The Fact: Unaided individuals are inadequate in both power and virtue.
How It Works: The first fact may be the least threatening, since few of us expect to refuse aid, to reject every idea or piece of information that comes from someone else. However, this fact is strategic because it offers the kind of humility required to take seriously the other five facts, as well as any other institution
We can easily be offended by the fact that individuals need to trust something larger, such as a system of laws, and that may explain the wide range of ways this fact is expressed (e.g. implying adequacy of a particular institution, spiritual or secular, as though this fact did not extend to individual institutions as well).
Diverse Citations:
You will say to yourself, "My strength and the might of my hand has accumulated this wealth for me." But you must remember the Lord your God, for it is He that gives you strength to make wealth. Devarim 8:17-18
There is no righteous man on earth who does good and sins not. Kohelet 7:20
Youths shall become tired and weary, and young men shall stumble... Yeshayahu 40:30-31
Hard man's heart is to restrain, and wavering. Bhagavad Gita 6.35
Of many thousand mortals, perchance one strives for Truth. Bhagavad Gita 7.3
He who discards scriptural injunctions and acts according to his own whims attains neither perfection, nor happiness, nor the supreme destination. Bhagavad Gita 16.23
Where the greatest virtue resides, only the teachings may reveal. Laozi 21
It is futile trying to possess the universe and act on shaping it in the direction of one’s ambition. The instruments of the universe cannot be shaped. Act upon it and you will fail, grasp onto it and it will slip. Laozi 29
"These sons belong to me, and this wealth belongs to me," with such thoughts a fool is tormented. He himself does not belong to himself; how much less sons and wealth? Dhammapada 62
As a cowherd with his staff drives his cows into the stable, so do Age and Death drive the life of men. Dhammapada 135
There is no such thing as perfect enlightenment to obtain. If a perfectly enlightened Buddha were to say to himself, 'I am enlightened' he would be admitting there is an individual person, a separate self and personality, and would therefore not be a perfectly enlightened Buddha. Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita Sutra, Ch. 9
The Master said, "A sage I will never get to meet; if I manage to meet a gentleman, I suppose I would be content. An excellent person I will never get to meet; if I manage to meet someone with constancy, I suppose I would be content...I think even constancy will be hard to find. Lun Yu 7:26
The Master said, "If you are respectful but lack ritual you will become exasperating; if you are careful but lack ritual you will become timid; if you are courageous but lack ritual you will become unruly; and if you are upright but lack ritual you will become inflexible." Lun Yu 8:2
Life and death are governed by fate, wealth and honor are determined by Heaven. Lun Yu 12:5
“What’s all this waste for?” they questioned. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price, and the money given to the poor!” … Jesus rebuked them, “You’ll always have the poor.” Matthew 26:1
He told them a story to illustrate the point. “There was a rich man whose land was very productive,” he began. “The man thought to himself, ‘what shall I do, because I’ve nowhere to store my produce?’ He decided, 'this is what I’ll do—I’ll pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and I’ll be able to store all my produce and possessions. Then I’ll tell myself, ‘Self, you have enough for many years, so take it easy, eat, drink, and have fun!’ But God told him, ‘Foolish man! Tonight your life is required to be returned—and who will get everything you’ve stored up?’” Luke 12:16-21
Inwardly I love God’s law, but I see a different law at work in my body, fighting against the principles I have decided on in my mind and defeating me, so I become a prisoner of the law of sin inside me. What a hopeless man I am! Who will rescue me from this dead body of mine? Romans 7:22-24
Man was created weak in flesh. Quran 4:28
Man is given to hasty deeds. Quran 17:11
Walk not on the earth with insolence: for thou canst not rend the earth asunder, nor reach the mountains in height. Quran 17:37
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” Newton, I. (1959). In Turnbull, H.W. (ED.). The correspondence of Isaac Newton, volume 1, (p. 416). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
For scientific evidence that the butterfly effect constrains individual power, see Lorenz, E.N. (1963). Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 20 (2), 130–141
For scientific evidence that individual virtue is constrained, see Slovic, P. (2007). If I look at the mass I will never act: Psychic numbing and genocide, Judgment and Decision Making, 2 (2), 79–95
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