Values for Explorers

Aurelia and Black is a name based on two colours - Black and Gold - that invoke the things I want for my customers - strength, intelligence, responsibility, prestige, wealth and success.  Together we can achieve these things by embracing our values of curiosity, character, consent, trade and science.

This an odd collection of traits is suited to people who expect to learn and achieve through intellectual efforts. As a brand and as a community success comes from living these values to the fullest.

Why we explore

These two values articulate the purpose of exploration, and the value of your journey.

Curiosity

Open minded exploration of the intellectual world.

It is fashionable these days to suggest that specific ideas are best and that others are wrong. I expect this is true, and I have my favourites, but it is very hard to know which ideas are best.

Being curious is being humble enough to know you might be wrong, or that you have something to learn, and confident enough to know you will sort truth from fiction on your own terms.

Curiosity also requires tolerance and bravery. Tolerance from the people around you who have different ideas than yours, and bravery to pursue the truth and to demand tolerance from others.

Being curious isn’t easy.

Character

A commitment to building the content of ones own knowledge and personality for success.

No one is born, and few are raised, with all the qualities required for success and happiness. Valuing character means recognising that success takes effort.

Being poor and unhappy is what happens when your efforts don’t work out, and they usually won’t. It takes determination to start, freedom to act, a dose of luck, and the persistence to follow through. Much is outside your control, but much of what is needed lies inside ourselves.

You must decide what to be, learn how to achieve that, and work to acquire the qualities needed to overcome adversity and flourish.

Where we are going

The journey is important but unless you choose a destination you will be lost.

These values describe how I want the end of my journey to look. Yours may be different, and I wish you well, but without these values I fear many will loose their way, and I know many have.

Mutual consent

Ethical conduct is based on the mutual consent of the individuals involved.

Many of the biggest problems in the world - violence, poverty and injustice - happen when people wanting something - bodies, minds, money and attention - try to get it from others without their consent.

Efforts to fix these problems create heat and resistance when they make fresh demands that people don’t want to consent to. Demands of money, silence, or conformity from good people mean others - good or bad - fighting back. Trying to change others, without their consent, creates situations in which nobody wins. Good intentions don't change this.

Fair trade

A commitment to offer something for something.

This is obviously the value we most frequently put into practice when selling - whether it is books or anything else. Selling a good quality book, at a fair price is an exercise in integrity.

The same principle applies to other kinds of relationship. Selling your profile on a dating app - offering the company of a good person in exchange for the same thing in return. That is a process that starts with being a good person and ends with persuading someone of equal measure that you are what you are.

Every kind of relationship throughout society work best when real things - money, company, trust, whatever - are offered for real things in return. These are the bonds that can be sustained, because relationships that work this way are a win for both sides.

Science

Reliable knowledge about the world comes from the open discussion of testable ideas.

It is testing our ideas that gives us confidence that they are true. We think the world is real. Our eyes can deceive us from time to time but there is no better way to see the world, and no world that is more reliable and solid than the one we see. Testing our ideas with experiments proves our ideas line up with what we can see.

Discussing our ideas, and our experiences, is the simplest experiment and the first test of any idea. It is also a opportunity for avoidable conflict, when we forget to test and challenge ideas as friends, and slip into intolerance.

Life itself is one big experiment. We use the knowledge we gain from science and philosophy - and looking and touching and hearing - to work out what to do. We don't guess at that, but we must generalise what we see around us to make fundamental ideas that we apply to our own lives.

Here it is possible to get lost in our ideas and believe in ideas that don't connect with the real world. We can be fooled by ideas we hear from others. Science helps us stay grounded in the real. It helps us plot the connections between our ideas of the world and the world itself. Science keeps us on course.