Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

Triumph Of Genius

 Interstate 80 West, El Cerrito, California, USA 

May 5, 2019


"Just remember I love you, and it'll be alright." ... Firefall, Just Remember I Love You

"Just remember 'I love you', and it'll be alright." ... Laurence Platt
This essay, Triumph Of Genius, is the third in a trilogy on Genius: I am indebted to Peter Asher who contributed material for this conversation.


It's underneath it all. But it's not apparent. If we don't look rigorously, we'll most likely never distinguish it, nor realize for how long we've been run by it. It's built-in to our epistemology  - which means it's not something we know, but rather it's something that impacts the way we hold  everything we know. It can be heard as an expression sounding something like "It's damaged", "This can't work", "Something's wrong", "It can't be fixed", affecting what we assume is possible for our lives without us ever realizing  it's affecting what we assume is possible for our lives. In the absence of distinguishing it simply as the epistemology and how it got there (more importantly, who put it there), we regard it as the truth. And pre-transformed society is attached, frantic, hell-bent  on finding ways to cement it as the truth.

There's a poignant expresssion in Afrikaans, one of the many languages spoken in South Africa. It's "Jou klap is naby"  (pronounced "Yo clup iss nah bay") which translates to "Your hiding is nearby" ie "Your come-uppence  is coming soon.". Before someone gets their hands and feet on the levers, dials, and pedals of that which allows life to work naturally and spontaneously, and it's obvious they're ducking and diving and violating integrity in order to get ahead, it's said their "klap is naby" ...

... which is arguably a sage observation: without integrity nothing works - realized or not, we all find that out sooner or later. We learn the consequences of living with no integrity. But listen: what of the unknown possibility, the unnatural act  if you will, of stepping out into a life powered  and driven  by integrity? What of stepping out, even given the background soundtrack of "It's damaged", "This can't work", "Something's wrong", "It can't be fixed", into a life powered and driven by integrity?

Consider this: given our epistemology, we already know  it's damaged, this can't work, something's wrong, and it can't be fixed. Thus in the bliss of ignorance, "Jou klap is naby" is also deployed when people step out beyond the norm in acts of unusual boldness, daring, bravery, and integrity. In pre-transformed society, you're expected  to fall - it's just a matter of when and how far. Everyone knows  acts of unusual boldness, daring, bravery, and integrity are too risky for the status quo. It's a given. "Keep a low profile" is what they'll tell you, "and everything will be alright" - hence the birth and onset and entrenchment of business as usual. And if you're stoopid  enough to violate what everyone knows, and step out into integrity (or better, if you're stoopid enough to step out from  integrity), jou klap is naby.

Listen: if you've been paying attention to what's been happening in the world of transformation, you'll know all of that has now been relegated to the past, having been rigorously re-written. It's all over, bar the shouting. It took a certain kind of conversation to shift that paradigm ie to break it up. It took an intentionality to isolate and distinguish the epistemology so that if you engage with it as its source, it loses its grip and its ability to hold you back and imprison you in pre-transformed eras. More than that, it took a certain kind of enrollment to assure the status quo that this is really an authentic possibility and not some frivolous foolishness to scoff at and / or to be afraid of, and that there'll be no nearby klap forthcoming (seriously). This is more than simply a big win. This is a triumph of genius.

At the source of what comprises the "genius" in "triumph of genius" is Werner's easy view ie his clear experience  of who we really are, and an unwavering, unflinching  commitment to stay with it and to share it and to true* to it and to sail with it, even when the inevitable epistemological winds  (if you will) threaten to blow us off course. It has the power (ie it provides the inspiration ) to disappear  the erroneous truths "It's damaged", "This can't work", "Something's wrong", "It can't be fixed", and to make available in their stead a fresh, new possibility of being for human being: the possibility of living life transformed, the possibility of life working. Really.

*   Merriam-Webster's dictionary allows "true" as a transitive verb: to make level, square, balanced, or concentric; bring or restore to a desired mechanical accuracy or form.

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