Hurl true words and displays of grace
Happy Friday! 🥳
One of the very many demoralising, frustrating and confusing things about our present age is that evidence, facts, science, knowledge have all been taken away from us, from humanity, as objective things that exist in the material world. They have been repackaged as signifiers of the correct form of political thought and opinion and thrown in our faces in order to perpetuate our own political and spiritual enslavement. Normal people like myself, who do not have a solid grounding in say, epidemiology or biochemistry or geology, are really at a terrible loss from this politicisation of everything. I can’t argue, molecule for molecule, about why Robert Malone or Peter McCollough are speaking truth. I can only sense it. I can only tell by listening to my intuition and by listening to a wide variety of people, some of them “experts,” who is full of crap and who is trying sincerely to help.
But I have come to realise something very important, as we all attempt to live without a humane intellectual (to say nothing of spiritual) framework. Each one of us must develop a set of first principles by which we can measure all things.
I now have an evolving list of first principles, to be my guide as I head deeper into middle age. One of the writers who has influenced me on this journey is Martin Shaw, who wrote the words from which I titled this essay: hurl true words and displays of grace. It was he who confirmed for me what I already, internally, intuitively, knew. That the material world and its images that bombard us every day are only a small part of the human story; that we must resist the temptation of thinking that this is all there is; and to remember our deep ties to both the earth below us — the mud the organic matter — and the sky — the soaring heights and empty vastness above us. We need both to be whole.
So here are, in no particular order, my guiding principles, and how they inform my thinking through our contemporary morass.
Every human is a miracle. Every single one. Yes, even the assholes, the sadists and the loud chewers. This foundational principle means that I am immediately suspicious of, if not hostile to, all arguments that claim a hierarchy of purity or attribute inherent morality to immutable physical characteristics; or claims that government or the state should act in a caretaker, parental role towards groups of people.
You cannot change your sex. Therefore, you cannot demand, or even ask politely, that the rest of the world participate in your delusion that by buying and sewing onto your flesh a pair of silicon tits, you are somehow magically transformed into a woman.
You cannot escape pain or conquer death. For a society or a collective to strive to do so will lead not to living forever but rather creating hell on Earth. Suffering, loss, and death give life meaning. Wisdom is understanding this. Immaturity and hubris try to stop it. This informs my opinions on a wide variety of issues. For example, it is insane to shut down societies, harm children and young people, or imprison old people in residential care and forbid them from seeing family to “protect” them from a virus — we are all going to die anyway. Also: pain, mental and physical, is part of the human condition, so let’s teach children how to take care of their bodies and their hearts so that when the pain inevitably arrives, they are able to keep going.
Anything that separates the mind (or spirit, or soul) from the body causes psychic wounds. It might feel, especially when you are young and your body is particularly thrumming with life and your mind lacks experience, that you can get away with dividing the mind from the body, free gratis. You can’t. The bill will eventually come due, and it will be a big one. From this I extrapolate that excessively permissive sexual culture — which is dependent on women in particular turning off their inner radar and disassociating from their most private selves — is harmful to the emotional states of young people, and we elders need to encourage people to rein it in.
Seek pleasure, but only within firm boundaries. Pleasure without boundaries is even worse than life without a purpose. It is the creator of cruelty. From this, I have recognised times where I myself have lacked discipline and how that has harmed me and those around me, and I’ve improved.
To love and be loved in return is the meaning of life. There. I’ve told you. Now you can stop looking for it in your career or in prestige or the validation of your Twitter followers. Love doesn’t live there. It’s at home, with your dog.
Strive to achieve enough knowledge and intelligence to appreciate the existence of magic and mystery. From this I know to avoid anyone who tells me they have all the answers.
What are your first principles?
There are those who want to reduce humanity to pawns obediently pushing the latest woke ideology. But human beings are created in the image of God. As the world gets crazier by the day, an eternal perspective, informed by biblical truth, is essential (Genesis, Psalms, John, and Romans can often be good books to start in).
Jenny,an essay I wish I wrote. Spot on. I've doubled down on my first principles. I would add freedom of expression. And the only way to be liberated is w your own agency. Pluralism makes better products. Character above all. And courage, the value of courage.