We’re really in wild times aren’t we? If you’re reading this much after I write it, check the time stamp and let me know if it got better or worse. We’ll have a good conversation no doubt. That is to say, of course, if there is really such thing as “worse”. From a good portion of potential perspectives all experience is progress; all roads are forward. Even the ones that feel like backtracking.

I tend to ascribe to this position myself. I used to tell myself often, “There’s no such thing as failure, only Success and Learning. And if you’re aware and present, you can have both.” Now the sentiment is automatic.

Perspective is King. That’s the long and short of it. Is there such thing as worse? Depends on how closely you zoom in, how tightly you place your measures, and how flexible you are with interpretation. But I’m not an ever-joyful demigod either, and sometimes the frame gets distorted outside of our control. I have days that feel like they suck. Days that I’d say are definitely and objectively worse. In the moment it stings. I work hard, I do good for others, I’m kind. Why, universe? On the flip side the answer is usually “you needed that experience”.

Universe is usually right.

Point is, how we look at things really matters.

One common scale that you are most likely aware of is the Micro, Medio, Macro scale. A measure of the size of the frame of reference through which you view the situation.

Micro is the day to day, minute to minute, current affairs and personal concerns territory of things. It’s the stuff that you have spontaneous thoughts about and the tasks you must get to any give moment. It’s your feelings in those moments.

Macro is the big picture. The really big picture. To be sure we could probably add “Mega Macro” for the frame that is the entire universe. The Grand Scheme, as some call it. But generally speaking Macro is easier to describe as the biggest consideration that directly effects you, and everything bigger is the “Whole Picture”. Macro includes the weather and climate, the political situation of the last decade or century. The span of your life. All of your relationships considered in one bucket. It’s the stuff you can’t directly do anything about but it’s still relevant to your life (even if that relevance is how much you know it doesn’t matter).

And in the middle is Medio. It’s not the small stuff, it’s not the big stuff. I tend to think of Medio as the 5 year plan, the business vision and mission statement, things you need to keep track of but that don’t change much from month to month or even year to year.

Said another way, Medio is the compass of your life, Micro is the steps you take, and Macro is the topography you are navigating across.

Understanding scale this way allows you to refine your understanding of the frame of reference. When considering something you can first ask yourself, “What’s the frame? What’s the scale?”. It matters because what you eat for breakfast matters in the Micro, but if you eat breakfast at all doesn’t matter a drop in the Macro. Make sense?

The thing about Frame though, which you can think of like a camera lens or a literal picture frame you hold up in front of yourself, is that it doesn’t just change size. It can also be re-positioned. It can also be altered. Depending on who is holding the frame, the perspective can be drastically different.

As an aside for those of you who like juggling multiple concepts at once, this “frame control” is a key aspect to everything from business negotiations to cult leader manipulation. When someone else is holding the frame, you are beholden to their choice is perspective. If you let them hold it too long, you risk losing your own sense of reality and self. In the extreme analogy, they might rose-color glass that frame, or obscure half of it with black cloth, and now your sense of reality is even less objective. In anything we start with Awareness, always, but from there it’s about interpretation of that information to form a perspective. Frame control is hands down one of the most important things about Perspective.

We can get into more detail on this another time but for now, consider the additions of: Vantage, Scope, and Multiplicity.

The tool I want to give you today stands on the shoulders of this notion of Frame and takes it into a whole new dimension: Cosmology.

For our purposes we’re looking at Personal Cosmology. Which is to say, the complete totality of how you map and understand your Universe. The models, ideas, and perspectives you use to create clarity for yourself. Principles and concepts that guide your thinking and how you view.

I’m going to share with you a model for tracking Cosmology that has served me well. To begin, we’ll go on a bit of a journey.

First, take all of what we’ve talked about so far, and imagine you’re using it to wander through a city. You’re keeping track of perspective, frame, and scale. You’re studying what’s around you as you stroll the streets, looking at the unique buildings and the people that live there. Everything around you is built above ground. We’ll call this Structure.

You find yourself in a nice little park and sit upon a bench to watch the city hum and drum around you. As you sit there your mind wanders to the unique style of the city. The particular way they build and the style of doors and windows they choose. The colors that are most prominent and the way the roofs slant. There’s clearly a style to it that is consistent across the whole city. Even the roads have a unique way in which they curve into the round-abouts and the trees planted along the streets are of a particular sort. Clearly this city has been built with a particular understanding of design, efficiency, and preference in mind. We’ll call this Culture.

However, as you sit and consider the Culture of the city further, you realize there are aspects of it that feel familiar. Not in the particulars of the paint and the layout of the roads so much as the thinking. The cars drive on the right side of the road. The buildings have roofs. The people wear clothes. At first the ideas seem silly; of course they wear clothes and build roofs. But the longer you sit with that thought you realize that’s not really an absolute. In the tropics and the jungles where tribal people still live and the weather is hot, they hardly wear any clothes at all, and their roofs are thatched grass and palms, if anything at all. You realize that the ideas that at first felt universal actually aren’t. Some cultures stand upon certain agreements and idea, while others may have some of those but in turn have a whole other set of agreement and ideas. There’s a pulse underneath the Culture. This is Principle.

Your mind races, how fascinating. If Culture isn’t the bottom, Maybe Principle isn’t either? You come to find that to wear clothes or not is still an aspect of Culture. But the reason it’s there is the Principles of how we care for our bodies. There’s a principle of propriety, and there’s a principle of Naturalism. Yet both cultures have a Principle of Self Preservation. How interesting! So then, what’s under that?

Thinking about it for a moment as you watch the people of this particular city stroll the park walk, you surmise that both Principles of Propriety and Naturalism could be sitting upon the same thing. Something that they both require and agree upon. Then it clicks: they both rely on the idea that the body must be considered. That everything from social to survival tells them that our bodies cannot be ignored. This is Foundation.

As you sit content in this new revelation, appreciating the wisdom of it all, the nagging thought comes to the surface. Is there something beneath that? Is there a Fundamental part? you suppose for a moment and the thought settles into your mind gently: The fact that we have bodies at all seems like a pretty solid Fundamental truth. If we didn’t, none of this would matter. There would be no body to consider, thus no body to dress or not dress. If that were the case there would be no Culture around clothing and the entire Structure of adornment wouldn’t exist.

you sit back and ponder what you’ve just obtained...

I tend to call this configuration the Cosmological Hierarchy. It’s a stack of holonic concepts that feed on and hold each other.

Fundamental is existence as it is. It is the most abstract and the least considered because if it wasn’t everything we wouldn’t be here to consider it.

Foundation is concepts that just are. They are the building blocks of reality and any given Fundamental is utilized by a vast spread of the Principles above it. To this effect most everything in our experience shares Foundations.

Above that is Principle; ideas and notions that can be formulated from the base materia. They’re not specific, they don’t tell you how to live, and you can share them, even with a person of complete opposites. Never the less they do set the tone of what we DO with ourselves.

Next is Culture. I like to think of this not in terms of demographics but as in the “style” of any given domain. There’s a culture to the US, a culture to how people make coffee, and a culture to philosophy of the Greeks. Culture is the coherent thinking and perceiving pattern of any group.

And it is from Culture that we create Structure. Given the aspects defined in Culture, using the implications of Principles, Structure is what we do with it on a day to day basis. It’s how everything beneath expresses itself. Its the gross material world that can be created, and when we’re ready to change it, must be taken apart.

But here’s the catch.

Most people are hanging out in Structure.

They think about Structure, they see Structure, they interpret Structure. It is their whole world and the idea that anything is beneath the surface doesn’t cross their minds.

Some folks also consider Culture. This is one of the greatest reasons for international travel, because you face Culture in the most literal and commonly held way. The language, colors, clothing, food, and customs are all different. How could you miss it? But to be clear: in this system of thinking, Japan and Korea have almost identical Culture. How they apply it is different, but under the hood they’re very similar. Canada and the U.S. also have a nearly identical Culture. Remember, Culture is the particular sets of Principles any group holds and how they consider them. You sometimes hear the statement “The Western Mind”, which lumps all of Europe with the US and Canada. This is a reference to a Culture.

However I will add: Culture is a big slice of the pie. And for that reason I often reference Deep Culture (the thing that Japan and Korea share) and High Culture (the particulars of Japan itself).

Going to the other end of the scale, there are very few people who spend a lot of time thinking about Fundamentals in a meaningful way. It’s extremely abstract for our minds and for the most part isn’t something we can interact with directly outside of literally every single moment. We’re always touching Fundamentals at at some point it’s akin to asking a fish, “What is water?”. That said there are some who do. True Zen explores our relationship with Fundamentals, as does the Immanent Metaphysics but my dear friend Forrest Landry. It’s a rarity, but it is within the reach of a well honed mind.

Coming up one layer into the Foundation, we’re now exploring the nature of our particular experience. It’s still vast and all encompassing, but the things we find here we can hold with our minds. Foundation is most usefully considered when trying to move your Frame (perspective) into one that is completely alien. If you’re trying to think and interpret the world like a deer or an elk, it helps to go back to Foundations. If you find yourself needing to understand the actions and statements of a sociopath or a narcissist, you’ll want to poke around in Foundation. This is the stuff we usually take for granted, but that we can indeed “take” as it has some sort of philosophical substance.

And that brings us to the sweet spot.

Not so deep as the ineffable Fundamentals but not so surface level particular as Structure. Right in the middle of it all is Principles, and this is where I find the most effective use of Cosmological Hierarchy.

I often think of the Principles layer as the response to, “Fundamentals and Foundations? So what?”. It’s the bread and butter of consideration. They’re not personal, they’re not customized to you, but they’re extremely useful when contemplating just about anything.

When you’re faced with a question about why something is as it is in the Culture or Structure of a person, place, thing, or idea, you can almost always find the answer in Principles. It is the stuff that allows you to relate to others, and yet it can help you truly distinguish where differences come from.

What’s more, in the way the world has turned chaotic and wild of late, Principle are uniquely valuable. This is because they do not hold charge, they do not hold emotion, there’s no bias. They are statements of fact about how the universe IS in a particular frame. They’re easier to hold and because of that you can consider a lot of them at once without getting stuck in the chaos. If Structure is the wind and the waves on the surface of the ocean as a storm rages, considering things from the vantage of Principles is like floating 20 feet under water, or way up above the clouds in the sunshine. You can still see it, and in a sense feel it, but you’re not in it.

Principles thinking is the definition of the wise saying “Be in the world but not of the world”, and indeed this is where the notion of “First Principles Design” comes from. It’s about asking “what is definitely True here?” and building off of that.

As the political theatre rages, you’ll find that shaving off all of the drama, personality, and debate leaves you with nothing but Deep Culture. And yet to hold even that it a task, especially if you want to consider multiple different Deep Cultures. So you gently sort through it like a kid looking for sea shells at the beach until you’ve found the treasures within. When doing this I ask myself, “What are the Principles of this perspective? What are the definitive concepts under the hood? What can I take away from this and still have an accurate sense of the thing even though I discard the details?”

So your homework, if you are so inclined, is to spend some time considering the world around you. Pick something easy, or pick something big and loud, but either way pick something you don’t like. Sort through the Structure (actions and expression) and the Culture (perspective and mindset) of the thing and try to identify what the underlying Principles are that you think that thing, person, or group would agree with. Imagine asking, “Would you agree that ______ is true?” and if you got it right, they’d say yes.

Once you’ve got a few, let go of your consideration of the thing itself and just settle back into the Principles you’ve found. Look at the thing again without any of the baggage, yet considering these Principles. How does your relationship to the thing land now? Even though you disliked before, can you tolerate it now? Can you find common ground with this thing that you hated before?

At the layers of Principle and below there is no good or bad, you or me, us vs them, there’s just Us. There’s just this world; this universe. Principles are the facets on the diamond, but it’s still one diamond. I’m not asking you to love everything. You’ll get there. I’m just suggesting that at the layer of Principles, we’re all bumping elbows.

To your broadening perspective,