Frauds can be the bringers of wisdom almost as often as a broken clock.

Do I refuse to hear the penetrating critique of a drunk in passing who says, “hey, buddy, you’re just as filthy inside as I am out here on the street. Go fuck yourself”? Is he no less right because he’s a liar?

And if I’m honest with myself, it’s my own fraudulence that teaches me. Then I stop swatting away the swarms of white lies that encircle some rotting portion of my personality, and they settle and devour the rot.

The flies are my teachers.

And so a minister hawking salvation for a buck is someone who might occasionally teach me something. Not about God and goodness, but about this rot itself. And after all, nothing that is known is wholly true. Sublime heights are reached on wings that become shredded like the wings of old bees. The farthest reach is defined as much by what it can’t grasp.

So why seek truth in trustworthy sources? Why trust a guide once removed when the only valid measure is my own? Failure and over-reach are the real teachers. And what is insight except the shredding of what I thought I knew, and long trusted?