Why Our Sense of the Beauty in the Truth Should be Our Guiding Light
The Signposts are Elegance, Simplicity, Grace, Hope, Awe, Wonder, Dignity, Appreciation, and Gratitude
When I was still an academic scientist, I found that, more often than not, the right answer ended up being a most simple and elegant explanation. There was very often a certain beauty to the solution. Meanwhile, the need for highly convoluted, tortured arguments, self-inconsistent explanations, and ever more Rococo intricacies and ignored anomalies, were often the markers of a theory which was stuck on the wrong track. There was a certain ugliness to it.
It seems I understood, even back then, that beauty and grace is an intrinsic part and parcel of the universe, and more-over, we humans are able to sense, and tune-in to this. We are in relation with the rest of nature/the universe, and in a continual process of unfolding along with it: we are part of it, and it is part of us, and, because we are not separate from it, when we find truth in the structure of the unfolding, we detect this to be good and beautiful to us. In our heart of hearts, we actually know that elegance and wonder are the lodestones for us which point towards the truth.
The same is true in everything I’ve discovered about healing. The solutions are often the simplest and most elegant, full of hope and wonder. Moreover, exercising our appreciation and gratitude for our innate sense of beauty, and seeking out the awe and wonderment in the universe, is part of the healing too.
In today’s world, it seems to me that our remarkable antenna for the beauty in the truth has been purposefully dimmed. Indeed, there are a lot of people pushing ideas and ideologies which are antithetical to grace and elegance. They are marked by their ugliness, relying on tortured and self-inconsistent arguments, and are thoroughly, and purposefully, demoralizing. They are centred on resentment rather than appreciation and gratitude. They are unkind and vindictive, twisted, without hope.
These should be signs that they are the wrong paths, but too many folks are going along with them, because they have been taught not to trust, and even despise, their own sense of beauty and grace.
When we don’t use our senses, we tend to lose them, they become dulled and atrophied, and the sense of beauty in the truth is no exception to this. We need to relearn how to use this innate sense, how to tune-in into the signals we receive from being in relation with the unfolding of the universe, trust the intuitions that it brings, listen to our hearts and guts, our feelings and bodily sensations, through which this sense communicates with us, and to thoroughly reject ideas and ideologies which set of the internal alarm bells and warning sirens.
I now believe that good and evil themselves are objective [this revelation that good and evil actually exist, for me, came from what has been done to the kids in our society in the last couple of years, especially the increasing sexualization and medicalization of children]. With fully working and attuned antenna, I believe we can sense this objective difference too.
Inspired by an exchange with .
The true, the good, and the beautiful are of God; their opposites are the lack of the good, therefore are evil. We must maintain or recover our awe at the beauty and wonder of the world, the world that was created for us. We are cocreators when we use are talents and creativity to contribute to these. We must find the child in us and be filled with wonder and gratitude. Best to you Gary.
I began writing semi-professionally in 2004. It was a business leadership column for my local paper. I had to learn to write with an economy of words. Later I began to write longer pieces. In 2018, i published my first book. I’ve been writing full time ever sense. The beauty of my experience is to see my own development first hand. It amazes and humbles me. It is analogous to what you write here. Thanks.