0.6.1 How Many Statements are Required?

Version 1.6 November 2016                                        Previous Version

We can summarise our beliefs to as short as we like.  Ultimately we might end up with a single word – perhaps something like “om” (or “aum”), from Hinduism, the world’s oldest major religion, the symbol of the beginning, duration, and end of the universe and everything in it.

On the other hand we could expand the presentation to include thousands of useful statements, that take too long to absorb and don’t help much with the big picture.  It’s a question of balance: determining how to be as brief as possible while still including the most significant points.

·       At the highest level, up to about 10 statements seems reasonable to achieve that goal without being too much to take in at one time. Others have come to a similar number:

o   We have arrived at 8 high level conclusions (with heaps of phrases) simply because that’s the way it turned out.  These cover the 8 essential learnings of Philosophy, Science, History, Religion, Culture, Personal Practice and Politics and an overall Vision. 

o   This is the “Diamond” level.  (It reminds me of my “diamond” credit card, apparently better than a platinum, gold, silver or bronze card – so the credit card company tells me).

·       Each of these knowledge domains can be broken down into separate topics.  At the next level, a few dozen high level supporting statements seems adequate.  We’ve chosen 42 “second level” summary statements to justify the top 8.

o   Restricting the number to 42 imposes a rather arbitrary discipline on the process, requiring decisions to be made on what really is important. 

o   We’ve summarised the secondary level conclusions as 42 one liners, the “platinum” level.

o   We can of course add an unlimited amount of additional detail to each of these one liners.  They have been expanded into 4 lines each, and we have called these the “gold” level.

·       The conclusions that justify the 42 “Gold” level summaries are will be comprised of hundreds of statements at the “Silver” level.

·       The conclusions that justify the “Silver” level summaries will comprise thousands of statements at the “Bronze” level.

We don’t want to fuss too much about labelling and the levels.  It’s just a way of working out what’s important at the highest level, clarifying what supports those high level conclusions, then working our way down to the real, evidence based level, that is the day to day substance of science and history.