Issue 04 — The Beautiful Truth

RelatedHighlights

We live our human lives in the lacuna between truth and meaning, between objective reality and subjective sensemaking laced with feeling. All of our longings, all of our despairs, all of our reckonings with the perplexity of existence are aimed at one or the other. In the aiming is what we call creativity, how we contact beauty—the beauty of a theo

Maria Popova • The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science & Poetry

“Your Truth” doesn’t exist.

“Truth? What is that?” — it’s the rhetorical question Pontius Pilate posed to Jesus in the Gospel of John.

Pilate’s world-weary cynicism suggested that truth is slippery and subjective, impossible to pin down. His question should resonate with modern audiences — in our current grappling with the nature of reality, facts, a

Steve Druggan added

Besides, we’ve all been cornered by the guy at the bar with a well-worn paperback in his pocket who locks eyes with you and whispers, “But how are you, really?” as if it’s a profound question. I would hate to subject anyone to such an encounter.

Rather than jump to sincerity, I’d like to start with basic honesty . It would be great if we started ju... See more

Catherine Shannon • Everyone Is Numbing Out

added

Truth illuminates the world, while information lives off the attraction of surprise, pulling us into a permanent frenzy of fleeting moments.

Noema • All That Is Solid Melts Into Information

Keely Adler added

Crisis moments lead to existential openings that force us to grapple with the deepest questions about life. By way of loss or by way of wonderment. - Andrew Taggart

Santi added

Before the 20th century, reflection on truth in Western intellectual and spiritual traditions usually exalted it. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty

Crispin Sartwell • Truth Is Real and Philosophers Must Return Their Attention to It

Rising out the world, you and I,

a finite flame among the infinite darkness

of two nebulous chasms…

Born into a disenchanted world

of Cartesian rationalism, our minds

and spirits isolated from the universal,

a race of convulsionaries trudging

though the wastelands of a technocratic

nightmare, afraid of what we might become

if we rid ourselves of the empt... See more

Amy Zhen added

Poetic Outlaws

Being truthful is an individual and communal effort — it means training, not only cognitive abilities, but empathetic relational ones, and our embodied experience in the world. It also means acknowledging that we don’t always have the answer. Admitting our vulnerable ignorance in the face of overwhelming mixed messages may be a good first step.

Rebel Wisdom • The War on Sensemaking

Stuart Evans added