Chapter 2: the grind and the refined - No one is Fa

I thought about writing this post before; in fact, I may have. It's difficult to say for certain these days.
I'm involved in a few cases that one of them, it is deemed, is important enough as to invoke a wide state of panic. I and others have dedicated many hours and days to it and will continue to until its inevitable resolution (or dissipation; like I said, it's hard to say). This means, of course, back to the sleep disrupted nights of old, having strange dreams and basically being tired to the bones.

But what is "Fa", you may wonder? Wikipedia will explain it better, but what I remember of it from university (because, really, memory of things is more important than the facts of those things, right?) is that it is a kind of a model. It was used by the ancient Mohists, my favorite school of old Chinese philosophy as a tool, to demonstrate and to think logically by analogy. One of the models or concepts that should be emulated is the Ren, the idealized or higher person.

Taking it to its simplistic extremes, it is having a person as a role model. However, it's demonstrated repeatedly that no one person is perfect and can be used as a role model for everyone, for all situations, for all times and experiences. Everyone is flawed. Even if that person was not flawed somehow, odds are that you and your perception are.

Can people be trusted then? How can we learn from something that we know to be wrong? The obvious answer is that we have no "real" choice. We can try to learn from many different sources many different things and hope that somehow we'll get the "right" idea. We need to assume nothing, and strip away our misconceptions. But, in the end, the truth is unknowable, and all we can get is increasingly educated guesses.

This has deviated significantly from what I wanted to say. I am tired and suspect my kitchen is haunted (the microwave turns itself on in odd hours).