I. Nothing Difficult - Failure is rarely related to the situation that receives the blame, but more commonly is the result of an initial self-defeat.

II. Blindness - A person can only look at what they are facing, while all else escapes their sight and goes unseen and unconsidered. Common errors in vision include focusing on the irrelevant, covering one's eyes, looking only immediately ahead, and staring at the sky. When people miss everything around them but are ignorant of their situation, they live as self-assured men unaware of their blindness.

III. A Lack of Artistry - There are many people who are slow to make good decisions but fast to make bad decisions. They are like musicians who emulate without having a sense of music. Either they do not possess the necessary talent, or worse: their rush for results prevents them from grasping a larger context that would provide what they most desire.

IV. Patterns, Layers, and Complexity - Many of our differences in worldview result from having vastly different understandings of life. The more we understand, the less fascinating or confusing the simpler problems become. Likewise, when we see someone fascinated or confused about something we figured out long ago, it is difficult to take them very seriously. This is because the active mind constantly explores new unknowns and possibilities and has little use for simple, already answered questions.

V. Submission Befitting of Slaves - The timid and passive are the beggars of life, for they wait upon the offerings of others and seek contentment in scraps and dregs, either glorifying them as holy, dressing them up with royal illusions, denouncing the superior as being merely equal, casting extravagant fantasies, cursing life with nihilistic fury, and in the rarest case: accepting the consequences of their inability to attempt heroic action.

VI. Enduring Value - The best wealth consists not of money or things or honors or praise, but of the internal ability to create. The person blessed with creativity can endure nearly any circumstance for he finds himself ultimately undefeated after every conflict, brave with endless ammunition and a spirit forever strong.

VII. From a Dialogue on Tradition

A:	How great is this life, this world! Still everything good prospers and perpetuates as the cycle of Tradition lives strong.
B:	Aye old man, this is no longer your world, and the great era of which you speak has passed. What remains today is a crass, ignorant world that knows only of its desire for self-indulgence and immediate pleasure. You may have fond memories but your culture has perished, and with it all hope for the future.
A:	Oh gloomy half-learned youngster -- you speak like a foolish preacher who would wish to indiscriminately preserve all things for all time, yet like the preacher you have never felt the instinct to love what is best. Instead you only plot and scheme to wrap all life in chains in a futile attempt to save it from organic fate.
B:	I assure you I am no preacher and have long ago discarded cheerful fables about promised worlds. Yet you cannot deny that your times possessed a substance that the present day lacks entirely. Has old age taken honesty from the memories of your younger days?
A:	What you say has a grain of truth and I concede that today's culture is lower than that of my age. But there has always been low culture, and despite how widespread its grasp or efficient its propagation, it is of no great concern. All civilization is a process of creation and preservation. Any fool can build a monument in tribute to stupidity and amusement, but such a monument is only fool's toil because it is quickly forgotten and crumbles without a maintainer, allowing the land upon which it was built to naturalize and reclaim itself. The work of the wicked is always undone by nature, even if the wicked reign for two thousand years and encourage destruction with seemingly benevolent justifications. Even the best piece of junk culture promoted by exploiters and cultural destroyers is forgotten in 5 or 10 or 20 years. Their great efforts at destructive social revolutions instead create temporary social trends that only last as long as enormous economic and legal maneuvers can artificially sustain them. Eventually the people discover the truth for themselves at which point public discourse no longer requires lies of feigned support for ideas contrary to reality. Everything that is in accordance with the gods will last the test of time. Look at the music that inspired the great, the literature and philosophy that instructed the best minds, and the worldviews that created the best civilizations in history. All of these are centuries old, yet endure! It does not matter at all if there are few or no great producers today because what we have is vast, eternal, and has been preserved so that the creators of the future will have a cultural tradition to which they belong. In that way does the culture of Tradition live strong while the inferior passes and is forgotten in time.