’s mistake is really just a variant of literalism. Human thought is simply not capable of literal/definitive/certain/1:1 insight. Even if a dogma you accept as literally True somehow turned out to be literally True (which I don’t think is possible, since dogma’s are ideas held with feelings, but whatever is going on is whatever is going on, not ideas and feelings about whatever is going on; but, again, for the sake of argument, supposing … ), there’s still the problem of how you are going to interpret that Truth in your day-to-day life. You, with your merely human ideas and feelings: you are not going to interpret the Truth perfectly (even supposing they could recite words that somehow connected perfectly the the Truth). But literal knowledge implies perfection: no room for error, misunderstanding, or confusion. I submit to you: even if a human could have literal knowledge, that knowledge would be meaningful only if the human had insight into that and how it was True. Hence Something Deeperism’s suggestion: don’t just blindly accept and follow dogmas, but gain insight into them.

Literalism is a misunderstanding of human thought. We are not formal systems. We are ideas, feelings, and etc all working together, and our own thought is only meaningful to us if it follows its own rules: logical rigor is one of them, but not the only one, and not the most fundamental one. Logic knows that unless there’s really a point in what we say and do, there’s no point in being logical. That is not at all to say that we can dispense with logic. We cannot make sense to ourselves if we do not think logically; we cannot choose our thoughts coherently, in a way meaningful to us. It’s just that logic cannot coherently be used to doubt meaningfulness and other values without which our thoughts ceases to believe in itself. The mistake of literalism is to pretend human understanding is identical with assenting to principles and following logical reasonings based on those principles. That is just a little portion of human understanding.

Something Deeperism suggests we accept those dogmas without which human thought have no meaning to human thought, but do so remembering that those dogmas are meaningless without insight into that and how they are True. Literalism suggests we need to accept xyz ideas as true or True (depending on a given literalism’s flavor) and then use reasoning to convert these truth or Truths into other literal beliefs and practical decisions. Something Deeperism suggests we find a way to organize our ideas and feelings around the Truth shining through our conscious experience better and better, with the goal of gaining more and more insight into that and how it is the case that there is a Truth shining through our conscious experience. Literalism thinks you either know it / believe it, or you don’t. Something Deeperism thinks knowledge and belief are things of degrees. Literalism suggests we need to assent to True dogmas and then interpret them. Something Deeperism suggests one organize one’s ideas and feelings better and better around the Truth within, understanding that one will never perfectly translate the Truth into ideas and feelings.

AMW/BW

Failed again

Something Deeperism – Midway Between Dogmatism & Skepticism

Something Deeperism – Midway Between Dogmatism & Skepticism

Something Deeperism is the middle way between excessive dogmatism and excessive skepticism. I have an inner joy that tells me love is real and that I must pursue ever more and more insight into that inner joy and that the way to succeed in this endeavor is through more and more awareness, clarity, honesty, competency, kindness, gentleness, love, sharing and giving. If that inner joy is not really onto something, I have no way to discover thoughts and actions that really mean anything to me, that I really understand, care about, or am interested in. To the degree I fail to make progress in the inner calling to better and better understand the truth of that inner calling (both that it is true and in what way it is true), I lose traction in my own conscious moment: my ideas and feelings become less and less meaningful to me / to themselves / to this series of conscious moments. Therefore, I should not sacrifice anything to the task of gaining more and more insight into the joy within by seeking ever more awareness, clarity, honesty, competency, kindness, gentleness, love, sharing, and giving.

If an intellectual idea or feeling or (as is most often the case in human thought) a combination of ideas and feelings causes me to lose engagement with the inner joy, that that idea, feeling, or combo is leading me astray. For example, if I focus on my idea of God and what God thinks of me and other people and etc. more than I focus on finding God within, then my religion can actually lead me away from God. For another example, if I focus on avoiding intellectual errors at all cost and lose sight of the fact that intellectual accuracy only matters if there’s something that is actually True, actually meaning, actually worth aligning one’s ideas and feelings with—well, then, my skepticism has undermined the only possible meaningful use of scepticism: helping me to get closer to the Truth.

Both excessive religious fundamentalism and excessive skepticism misunderstand human thought.
Human thought is not a perfect science; our ideas are not perfectly clear objects. When we use completely precise definitions to perfect certain aspects of our thought (into, for example, mathematical reasoning), we necessarily jettison other aspects of our thought (for example, the ability to speak meaningfully about absolute concepts like “meaning”, “truth”, and “goodness”). That’s not to say rigorously defined intellectual disciplines have no place in human thought or that we cannot fit meaningfully into a human’s journey as a whole. The point is merely that human thought is not just ideas, nor even just ideas and feelings. It is ideas and feelings plus intangibles like awareness, meaning, love. You can have theories about what these intangibles are, but you cannot capture them with theories—they are experiences, not ideas about experiences; and they provide the meaningfulness without which none of us can care about anything, including theories.

Human thought (ideas, feelings, and whatever else is in a human conscious moment) loses meaning to itself to the degree it does not meaningfully engage with the Absolute (ie: what is really going on, what really matters, what should really be done; as opposed to opinions, theories, feelings about what is going on, … ). And if we try to turn the Absolute into perfectly clear ideas (in practice often tied to feelings of certainty), we are shift our core conscious focus from what is actually going on to mere ideas and feelings about what is actually going on: we miss the mark. That is true if we convince ourselves that we know exactly how to interpret xyz holy scriptures, or if we convince ourselves that we should not have faith in anything except doubt. In both cases, we’ve turned some notion—some mixture of ideas and feelings—into our Absolute (even if, as in the case of radical skepticism, we refuse to countenance the idea of the “Absolute”: we’ve still clenched our dogma with the sense of THIS IS RIGHT!, and so have tried to make an intellectual idea into what is really going on, which, of course, is deeper and wider than intellectual ideas).

You’ll note that I sometimes use “I” and sometimes “we” in the above. That’s because part of what the shared joy tells us, and part of the inner insight whose Truth we must discover in order to understand, care about, believe in, and engage in our own thoughts and actions, is this: we are all in this together and are essentially the same and, just as my ideas and feelings can adequately communicate with each other and the Light shining through my conscious moment, different human beings can adequately communicate with one another.

Something Deeperism entails the never ending attempt to become more aware, honest, kind, generous, good, decent, loving: to keep working to become more and more truly competent as a whole being—from the Light out through ideas and feelings into this shared space where we interact with others likewise rooted in the Light.

How to prove the above? Or how to say when, for example, one’s spiritual insight is “adequate”? There is no philosophy or religion that can be 100% proven by ideas. Our ideas do not perfectly capture concepts like “meaning” and in and of themselves, there’s no reason to suppose ideas actually mean anything. The above is only meant to point adequately towards a sense of things within us all, and to help us to hold it up together for a moment and think about what conclusions we should draw from it.

Dr Doctor Von Aenywey

Shrugs and “sure”s provided by BW & AMW

IDF – Effective Web Communication #16

IDF – Effective Web Communication #16

Interaction Design Foundation asked us the following questions about how to make our website meet the requirements that bring consumer trust and loyalty.
We, too tired to resist, answered without verve:

How can you demonstrate integrity?
Money-back guarantees; clear and succinct product descriptions; clear reasoning and clearly good intentions in essays; make contact info on front page and respond to people who write; product reviews that include unfavorable as well as favorable reviews

How can you increase familiarity with your company?
Put a short About Us blurb on the bottom of the homepage and link it to a FAQ page; make contact info on front page and respond to people who write

How can you demonstrate benevolence?
keep everything clear and concise

How can you demonstrate competence?
product testimonials, avoiding errors, making site clear

How can you demonstrate partnerships with reputable companies?
We could have a page about who makes the totes and other physical products

How can you lend to the perception of a high market orientation?
give surveys asking people what book else they’d like us to offer and other changes they’d like to see; if some wish is overwhelming, go with it, explaining why we did

What does it mean to develop a high quality website?
Easily navigable, clear, free of errors, pleasant and satisfying to use because with minimal confusion it brings you valuable content

How can you use a typical interface while maintaining originality?
writing style and content can be original within a standardly laid-out website

The importance of clarity, honesty, and kindness in public discourse

The importance of clarity, honesty, and kindness in public discourse

What is good and bad?
How should a society think and act?
What should it prioritize?
What limits should it set on its citizens?
Is it enough to keep the peace and let them find their own way?
Is corruption inevitable?
How bad is it?

It is customary among US politicians to praise the people and credit them with whatever good befalls the nation.
Inaccurate.
US citizens are like everybody else–mostly working for their daily bread and looking after their own.
If things go better for the US it is due to a system with enough checks and balances that when one group starts to overreach and corrupt the government, there are enough strong opponents there to push back on the evildoer.

People can’t get along.
They say it is the other side’s fault.
The truth is the fault is always corruption: within oneself and between people.
We could spend time debating who is more to blame than who. We all have our ideas about that. I certainly have mine.
But is it not better to use our time at the crux: fighting against loose-thinking, dishonesty, unclarity, meanness, selfishness, greed within ourselves and within the government?

Politics must start where we can all agree and it must constantly be brought back to that point, otherwise we cannot journey together to political thoughts and actions.
Just as an individual human’s thought cannot be meaningful to her if she thinks unclearly, dishonestly, or unkindly (her brain cannot follow logic that fails to meet the first two requirements, and her heart cannot follow logic that fails to meet any of them), a society cannot think and act meaningfully together if they allow their public discourse to become unclear, dishonest, and/or unkind (no one actually follows the conversation; the conversation just becomes part of a war of noise/propaganda).

So let us begin again and begin again and again: Where is the awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, loving kindness, true togetherness? There we have a chance. Everywhere else we slip, we slide, we proudly sink the ship.

AMW/BW

What is Love?

What is Love?

Is love a feeling?
Is love an attitude?
Is love affection, respect, caring, empathy, understanding?
Is love willing oneself to care for another’s spiritual/emotional/intellectual/physical health?

When humans love, they feel affection, respect, caring, empathy and understanding; and they also will themselves to act affectionately, respectfully, and with caring, empathy and understanding, and to do what they can to nurture the loved one’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.

However, love is more than this. Because real love successfully nurtures the spirit of oneself and one’s loved one. Real love is wise and knows how to actually help oneself and others live well. Love is not just something people do, but something that God does; and, since for God there’s no distinction between doing and being, something that eternally and infinitely IS. Human love is successful to the degree it understands and follows divine Love.

INTERRUPTING INTERLUDE
I feel that to the degree you fail to love everyone, you fail to love anyone. The proof’s based on the interconnected nature of all created things; and how the One Love shines through it all. The proof’s based on the difference between an open and a closed heart/mind (the gate must be open if anything’s to pass through, but if the gate’s open, everything can pass through). The proof’s based on all the chalk I’ve been chewing, all the werewolfing hunched-over, open arms bent beseechingly upward, yellow-fangdrooling bellowing I’ve been preening, all the alleycats I’ve been hissing.
INTERLUDE ENDS HERE

Love is a decision (we choose to love) and a feeling/action (we love) and something bigger than us that takes over and guides our decisions and actions (Love as spiritual Reality).

Can you choose how you feel?
Yes and No.
The point of a spiritual path is to change yourself, so that you become wiser: more able to understand what Pure Love (ie: spiritual love, godly love, love that is 100% good and helpful/useful/uplifting/selfless; love that only compassionately holds and uplifts) is and more willing and able to live in and through and for Pure Love.
We can choose to work every day to become more patient, more empathetic, more understanding, gentler, kinder, more insightful. And so we can choose to work to change both our feelings and ideas, to bring them more in line with wisdom — more in accordance with the counsel of Pure Love.

But ideas and feelings are not wise.
In and of themselves, they do not know what is really going on, what really matters, what should really be done. To become wiser, ideas and feelings must more adequately understand and follow Pure Love. We must ask Pure Love to guide us; It must oblige; and we must accept Its counsel. Our fundamental life-choice is whether or not we consciously turn more and more towards the Love shining in and through all things.

[Here the essay turned into another standard Something Deeperism essay; concluding standardly:]

But how? But don’t we know? Doesn’t the very sense that pushes us towards seeking a life lived in and through and for Pure Love contain within itself a sense of the path we must follow?: Think clear, honest, aware, kind, open-hearted and -minded; seek real fellowship, sharing kind joy around the understanding that we are all in this together and all share the same Light and therefore the same rights and responsibilities.

Love is accepting, assenting to, caring for, celebrating and lifting up. So I guess Pure Love does that 100% no questions asked for every little bit of the interconnected whole??

Anyway,

Lisa Singz Allown

Editor’s Note: Erich Fromm defined love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” in The Road Less Travelled, but the author didn’t hear about it until Bell Hooks mentioned it in All About Love: New Visions. She also mentions affection and caring as being part of love’s works, though in and of themselves not enough to constitute love. Neither the author nor editor read Erich Fromm, or more than a few pages of Bell Hooks. Some projects are scholarly-precise, and some are lucky if they can stagger out into the sun to die a happy death* in the soft forgiving damp springtime air.

[Editor’s Note: See Albert Camus’s La Mort Heureuse (A Happy Death).
Or should you? He didn’t see fit to publish it, and though completed in 1938 it was not released until 1971, after the author had been dead for like 11 years.]

IDF – Effective Web Communication #15

IDF – Effective Web Communication #15

IDF asked us to analyze the sites of our competitors: Does their writing convey confidence and competence?​

https://www.retroplanet.com/CTGY/Funky_Stuff.html​

Ditch the typical book and a tie gift idea for men and instead give some of these odd novelty items that will be sure to spark a laugh. These funny and funky gifts add great humor and color to your home furniture, the office desk, kitchen decor and more.

Impression of competence & confidence: competent as novelty sellers, but not of hilarious literary jokes: blurb is a little clunky, especially “give some of these odd novelty items that will be sure to spark a laugh”. Also the first portion of that sentence is kind of awkward. The whole thing barrels forward clumsily but good-naturedly self-confident like a St Bernard pup.
Sentence length: longish sentences; the first is a composite that could easily be broken into two sentences.
https://www.europaeditions.com/​

Europa Editions is dedicated to bridging cultural divides by introducing fresh international voices into the North American and British marketplaces. Explore our diverse catalog by region and take in what the world has to offer.​

Impression of competence & confidence:​ Yes to both. Breezy but also succinct. No excess and no errors. See the above snippet of the landing page.

Sentence-length: varied

http://www.diversionbooks.com/about/​

Confident and Competent sounding? They announce themselves to be: “Diversion Books is a leading independent publisher based in New York City. ​” (About page) And they back it up with clear, smooth prose: Launched in 2010, Diversion combines decades of traditional experience with new, innovative publishing strategies. Diversion believes in establishing creative and collaborative partnerships with authors and is committed to the discovery of new voices as well as the rejuvenation of yesterday’s bestsellers.​

Sentence length varies

No one is doing it like WAP. We act all discombobulated and openly admit we can’t take it anymore. But we’re not really a company that needs you to believe anything except: Yes, we’ll deliver the items we promised; and no, we cannot take the hurt, but we are trying to find a way forward.

Anyway