How can we continue to do something, anything, once we become aware that every action has potentially negative consequences and we never fully know what those consequences might be?
It’s beautiful—and necessary—to perceive the whole. But wholeness is not paralysis. It’s a sacred weight, not meant to be solved but felt through. The tension between action and consequence isn’t a trap—it’s the evolutionary stretch of a consciousness learning how to care without collapse.
What I’ve witnessed in thousands of journeys through the unconscious is this: we don’t wake up by perfecting every decision. We wake up when we stop using our intellect to outrun the ache of coherence. When we stop needing clean outcomes to feel like good people.
The real work is not to drink the coffee without guilt, or to refuse it in moral clarity. The real work is to see that our longing to do “less harm” is a message from the soul, reminding the ego it was never meant to lead alone. This isn’t an escape from the world. It’s a call to re-enter it differently—heart forward, eyes open, and spirit intact.
So yes, stay with the trouble. But know this too: complexity doesn’t ask for purity. It asks for presence. The signal isn’t found in the answer. It’s found in how fully you inhabit the question.
Thanks, Jessica. I think this will actually help moving forward. I especially enjoyed the breakdown of creative chaos. Seeing the process of questioning as a valuable part of the movement to a higher order of complexity does help to reduce the weight of the decision, I think.
The problem still exists, and I think I’ll still want to move towards a direction where I don’t drink the coffee, but it may help to soothe the mind when I do. Not as a justification to keep doing it, but as a realization that evolution is not a straight line.
I was already feeling something like this for a while, but seeing it broken down was helpful. For me, lately, it’s been about being plant-based. Most of the time I can do it, sometimes I fail for whatever reason (convenience, or lack of options, or just lack of willpower on my part), and feel guilty. I don’t think that will necessarily change, but there may be some solace in seeing that guilt as part of the process.
Hey David, same here. I still experience guilt - for example when I order on something amazon - and then try to see things from these different perspectives. At the same time, I don’t want to fall into a sense of comfort where I find an excuse for any action.
Loved this articulation - and have experienced all these options in coffee form.
Conversations with a couple of people who have recently experienced the reality of UAP/NHI led to a discussion of ‘cognitive paralysis’. For a while they felt unable to proceed in discerning fact from fiction.
They resolved their paralysis by deciding they could be comfortable with a certain level of ‘ontological uncertainty’. Having a high level of confidence in something was enough to proceed with their exploration of the implications of UAP/NHI reality. They no longer needed ‘certainty’.
Now I’m wondering about the notion of being comfortable with a level of moral uncertainty.
Hey Roger, that is super interesting and something I can deeply relate to. Also a good reminder how there might need to be a warning label with evoking ontological uncertainty. And fantastic question in how far that relates to moral uncertainty as well.
This was stunning. Like watching a philosopher try to make peace with a compost pile while quietly weeping into their ethically sourced herbal tea. And I mean that in the best way.
The question “What action causes the least harm?” feels like the metacrisis-era version of “What is truth?”—except now Pilate’s drinking cold brew with oat milk and regretting it mid-sip.
I especially appreciated the reframing of dissonance as a feature—a signal of system evolution rather than failure. That hits deep. It reminds me of when the early Desert Fathers fled to the caves not to escape the world, but to sit with their own unbearable entanglement in it. They didn’t have Wilber’s quadrant model, but I suspect they were mapping interior states just the same.
Also: the bit about aesthetic richness gave me flashbacks to Mary Magdalene recognizing the Risen One—not through theology, but through presence. Maybe the coffee cup is just another empty tomb, and the question is whether we’ll perceive the gardener.
Thank you for this essay. I’ll be sharing it. Right after I sit silently and let it compost my certainty. ;-)
Yes. Sort of. I deal with this type of paralysis so the general topic resonates with me. I also have a predeliction (my phone doesn't know that word for some reason) for this kind of cogitation but i perceive it as disordered more or less. I am drawn to chew on this and revolted by the taste at the same time hahaha. But chew i will.
Where i am is that aspiring to not-doing is the whole effort and also that effort must be cast away. As a good friend puts it, i can just allow nature to act through me. Or something like that 😁
When it comes to challenges and problem solving, I created an effective simple model that only requires asking two questions:
1. How does the natural world solve or address the problem?
2. What would a reasonably smart group of 6th graders do?
It has never failed me…
Love that. Sounds perfect.
It’s beautiful—and necessary—to perceive the whole. But wholeness is not paralysis. It’s a sacred weight, not meant to be solved but felt through. The tension between action and consequence isn’t a trap—it’s the evolutionary stretch of a consciousness learning how to care without collapse.
What I’ve witnessed in thousands of journeys through the unconscious is this: we don’t wake up by perfecting every decision. We wake up when we stop using our intellect to outrun the ache of coherence. When we stop needing clean outcomes to feel like good people.
The real work is not to drink the coffee without guilt, or to refuse it in moral clarity. The real work is to see that our longing to do “less harm” is a message from the soul, reminding the ego it was never meant to lead alone. This isn’t an escape from the world. It’s a call to re-enter it differently—heart forward, eyes open, and spirit intact.
So yes, stay with the trouble. But know this too: complexity doesn’t ask for purity. It asks for presence. The signal isn’t found in the answer. It’s found in how fully you inhabit the question.
Thanks Ernie.
Thanks, Jessica. I think this will actually help moving forward. I especially enjoyed the breakdown of creative chaos. Seeing the process of questioning as a valuable part of the movement to a higher order of complexity does help to reduce the weight of the decision, I think.
The problem still exists, and I think I’ll still want to move towards a direction where I don’t drink the coffee, but it may help to soothe the mind when I do. Not as a justification to keep doing it, but as a realization that evolution is not a straight line.
I was already feeling something like this for a while, but seeing it broken down was helpful. For me, lately, it’s been about being plant-based. Most of the time I can do it, sometimes I fail for whatever reason (convenience, or lack of options, or just lack of willpower on my part), and feel guilty. I don’t think that will necessarily change, but there may be some solace in seeing that guilt as part of the process.
Hey David, same here. I still experience guilt - for example when I order on something amazon - and then try to see things from these different perspectives. At the same time, I don’t want to fall into a sense of comfort where I find an excuse for any action.
Loved this articulation - and have experienced all these options in coffee form.
Conversations with a couple of people who have recently experienced the reality of UAP/NHI led to a discussion of ‘cognitive paralysis’. For a while they felt unable to proceed in discerning fact from fiction.
They resolved their paralysis by deciding they could be comfortable with a certain level of ‘ontological uncertainty’. Having a high level of confidence in something was enough to proceed with their exploration of the implications of UAP/NHI reality. They no longer needed ‘certainty’.
Now I’m wondering about the notion of being comfortable with a level of moral uncertainty.
Hey Roger, that is super interesting and something I can deeply relate to. Also a good reminder how there might need to be a warning label with evoking ontological uncertainty. And fantastic question in how far that relates to moral uncertainty as well.
This was stunning. Like watching a philosopher try to make peace with a compost pile while quietly weeping into their ethically sourced herbal tea. And I mean that in the best way.
The question “What action causes the least harm?” feels like the metacrisis-era version of “What is truth?”—except now Pilate’s drinking cold brew with oat milk and regretting it mid-sip.
I especially appreciated the reframing of dissonance as a feature—a signal of system evolution rather than failure. That hits deep. It reminds me of when the early Desert Fathers fled to the caves not to escape the world, but to sit with their own unbearable entanglement in it. They didn’t have Wilber’s quadrant model, but I suspect they were mapping interior states just the same.
Also: the bit about aesthetic richness gave me flashbacks to Mary Magdalene recognizing the Risen One—not through theology, but through presence. Maybe the coffee cup is just another empty tomb, and the question is whether we’ll perceive the gardener.
Thank you for this essay. I’ll be sharing it. Right after I sit silently and let it compost my certainty. ;-)
Thank you 🙏🖤
Exactly what I needed. Thank you.
Very happy to hear that, Nadine. 🙏
Yes. Sort of. I deal with this type of paralysis so the general topic resonates with me. I also have a predeliction (my phone doesn't know that word for some reason) for this kind of cogitation but i perceive it as disordered more or less. I am drawn to chew on this and revolted by the taste at the same time hahaha. But chew i will.
Where i am is that aspiring to not-doing is the whole effort and also that effort must be cast away. As a good friend puts it, i can just allow nature to act through me. Or something like that 😁
„Allow nature to act through me“ - I want that, too.