Here is how. Knowledge is linked with prudence, and understanding, with justice.

An autistic person does not understand people, but if he did, then he would be just toward them or love them.

Such a person (1) may not realize that there is anything on earth to be understood: Barnbaum (2008) quotes a mother who questions whether her autistic son will ever be able to grasp that “she is a person with thoughts and feelings, not a wind-up toy.” (78) Again, an autistic person may be “unperturbed by the loss of her father, comparing his departure to a bowl of fruit that was on the table one day and gone the next.” (106) Alternatively, (2) an autistic may feel presence of other human beings but be completely unable to “read” them.

He has the habit of justice, but a bodily sickness has prevented him from acting justly.

A psychopath does understand people but is unjust to them or fails to love them. In fact, a psychopath may derive perverse pleasure from toying with people’s emotions.

Thus, an autistic would be just, if his virtue of understanding were restored to him. By my definition then, an autistic person is, and a psychopathic person is not, a member of the moral community.

Perhaps, this way, any antagonism or animosity can be safely diffused.

Of course, the word “forces” belies this understanding somewhat, because it connotes unjust coercion rather than necessity imposed by duty.

I suppose one difference between primitive and civilized people is that the latter don’t take signs literally but rather as pointing to some greater reality. Thus, the female yin represents both receptivity and destruction: potency and evil or corrupting act into potency. The male yang, on the contrary, suggests act and good or creating act from potency.

For example, from my book:

The yang and yin of creative destruction are best fully enabled and well balanced. In creating profits and jobs, the disequilibrating yang butchers the deer-in-the-headlights even rotators; in destroying profits, the equilibrating yin like some bloodthirsty goddess Kali (remember that the female archetype is both receptive and destructive in its various guises: e.g., if you do not take the opportunity to plant your crops in the summer when nature is pliable, the same nature will starve and kill you in the winter) creates new opportunities for growth; both benefit economy as a whole. Under unhampered capitalism, society tends to become more ideal in the most efficient ways possible.

(I’m not sure I want to keep the part in the parentheses, though… a bit too much symbolism for a book on economics. Then again, it’s precisely the failure to grasp the economic yin and yang that has led so many economists completely astray. What should I do?)

Well, faith is a set of axioms, and understanding is deriving theorems from these axioms. The axioms are coherent, so if two theorems seem to follow from them that contradict each other, then I must by logic have made a mistake.

A person who does not accept the articles of the Christian faith as axioms cannot undertake the same search, unless he accepts them provisionally, just to see where they will lead him. (Though I don’t know why any non-Christian would bother to do something like that.)

Another question immediately arises. Why this set of axioms and not some other set? Axioms are supposed to be self-evident; but not all people consider them such. Well, the Christian articles of faith are self-evident not a natural unaided reason by to an enlightened mind graced by God.

Faith is a peculiar thing: attaining it requires both man’s own effort and God’s assistance. The best way to summarize Christianity is this: I believe that I am spiritually connected to the divine as a branch to a vine through which the Holy Spirit flows, nourishing me. The connection is through love with all the consequences that that implies. As God breathes, so do I.

Now if a person lives in an area where missionaries have not yet arrived, he does not know this and cannot, generally speaking, be helped by God. If he is not aware of the axioms, then God cannot make them feel self-evident. On the other hand, sanctification is done at God’s pleasure, so even a person who is well aware of the Christian claims may have been for whatever reason denied grace. Perhaps, since grace builds on nature, this person’s nature is corrupt.

If Smith is a wicked person, then his nature may be an unsuitable host for grace. But if Smith defiles himself so, then the fault and punishment are his and his alone.

In short, faith is the axioms that seem self-evident to the chosen ones, and understanding is everything that these axioms do and do not entail.

Very good. But could Jesus also have said: “But I tell you, if anyone rapes you in the ass, turn to him your mouth also.” Surely not. So, where do we draw the line? Where does humility become cowardice and self-contempt?

Economist Leland Yeager argued that “turn the other cheek” encourages violent predation of humans on each other. This certainly seems to be the case.

These despite the fact that one and the same person often plays multiple roles.