He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all unwisdom.

While still in my early twenties, when I was exploring various ancient and new religions, I took the risk — then, it seemed to me to be a risk, a palpable danger and fearful step into the gaping maw of the unknown — of buying Anton Szandor LaVey’s The Satanic Bible.  The second phrase of the quote above is all that has remained in my memory of that book, throughout the years (besides a very general conception of LaVey’s philosophy), a saying I have repeated to myself often:

Belief in one false principle is the beginning of all unwisdom.

Perhaps this is why, when exploring the concept of horizontal thinking, and particularly the synthesis of disparate things and domains viewed via horizontal thinking, I am rather skeptical.  Only one misstep, one tiny erroneous datum in all the data, can lead one so far astray, or produce monstrosities of design.

Perhaps, also, that is why I have always sought to obliterate even the smallest and most insignificant-seeming data in my pursuit of what has been called consilient thinking about things:  perpetually dissatisfied with the idea that I have escaped unwisdom in whatever horizontal thinking I have utilized as well.

There are many times, of course, that I have allowed myself a resting point or three — but always, they are contingent resting points, temporary respites.

For instance, I have decided upon an understanding of horizontal thinking and consilient thinking, have utilized this limited understanding to describe identity and poetry, but I am not unaware of the fact that so many others may have a different concept of these terms. Before I can synthesize what I have read with what I have seen, I must first test the limits of what I have seen and what I have read: will they be minute or epic?