How can you tell you are free of delusion?
What landmarks can you sight on to keep yourself balanced on the thin edge of rationality?

The dogmatic contention that the criteria of sanity must be completely subjective is rather obvious excess
. It is an example of stretching principles to make them fit into realms which are inappropriate, the absurdity of excess.
The extreme of subjectivism is simply an abandonment of rationality altogether, and is in itself a pathology of mentation.
Those who profess such a belief have given up the effort to uphold sanity, a surrender which costs them dearly.
They are ignoring the hard-won data which identifies patterns of delusory thought,
families of fallacies which can be known and named, tagged and treated, faced and banished.
To say there is no way to detect a perceptual pathology is a falsehood which results from a logical error.

The value to be desired in useful philosophy is correctness.
Truth in the abstract is too metaphysical a concept.
It is liable to take on too broad and sweeping a span of meaning
to be used with the precision needed in our tools.
Validity, on the other hand, is too narrow, being applicable only to logical statements,
and so could too easily exclude psychological insights.
We can make use of the word correctness
in our measurement of perceptual maps,
in determining how well the map represents the territory,
how well the mental model corresponds to the phenomonological data base we call reality.

The goal of the visionary must be to establish intersubjective acceptance
of a particular perception, or a suite of perceptions.
Prophesy becomes dogma, fiction becomes news.
The task of replacing the dominant perceptual system
with the revolutionary alternative is not as difficult for the sorceror as it may seem to the uninitiated.
Those who have struggled for years to budge society's mindset
in a desired direction, are bound to be amazed
at how swiftly the new comprehension replaces old prejudice.
The sorceror sidesteps political imbroglio, presenting the replacement reality
as merely an esthetic choice rather than an ethical choice.
The new vision is more beautiful because it is more correct.
That it is also morally preferable is a subsidiary bonus,
which people discover with delight only after their "conversion."
Fundamental to understanding the power of sorcery is this one fact,
that each individual's internalization of the sorceror's construction is an esthetic act of will.

Among the benefits of the extended initiation rites you encounter
among the higher Hermetic orders is an enhancement of the sense of humor.
The dues you have to pay are substantial, as you can easily imagine.
That's euphemistic for: it hurts.
Yet when you can't find anything funny, it's a pretty good sign for you to back up a bit and look for a turning.
There's a word to the wise.

The sorceror is completely confident of results because of the insurmountable advantage of leverage.
Each glimpse of wisdom evoked is a finely-polished gem of clarity which has been faceted by the mental labor of ancient predecessors.
Correctness is assured by practice from ages ago in cities now dust, whose very names have flown to the winds.
The sorceror speaks as a full member of a tradition of peers, in unison voice.
There was time to learn; this lineage learned over time.

An esthetic preference is not falsifiable.
A belief, on the other hand, is subject to debunking.
To manifest this rapid universal change in human behavior patterns
will not require that each human belief be debunked in detail.

Whereaway?

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