Some of these are true axioms. Some are meta-axioms - derived beliefs about how the world works in general, that may or may not hold for absolutely *every* situation, but are a good place to start. And some are simply statements of preference - sometimes of preferred worldview.

(These are not "how to live one's life" type instructions. That would probably be simpler; at its most basic/meta, it would be summed up in the command: "Be Alive!")

This I believe:

• Life
• Lack of change = death (stagnation). Change does not necessarily = life.
• Corollary: (Endpoint, i.e. unchanging) Perfection = death as well.
• There are multiple "best" _____, for anything remotely complex. The assertion that this is false is dogmatism.
• Catch: Anything is "best" for something. Likewise, it is also "worst"; this is trivial. For most practical things, however, one can't say that *everything* is "best", just that there are multiple apices.
• There is no endpoint to life, or to any long-term (particularly spiritual) development - though it may be log-scale.
• Sufficiently increasing skill does not get one "near the end" of possible development, but rather near the beginning of another level thereof; there is no endpoint.
• Corollary: Perceiving oneself as being "near the end" probably indicates lack of learning, for anything but trivial skills / areas.
• People
• Others - and the outside world in general - are dependable only to act in keeping with their history, not their promises or desires. This does not deny the capacity to change, just the dependability thereof.
• Corollary: It is unwise to depend on others' actions or non-actions to a degree that leaves you vulnerable if they act in a way you aren't expecting, or to expect them to act differently than is their wont. That is, you must be able to deal with their doing anything, and most importantly, with their continuing to do exactly what it is (pattern-wise) they already are doing for the indefinite future, because that is the most likely event. Do not get into situations where you do not have an acceptable way to deal with (or, simply, to accept) all possible outcomes.
• [Clarification: Yes, this does entail a sort of rigorous independence, particularly of emotion; it doesn't necessarily entail non-interaction though. You just have to find those little paths that the world makes easy, that also fulfill your needs. Rather like aikido. Does make "trust" a rather thorny issue, though.]
• Corollary: Don't gamble unless you're willing, and can afford, to lose.
• Catch: You can probably afford to lose a lot more than you think you can.
• People, and systems, are generally very predictable. The interesting ones aren't - because not being able to predict them indicates some lack of knowledge or understanding which can be gained from them (other than the trivial case of pure randomness).
• Corollary: This applies to one's own unpredictability, or violated expectations, also.
• One can change any of one's perceptions, in any sense of the word, given sufficient skill and motivation.
• Corollary: One can determine one's experience of any situation - whether by changing actions or perception - without needing to rely on others to change. This is mainly a matter of skill and effort... which does mean that some changes are outside one's [current] reach.
• Most things are possible; most situations can be resolved.
• Corollary: Most situations can be resolved purely on the basis of one's own actions.
• Most deadlocks can be solved by going one more step meta, identifying an axiom conflict, or identifying a difference in semantics / framing.
• Axiom conflicts cannot be resolved, but can be negotiated. Provided that they actually are *true* axiom conflicts, and not higher-level concepts masquerading as axioms - a distressingly frequent occurance.
• Understanding
• Everything has a reason. Said reason may not, however, be psychologically acceptable, or be able to be determined with enough accuracy given available data.
• It is usually easier to extrapolate into more meta than into more detail (the reverse); going more meta involves syncretism, while going more detail involves specific knowledge.
• It is desirable to know things at multiple levels of description / detail, ranging from specific to highly meta. The more, and the more in-depth at each, the better. Generally speaking, one does not learn as well from being told the meta-level conclusions without understanding the one-less-meta-level which entailed them, and certainly does not understand the situation as well either (i.e. if provided only with the "executive summary" version of events). And in any case, I don't trust others to do my thinking for me. :-P
• It is desirable to understand people from their point of view, *and* from a more external behavioristic perspective. Neither alone will give you a good understanding of who they are; behaviorism won't tell you what it's like to be them (and give you almost no grounds for extrapolating behavior in unusual circumstances); purely internal perspective won't give you the perspective needed to *notice* particular patterns of behavior.
• Corollary: It is desirable to understand *oneself* from an external perspective. You already have the internal one.
• Coercion of any sort is not a reliable way to control, predict, or direct the behavior of others, except insofar as it is constantly enforced. When it is not, expect them to do what they want. Viz. drug laws.
• Corollary: Changing what they want, or adapting to it, *is* a reliable method. Viz. advertising.
• Personal change / development
• Most major personal change happens quickly. However, the integration following it, and the preparation for "jumping in" preceding it, can take very long indeed.
• [Aside for a definition: "Near-side" and "far-side" refer to one's perspective and understanding of an event respectively before and after it occurs.]
• Truly major personal change cannot be made significantly easier by preparation. Trying to temper the blow is a near-side fallacy, a form of fear.
• Said fear is probably justified near-side, but not far-side. The distinction is incomprehensible near-side.
• Corollary: It is rather difficult to "reach" someone from the far side who's not there yet, except by attempting to give them a glimpse of it. Direct argument is relatively useless. This is in no way a fault of the person involved. (E.g., to convince someone who's always depressed that getting a good job will be good for them overall; they lack the conception of a positive-feedback cycle. Thus, the best approach is probably to put them *in* a positive-feedback cycle of some sort - no matter how small - so that they have some core experience to go off of. [See below.] Or to let them bottom out and and thus stop procrastinating from doing whatever realizations they're afraid of.)
• Knowledge, aka "How I am a gnostic":
• It is not possible to know that anyone is having the same experience as you - and in principle this will never happen. The best one can do is to have a working hypothesis that it is, which is reliable in direct proportion to the overlap in a) experience and b) symptoms between the people involved.
• Generalization: One's capacity for understanding *anything* is directly related to, and strictly limited by, one's experiences, because one must have at least some experiential overlap with the target to be understood. This does extend by analogy, metaphor, etc., however, and as it's recursive it is of course infinite - i.e. for any particular set of experiences, there are an infinite number of things one can understand. (And how well you understand them - including simulations of experiences you haven't had - is directly proportional to how "far", and inversely to how "well-connected", they are from core experiences.) However, these are still limited; more experience gives you a greater "cone" / "network" of possible-understandings. (Viz. "What Mary Didn't Know" as a good example of this - google it if you haven't read it.)
• It is generally desirable to understand as much as possible / feasible.
• Corollary to the above two: It is desirable to have as "broad" a base of experiences as possible, so as to thus have "access to" understanding as much as possible. However, "broad" in this sense is ill-defined from the front end, as it is impossible to jump the understanding gap without the aid of retrospection; in other words, you have no way of knowing for certain just *what* experiences will broaden your scope, so as to seek them. So you go on guess, accident, and hearsay.
• Experiences that *are* outside one's reachable network are relatively rare.
• Corollary: Most experiences are predictable in outcome - i.e. one can more-or-less guess how things will turn out, knowing the important factors involved, unless it turns out to be one of those rare things that *does* cross over. In which case your predictions of what it will be like will be mostly useless.
• The main advantage humans have over computers and mules is in two skills: discrimination and integration. That is, the ability to tell what is important and what is noise (this subsumes pattern-recognition); and to add new experiences or ideas to an already-existing (vast) network thereof. and quickly use the result. This is in a sense my definition of human intelligence. In this sense, any situation that works against one's being able to implement these skills successfully - rather, that does not ensure that your route of action is to implement them - is dehumanizing and to be avoided at all cost.
• Catch: New "levels" of skill (see above) often have very different sets of properties for what is important and what irrelevant. This is where the ritual of "unlearning and learning anew" comes in.
• Corollary: Intelligence, therefore, will also help one more quickly adapt to new levels, and thus progress more quickly when the situation changes (or more accurately said, when one's perception of it does due to more perspective / experience).
• Corollary 2: Very experienced teachers are generally good at describing what is important - *at their level*, or more likely, at one level below them (as, if they truly understood their own, they'd be out of it soon). Alas, they often suck at describing what is important at all the levels needed to *get* there, or leave out critical parts. Thus, they are useful mainly to give a glimpse of "what it's like", and to provide reference-points to know when you've arrived. Some make the reverse error - they concentrate too much on the "basics", and give no guidance on how to jump to the next; this too impedes progress. Combining the two types, and being able to understand what you're getting and discriminate/integrate it (hm, that again), can make things go much, much faster than either alone.