The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth

Every staircase needs a first step, and this one starts with a sentence that sounds like a late-night dorm argument: existence is relative.

Relative to what? There is nothing apart from existence to compare it against. That makes the statement a paradox. And yet it is still true, because "nothing" is exactly what we compare existence against. Read that twice. It all depends.

That is the first premise, and everything else in Baseline Your Life leans on it: two statements that seem to contradict each other can be true at the same time.

This is not a party trick. Look at almost any argument that has run for centuries, about where we come from, what we owe each other or what a good life looks like, and you will usually find two sides that are each holding one true half of a paradox. Each side is sure the other is wrong, so the argument never ends.

Once you accept that both halves can be true, something shifts. You stop needing to win. You start asking which half applies here, now, to this person. That is the first move toward the middle, and the middle is where this whole system is headed.

The next two premises put the idea to work on the oldest argument in Western thought.