Wizard’s Rules

The Sword of Truth is a series of high fantasy adventure novels by Terry Goodkind. It follows the lives of wizards, sorceresses, and other magic and non magic people as they battle for their very existence against several enemies. After the series Goodkind wrote several other books taking place in the same fantasy world. One smaller series of books follows the main characters after the events of the main books. In the series and beyond it Goodkind lists out several Wizard’s Rules. These are guidelines and rules to live by for the characters, specifically the wizards, in the series. While they claim to be secretive the characters in the series seem to dispense them freely giving about one per book in the Sword of Truth series. The first eleven rules are numbered and associated with a book in the main Sword of Truth series. The final three are found in the books written after the series and are not given a specific number associated with the rule. These rules are based on a series of fantasy novels, so take them for what they are; one way to go about living and an interesting April 1st episode topic to get you thinking differently. Read through them, write them down, and try applying them to your life. Take a scientific approach and see if applying these rules makes a difference in your life. Episode Breakdown People are stupid. We are all people. “People are stupid. They can be made to believe any lie because either they want to believe it’s true or because they are afraid it’s true.” ~ Wizard’s First Rule People will believe something because they want it to be true. Desire for a lie to be true gives it validation. We can start to believe a lie because we want to believe it is true. Just because you want something to be a certain way, doesn’t mean that it will be that way. People will believe something because they are afraid of it or afraid it is true. Fear of a lie gives validation to that lie. Being afraid that something might be true means that you admit the possibility of it being true. You have to objectively look at the facts and not be ruled by fear. This describes tactics used in sales all the time. The Jones Effect plays on the fear of missing out (FOMO) or not having what your neighbor’s have. Look at advertising to see this play to peoples desires. This can be used for manipulation or freedom. In the books this rule is shown to be used as a way to manipulate people. It is also used as a self assessment tool to keep the characters from falling prey to a lie. The intention is to free yourself of biases based on desire or fear. The greatest harm can result from the best intentions. Sometimes doing what seems right at the time actually causes more harm than good. The full effects of an action may be unknown or unclear to you. There will likely not be any obvious signs that what you are doing could cause harm. You may not see the harm at first because you are still reaping the benefits or not looking at it. The harm may be something much further down the line. You may not even be around for when the actual harm hits. To avoid causing harm you must know the effects and long term outcomes of your actions. This involves a bit of wisdom that may only be earned by making mistakes. It also means not falling victim to the first rule. The key is to have forethought about what you are doing to do the right thing and avoid harm. This rule comes into play a lot when making changes to existing or legacy code. Your changes may solve the problem that you are having. However, it may break other areas or have long term consequences.