12 Rules for Life (Full) ENGLISH

Everything shifts and changes in the real world. Each hypothetically separate
thing is made up of smaller hypothetically separate things, and is
simultaneously part of larger hypothetically separate things. The boundaries
between the levels—and between different things themselves at a given level
—are neither clear nor self-evident, objectively. They must be established
practically, pragmatically, and they retain their validity only under very
narrow and specified conditions. The conscious illusion of complete and
sufficient perception only sustains itself, for example—only remains
sufficient for our purposes—when everything goes according to plan. Under
such circumstances, what we see is accurate enough, so that there is no utility
in looking farther. To drive successfully, we don’t have to understand, or
even perceive, the complex machinery of our automobiles. The hidden
complexities of our private cars only intrude on our consciousness when that
machinery fails, or when we collide unexpectedly with something (or
something with us). Even in the case of mere mechanical failure (to say
nothing of a serious accident) such intrusion is always felt, at least initially,
as anxiety-provoking. That’s a consequence of emergent uncertainty.
A car, as we perceive it, is not a thing, or an object. It is instead something
that takes us somewhere we want to go. It is only when it stops taking us and
going, in fact, that we perceive it much at all. It is only when a car quits,
suddenly—or is involved in an accident and must be pulled over to the side
of the road—that we are forced to apprehend and analyze the myriad of parts
that “car as thing that goes” depends on. When our car fails, our
incompetence with regards to its complexity is instantly revealed. That has
practical consequences (we don’t get to go to where we were going), as well
as psychological: our peace of mind disappears along with our functioning
vehicle. We must generally turn to the experts who inhabit garages and
workshops to restore both functionality to our vehicle and simplicity to our
perceptions. That’s mechanic-as-psychologist.
It is precisely then that we can understand, although we seldom deeply
consider, the staggeringly low-resolution quality of our vision and the
inadequacy of our corresponding understanding. In a crisis, when our thing
no longer goes, we turn to those whose expertise far transcends ours to
restore the match between our expectant desire and what actually happens.
This all means that the failure of our car can also force us to confront the
uncertainty of the broader social context, which is usually invisible to us, in