This Is Our Story

This is Our Story

Humanity United in Action,
Driven By Love and Compassion,
Informed by Science and Reason.

Value for Wednesday of Week 21 in the season of Growth

Being Incisive

Jack Bush, Knife Sharpener (1941)

Being sharp, keen, and penetrating is the essence of being incisive.

Most people think they do not have time to consider issues carefully. They are sloppy thinkers. We value the cultivation of incisiveness, which is the art of considering details.

Details matter. In Constitutional law, for example, seemingly innocuous breaches of individual rights can lead to the destruction of the ethic of respect for minority opinions and lifestyles. For example, when Ronald Reagan said a prayer at the Republican National Convention in 1980, he breached the wall that had separated church from state. Many people count him as a hero for having done it. They think that the United States is a Christian nation and that politicians should operate from their sectarian religious beliefs, as opposed to their values. People may think that but it is not consistent with equal justice for all or respect for each person’s inviolable right to worship, or not, as she sees fit, free from government interference.

Now, partly as a result of Reagan’s action, “God bless you and God bless America” is mandatory language at the end of every presidential address. This practice is disrespectful to those of us who do not believe in a god and more important, it is a violation of the spirit of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Most people do not want to hear that. They like the sound of it, it seems innocuous and for them, that is the end of the discussion, if they ever engage in any discussion.

Scientists cannot get away with that. Violation of a fundamental scientific principle may invalidate a researcher’s entire body of work. Ignoring one detail can upset an entire body of research.

We need not all express the painstaking incisiveness of scientists but if we hope to maintain the values of ordered liberty under a written Constitution, it is essential that we pay attention to the details that Americans have gotten into the habit of overlooking. In the education of our children too, and our adults, incisiveness is an essential value too often overlooked.

Real

True Narratives

Book narratives:

Technical and Analytical Readings

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels:

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Compositions:

Albums:

  • Wolfgang Fuchs, Hans Koch, Evan Parker and Louis Sclavis, “Duets, Dithyrambisch” – a constant evolution of small changes

Music: songs and other short pieces

Visual Arts

Edvard Munch - August Strindberg
Edvard Munch, August Strindberg (1892)

Film and Stage

This Is Our Story

A religion of values and Ethics, driven by love and compassion, informed by science and reason.

PART ONE: OUR STORY

First ingredient: Distinctions. What is the core and essence of being human? What is contentment, or kindliness, or Love? What is gentleness, or service, or enthusiasm, or courage? If you follow the links, you see at a glance what these concepts mean.

PART TWO: ANALYSIS

This site would be incomplete without an analytical framework. After you have digested a few of the examples, feel free to explore the ideas behind the model. I would be remiss if I did not give credit to my inspiration for this work: the Human Faith Project of Calvin Chatlos, M.D. His demonstration of a model for Human Faith began my exploration of this subject matter.

A RELIGION OF VALUES

A baby first begins to learn about the world by experiencing it. A room may be warm or cool. The baby learns that distinction. As a toddler, the child may strike her head with a rag doll, and see that it is soft; then strike her head with a wooden block, and see that it is hard. Love is a distinction: she loves me, or she doesn’t love me. This is true of every human value:

justice, humility, wisdom, courage . . . every single one of them.

This site is dedicated to exploring those distinctions. It is based on a model of values that you can read about on the “About” page. However, the best way to learn about what is in here is the same as the baby’s way of learning about the world: open the pages, and see what happens.

ants organic action machines

Octavio Ocampo, Forever Always

Jacek Yerka, House over the Waterfall

Norman Rockwell, Carefree Days Ahead

WHAT YOU WILL SEE HERE

When you open tiostest.wpengine.com, you will see a human value identified at the top of the page. The value changes daily. These values are designed to follow the seasons of the year.

You will also see an overview of the value, or subject for the day, and then two columns of materials.

The left-side column presents true narratives, which include biographies, memoirs, histories, documentary films and the like; and also technical and analytical writings.

The right-side columns presents the work of the human imagination: fictional novels and stories, music, visual art, poetry and fictional film.

Each entry is presented to help identify the value. Open some of the links and experience our human story, again. It belongs to us all, and each of us is a part of it.

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The Work on the Meditations

AI buffer

CHAPTER 4: The DEMOCRATIC (R)EVOLUTION We are better than we realize we are. For the first time, we can now create institutions of governance that elicit our best. Copyright 2026 by Paul L. LaClair

BEING EMPATHETIC

Empathy begins the process of connecting us with others, as we share their emotions. Our own life experience enables us to understand something of the life experience of others. That emotional understanding is the distinction we call empathy: “. . . the capacity to share the feelings of others . . .” “Empathy is a complex capability enabling individuals to…
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Wish Fulfillment

Believing things to be true because one wishes them to be true is a prime malady of the human condition. It is an opposite of objectivity, reflecting a shortfall of intellectual honesty. It has led to wars, famines and other guarantors of human suffering.

Hopelessness

Hopelessness is a dark view of the future, in which there is no escape from unhappiness and suffering.

Living in Dignity

Properly understood, dignity refers to a high state of ethical/moral attainment and behavior. If human worth is the intrinsic life experience, then what is human dignity? In this model, it is the global term for being excellently developed in all three domains of being in a way that enhances human worth. Its elements are caring (emotion), wisdom (thought) and courage…
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Cycles – Seasons

Life is cyclical. There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity . . . [The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1.] Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something’s time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a great metaphor…
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Mutuality – Reciprocity – Cooperation

Low-level interpersonal relationships are essentially transactional. Mere reciprocity, or cooperation, does not imply any good feeling toward others. People who do not otherwise get along can cooperate to achieve a common end or purpose. Early experiments in game theory, particularly in the prisoner’s dilemma, revealed that repeated interactions between members of a community, of as few as two people, were…
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