Your gut produces instincts, which can steer you true.
Your body also produces hormonal needs we can steer you into the rocks. Naturally, the bodily contradiction makes being human very messy.
Tag: Truth
- Theme: Self
I’m just keeping it real
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1–2 minutesOur culture is filled with excuse phrases, often confusing bluntness with truth and rudeness with honesty. It is incredible how often "being real" is brutal and inconsiderate.
"Being polite," or "nice" may appear to be a weakness or falsity, but it requires discipline and respect not found in "being real." - Theme: Self
true kindness
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1–2 minutesThe unpleasant thing is to be honestly precise rather than passively ambiguous.
Contrary to the stereotype of kindness, politeness can mask avoidance, producing a pain of confusion far more significant than the sting of a momentary correction.
It is ultimately kinder to be clear than to allow the delusion that you are kind.
- Theme: Growth
Complicit Road Kill
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1–2 minutesHow we shape our world shapes us: the dead raccoon on the side of the road is an antiquated species amidst the speed of progress.
Unfortunately, humans become the next inconvenient casualty as technology outruns our slow flesh.
It remains true: how you treat others will become your fate.
- Theme: Self
Getting lost to find yourself
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1–2 minutesThe only way to find your purpose or true self is to shed your social conditioning to look to others for affirmation.
Once you enjoy something without needing to share it, you are on the right track.
It is a paradox of giving up trying and getting lost, which allows you to find. - Theme: Self
Passion relies on possibility
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1–2 minutesThere is only passion (and argument) when a situation is unsettled.
If thoroughly confirmed and believed, the situation enters the state of fact: an operating condition of reality, not a possibility or hope. - Theme: Self
Politeness is glue, but it is toxic too
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1–2 minutesDo you ruin a dinner because somebody won’t recognize school shootings or climate change facts?
Our politeness is the glue of society, but it is also the neutrality that allows idiocy to perpetuate unchecked. - Theme: Self
Truth destroys, Fiction unites
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1–2 minutesTruth tends to divide under the banner of transparency: revealing is destructive. Fictions tend to unite through simplification: power requires narratives. Our species tends to waffle between tearing down the grand productive narratives (fictions) and exposing hypocrisy (truth).
It is cyclic: after hypocrisy is revealed and power weakened for a while, the appeal of joining back together under a single narrative to reestablish control and security reasserts its attraction, truth be damned. - Theme: Politics
Authority Constricts Freedom: Belief is not Truth
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1–2 minutesEvery belief system you follow has an authority that limits your thinking.
True freedom revels in doubt, not belief.
This reminds us that belief is not true, it is merely guide we lean on so we can escape the anxiety of doubt.
- Theme: Self
Don’t Confuse Truth with Belief
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1–2 minutesBelief is when we stop being curious and observant. We stop thinking because we “have it figured out” or have an instinctual “gut reaction.”
A truth seeker is aware of this bodily reaction and the quick righteous response. They pause and question their response and re-open themself to the world.