IS IT AND... Ecclesiastes
If the Beatitudes describe Reality as seen from above, Ecclesiastes describes Reality as experienced from within. The ISIT Construct reconciles both of these poignant perspectives.
In the Beatitudes, Reality is described from above.
Jesus speaks as one already aligned with Infinity—unconcerned with outcomes, untouched by cycles, grounded beyond time. The Beatitudes show what life looks like when IS is not mistaken for IT, and meaning is not demanded from the finite.
Ecclesiastes could not be more different.
Here, Reality is described from inside time—inside effort, seasons, decay, repetition, and death. Tradition attributes the book to Solomon, the wisest king ever to rule.
And yet, when Ecclesiastes is examined carefully from the perspective of ISITism, a startling possibility emerges:
The wisest king in history still didn’t see the full picture.
Not because he lacked intelligence.
Not because he lacked experience.
But because he mistook mastery of IT for mastery of Reality itself.
A Mind That Exhausted IT
Ecclesiastes is extraordinary precisely because of how thoroughly it interrogates the finite realm.
The author examines:
Work and achievement
Pleasure and indulgence
Wisdom and knowledge
Power, legacy, and reputation
Justice and injustice
Life and death
Nothing is spared.
And everywhere he looks, he finds the same result:
“Vanity of vanities… all is vanity.”
This is not arrogance.
It is impermanence.
Emptiness.
Transience.
Based on the ISIT Construct, the author is describing IT with ruthless accuracy.
Forms decay.
Outcomes dissolve.
Patterns repeat.
Nothing accumulates.
On this level, Ecclesiastes is devastatingly correct.
The Fatal Assumption
Where the author falters is not in observation—but in ontology.
Again and again, Ecclesiastes treats what is observable within time as the totality of what exists.
The recurring phrase gives it away:
“Under the sun.”
Everything is evaluated there.
Within time.
Within cycles.
Within effort and consequence.
Within birth and death.
In the language of ISITism, the author is conducting a masterful analysis of IT-dominant reality—but he never decisively steps beyond it.
And so he reaches conclusions that feel profound but are ultimately incomplete:
If everything fades, then nothing ultimately accumulates.
If effort doesn’t guarantee reward, then meaning is suspect.
If wisdom and foolishness share the same ending, then wisdom is limited.
These conclusions only follow if IT is assumed to be the foundation of Reality.
The Wisest King’s Blind Spot
This is the paradox.
The author of Ecclesiastes is wise enough to see through every illusion of permanence—
but not wise enough to see beyond permanence itself.
He recognizes that:
Structures don’t last
Achievements don’t endure
Outcomes don’t stabilize
But instead of asking why that must be so, he treats this realization as the final word.
ISITism reveals what he could not see: IT was never designed to carry meaning.
IT is the container.
IS is the movement.
IT is the record.
IS is the becoming.
The author senses this—uneasily, indirectly—but never names it.
As a result, Ecclesiastes becomes a book that brilliantly diagnoses the failure of IT to satisfy, without recognizing IS as the missing dimension.
Cycles Misread as Futility
Consider the famous passage:
“A time to be born, and a time to die…
A time to sow, and a time to reap…”
The author presents this as resignation.
As inevitability.
As weary acceptance that life simply oscillates without resolution.
But based on ISITism, the same passage reads very differently.
Cycles are not evidence of futility.
They are mechanisms of refinement.
Repetition is how awareness deepens.
Time is how IS learns to express itself through IT.
Return is not failure—it is how learning propagates.
Ecclesiastes correctly identifies cycles.
It misinterprets their purpose.
The Missing Key
Ecclesiastes is unsettling because it lacks one crucial insight:
Meaning does not come from permanence.
It comes from participation in an infinite process.
The author assumes meaning must be:
Visible
Accumulative
Stable
Guaranteed
But meaning is none of these.
Meaning is IS moving through IT.
Without this understanding, Ecclesiastes collapses into somber wisdom.
With it, the book becomes a record of what happens when IS is forgotten.
A Strange Irony
This is the great irony of Ecclesiastes:
The book is often praised for its wisdom precisely because it sounds disillusioned.
But from the standpoint of ISITism, its disillusionment is not wisdom completed—it is wisdom arrested at the boundary of finitude.
The author saw through the illusions of the world…
but not through the illusion that the world is all there is.
Why This Matters Now
This is why Ecclesiastes feels so modern.
Humanity today has mastered IT:
Technology.
Systems.
Optimization.
Measurement.
Control.
And like Solomon, we are increasingly tempted to believe that if meaning cannot be extracted from those things, then meaning does not exist.
Ecclesiastes is the ancient version of that error.
The Beatitudes revealed what Reality looks like when alignment with Infinity is already achieved.
Ecclesiastes shows what Reality feels like when that alignment is absent but still longed for.
ISITism provides the missing bridge.
The Difference One Insight Makes
Ecclesiastes says:
“All is vanity.”
ISITism replies:
“All IT is transient—and that is exactly why it cannot be the source of meaning.”
The wisest king reached the wall.
The Beatitudes showed what lies beyond it.
ISITism explains why it lies beyond it.
And next, the Tao Te Ching will show us how to move through this same Reality without resistance—
how to live in time without mistaking time for the truth.
As always:
IT IS what IT IS.