Jack Pelham

Here’s my 3-part video primer on my philosophy of Reality-Based Thinking (honesty, rationality, and responsibility). It’s based on years of studying cognitive science on the psychology of rational thinking (since 2011). And I note that while it doesn’t quote the Bible directly, it does jibe really well with my lifetime of Bible study.

In my frequent discussions about truth/reality, I’m often asked a question of this general sort:

“But which reality? The one about how things actually are, or the one that people perceive or believe?”

It’s a very common point of confusion in our society, yet to me, the difference between the two is like night and day. The definition of reality that I use goes something like this:

It’s easy enough for you to say,
“Come, Lord Jesus!”.
But if he did,
Then it wouldn’t just be
You saying religious stuff.
No, it would be you saying religious stuff
And Jesus standing there
Hearing you say it—
Face to face.

In these dark days
When corruption abounds in the land—
When the tyrant and the scoundrel
Seem all one can find in the public hall—
And no hero can be found
Who is true to the core—

The man dares not too far afield
From where his life was set,
But keeps himself quite close at home
And ventures little yet.

How can one,
In worship of the Great Hero,
Fail to play the hero himself?

By what twisting of the mind
Can one laud in another
A virtue he refuses in himself—
As if it would be improper to have it, too.

This I do not understand.

He wishes for better—
As if in the wishing
He were doing a worthy deed,
Long overdue among the countless
Neglects in this haggard world.

He sets it aright in the vista of his mind,
And manages, when he can,
To feel some satisfaction in it—
For it is his due, he thinks,
For having burst the bonds of convention
In daring to think, for a change,
How things should be.

And he is certain of it—
And of himself—
And of his deftness of conviction.
And he wonders from time to time why they don’t
Ask him to do more such work—
Why he isn’t summoned
To do this more often—
Visionary that he is.

And tomorrow—
Or perhaps the day after—
He will wish about something else.
And so begins a new venture,
The better for which
This world will surely be,
He is certain,
When he has at last
Wished it hard enough
That he can mine from it
That scant morsel of piety
That he is fortunate sometimes
To feel after such great works.

And should someone else
Wish the wish alongside him,
Lauding the greatness of his vision,
He is more sure to sense
The reassuring signal
That he has got it right
Yet once again,
And that his worth
To this world is certain.

And so it goes—
And so go his years,
Until at long last,
He discovers,
Or not,
That he has done little
But to wish things different—
That his life’s great work has consisted in
The slightest of all possible deeds—
In mental child’s play—
And that he has not taken, after all,
What he thought should be
His rightful place
Alongside the champions of the ages
Who, themselves, had forged those
Most precious of moments of history
By daring not merely to wish,
But to make it so.

He may, in fact, never see the difference
Between him and them.
He may never realize that
To a million wishers,
There may be but one
Who dares to do—
And that he has not been that one.

This afternoon, my dear wife, Kay, posted the following on Facebook–presumably about me.

My husband does stuff like messaging ‘on way home’ or ‘leaving now’, and then I’ll see he’s still there minutes and sometimes even hour later. #SlaveToSavingTheWorld

So I thought I’d share with you my reply, which I have since edited a touch here and there, because I’m cool like that.

What lover of God
Should not also be
A philosopher—
A lover of Wisdom—
Whose glorious self
Was so named
In the very Proverbs?

Has there ever been
A soul who reached grandeur
Without loving Wisdom?

And who but a fool would think he could?

They tell me not to try—
That I’m wasting my time.
But someone tried with me,
And I am the better for it.

They tell me it’s hopeless,
But I’ve experienced successes myself.

They tell me the people won’t listen,
But I listened.

And after a while of hearing such things,
He who says them begins to seem to me
The stupidest of all—
He who dares to declare for others
A fruitless future
When God himself—
The greatest wisher ever for the good of man—
Has still left them alive
To live in this world of possibility
Yet another day.

The naysayer thinks himself enlightened,
Yet cannot see the darkness in his outlook.

But I will speak to him of it.
I’ll push back for his good.
I don’t believe the others can’t change—
Nor that he himself can’t change
This darkened outlook.

Perhaps he’s mad because
I won’t give up like he has.
Or perhaps he’s simply forgotten
And needs a friendly nudge to remember.

If he sees that they are wrong
Not to listen about other things,
Perhaps he’ll see that he’s
Been so stubbornly wrong himself
Not to listen about this.

So don’t tell me that people can’t change—
That grandest excuse for mankind
In all of history.

Has there ever been a bigger lie?

I know it is a lie because
I have changed.

There’s too little hope in this world.
But I still have some.
And I still remember where I got it.