What are your core beliefs? Here are mine.

A few unpleasant interactions recently focused my mind on my own core beliefs.

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A few weeks ago, in the space of a few days, I received a series of Instagram messages and emails that, in different styles, told me more or less the same thing: that I was angry and hateful.

These messages came from two different men who know me personally. So I can’t just dismiss it as attacks from faceless Internet trolls. They were both reacting in a negative way to what I’ve been writing about. And they both felt compelled to tell me. I’m hardly a shrinking violet, but I would find it challenging to write, unsolicited, to someone I knew personally to tell them their work was “facist shite” or that they “sound angry and hostile much of the time.” It’s not easy to criticise someone directly. Especially unprompted. It takes an investment of energy that indicates some kind of emotional attachment, even if negative, and comes with the risk of getting a good deal of negativity in return. 

I’m not sharing this to engender sympathy —but because it gave me the inspiration to spell out what my core beliefs are. And I would love to know what your core beliefs are, dear reader, so please share them with me below.

1. I believe that every human being is a walking miracle, because all life is inherently miraculous. The fact that we are lucky enough to have been given life is enough of a foundation upon which to build a worldview. Have you ever experienced the warmth of the sun on your face, or seen a butterfly flutter by? Then you have experienced an incredible confluence of events, hosted by nature, time and biology, that all worked together in one tiny, pure moment. That, to me is a miracle. 

2. I believe that all human life (miraculous as it is) is created by love; therefore all people are embodiments of love — no matter how twisted that love might become through toxic family and societal dynamics. 

3. I believe that women are the creators of life and as such have the right to decide when to create life. Along with that right, women are responsible for choosing wisely, living in a spirit of gratitude for our awesome power, and conducting ourselves like the powerful beings that we are. 

4. I believe that emotional/spiritual weakness is as dangerous as violence, because most negative states  (resentment, fear, dishonesty, manipulation, control, greed) rest upon emotional/spiritual weakness; almost every human being is strong enough to overcome emotional/spiritual weakness if they decide to. By weakness I do not mean mental illness or disability, I mean the small but damaging ways all humans let a damaged and reactive ego infect their personalities and cause a variety of harms to everyone around them.

5. I believe that in order to survive, humans need meaning and purpose as much as they need food and shelter.

6. I believe that most people will figure their shit out on their own, if they can access their inner compass.

7. I believe it is better to live as a soldier than as a prisoner.

8. I believe that fairness is more important and more trustworthy as a principle than kindness; and that common sense is built in to humans like sonar is in bats.

9. I believe being emotionally detached from what is outside your control is a prerequisite to being an adult

10. I believe righteous anger is necessary — it burns those it is intended to burn. (Metaphorically, of course).

It’s usually impossible to argue with people’s perceptions of you, especially if they are in a state of agitation from something you have said. But in this case, I can guess that my critics were reacting to my righteous anger, and confusing it with an anger that is generalised or misplaced. Hearing ideas that contradict your own often sounds like nails on a chalkboard, and when those ideas come loaded with the fire of righteous anger, that is even more alienating. In my case, that righteous anger stems from witnessing the decline of my culture and my society. From witnessing the descent of formerly ordered and peaceful western societies into fractured and warring clans, while vast, unaccountable wealth moves us all around like pieces on a chess board. From witnessing humans— who are capable of so much good— do so much harm through ignoring the common sense and wisdom that is part of our human constitution and our patrimony. 

There is much confusion among my peers about these painful realities — and confusion causes fear. Fear is a barrier to understanding. And so the vicious cycle continues. 

It is a full life’s work to become yourself, and there are many obstacles in the path of that becoming. In my experience, at least, it involves a lot of solitude and loss. It involves recognising where you have conflated your own personal failures and weaknesses with the flaws of society or others, and having the fortitude to step away from false beliefs, even while they continued to be embraced by those around you.

In 2019 I visited New York for the first time since moving away 8 years before. While there, I went to the Jewish Museum to see a Leonard Cohen exhibition. The exhibition featured a speech he gave in which he talks about the influence that the Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca had on him. 

“He gave me permission to find a voice, to create a voice…that is to locate a self, a self that is not fixed, a self that struggles for its own existence. As I grew older, I understood instructions came with this voice. What were the instructions? The instructions were: Never to lament casually. 

And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.”

Every day I see dignity and beauty being raped and pillaged the public square — brutality always follows. Every day my consciousness is flooded with the casual laments of the most privileged people to have ever existed. The damage this does is far deeper than mere politics. The damage is to our psyches, our collective unconscious. Possibly even to our evolution as a species.

I spent many years convincing myself to hide my own voice, because why should anyone care what I thought, why was I so special? I was asking the wrong questions. The right question was: what would it cost me, eventually, to stay silent?

I would love to know what YOUR core beliefs are — please share them below.