Volume 6 · The Unfinished Syllabus · Essay 75

Dysrationalia

Dysrationalia is a small handle on a large fact. Grip it, and the fact becomes easier to carry.

It is worth keeping in your pocket not because it is always right, but because it is always available. A tool you carry beats a perfect tool you left at home.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

Watch a master carpenter teach an apprentice. He does not lecture; he lets the boy hold the wrong end of the saw until the wood itself becomes the teacher.

Learning is the one wealth that survives every partition of fortune. Keep it like a good key: accessible, unlabelled, and used often.