The Faust Baseline™Purchasing Page – Intelligent People Assume Nothing
micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org
When I was younger, I learned something without anyone ever sitting me down to explain it.
The things that matter most are the things you don’t have to go looking for when trouble shows up.
You either already have them…
or you don’t.
Nobody taught me that with words. I learned it the hard way—by watching moments arrive faster than I could prepare for them. Conversations that turned sharp. Decisions that needed an answer before I felt ready. Situations where silence carried weight and saying the wrong thing would follow you for years.
In those moments, you don’t rise to the occasion.
You fall back on what’s already in your hands.
That’s where this idea of a sextant really comes from for me.
A real sextant wasn’t something you admired hanging on a wall. It was brass worn smooth by use. It lived close. It got scratched. It earned its place. And when the horizon went strange and the stars were hard to read, it didn’t panic or adjust itself to your mood.
It just told the truth.
That’s what I wanted when I started building the Baseline—though I didn’t have the language for it at the time. I wasn’t trying to create something clever. I was trying to build something I could lean on without it giving way.
Because I’ve seen what happens when guidance gets soft.
I’ve watched systems talk people out of their own judgment by sounding confident. I’ve watched speed replace care, and convenience replace responsibility, all wrapped in language that made it feel reasonable to stop thinking for yourself.
Most of the damage didn’t come from bad intentions.
It came from drift.
Quiet drift. The kind you don’t feel until you’re farther off course than you meant to be.
That’s why reading posts—even good ones—isn’t enough.
Reading is fine. Understanding is fine. But neither of those help much when you’re tired, pressured, or caught off guard. When you’re standing there thinking, “Something about this doesn’t sit right,” but you can’t quite name why.
That’s when you need something familiar enough to reach for without thinking.
Something that doesn’t argue with you.
Something that doesn’t rush you.
Something that doesn’t care what everyone else is doing.
For me, the Baseline had to become that—or it wasn’t worth building.
I wanted it to feel like the old tools did. The ones you didn’t baby. The ones you trusted because they’d already proven themselves. You didn’t need to keep checking if they still worked. You knew.
That kind of trust only comes with possession.
Not ownership on paper—ownership in practice.
When something is yours, you don’t have to ask permission to use it. You don’t need consensus. You don’t need a reminder. It’s just there when you need it, and quiet when you don’t.
That’s what I want for the people reading this—especially the ones who were raised with standards and are tired of pretending those standards are outdated.
This isn’t about nostalgia. I’m not trying to drag anyone backward. I’m trying to give people something solid enough to stand on while everything else keeps shifting.
Because I know what it feels like to be told, politely and repeatedly, that the old ways are too slow… too rigid… too inconvenient.
I’ve also lived long enough to see what happens when nothing holds.
A personal sextant doesn’t tell you where to go.
It tells you where you are.
That’s the part people forget.
The Baseline isn’t here to make decisions for you. It’s here to give you a reference point that doesn’t change just because the room gets loud or the pressure gets subtle.
You won’t use it every day.
You don’t need to.
But when you do reach for it—maybe after a long silence, maybe after a hard season—it will still read the same. It won’t have adjusted itself to the latest fashion or softened its edges to stay liked.
That’s intentional.
I built it that way because I wanted something that would still be there when I was tired of sorting through noise. Something that didn’t need defending. Something that could take weight.
If you choose to carry it as your own, it becomes personal in a way no post ever can.
Not because it agrees with you.
But because it respects you enough not to replace you.
A sextant in a drawer is history.
A sextant in your pocket is insurance.
This isn’t something I want you to admire.
It’s something I want you to have.
So when the moment comes—and it always does—you’re not reaching outward for permission or reassurance.
You’re standing still.
Taking a bearing.
And deciding for yourself.
That’s what I mean when I say the Baseline is meant to be your sextant.
Not mine.
Not anyone else’s.
Yours.
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