“Tell them something beautiful.”

In my previous post (Nauseating ‘News’) I wrote about the nauseating effect that the so-called “news” has on me. The ironic thing about it is this: blog posts going on about the nauseating effects of media are themselves a nauseating form of media.

There is no shortage of rebellious Zarathustras decrying convention and throwing-up on their minuscule cyber-audiences with pious indignation. I am one of them. For that, I apologize.

As a penitential exercise of sorts, I would like to offer the following meditations.

After realizing the stupid cycle my protesting post participated in, I was frustrated. I asked myself, “What should I write; what should I tell them?” This led to a deeper question, “Why am I writing here at all and why do people read this stuff?”

I quickly realized that these questions are far too difficult to answer so I settled for an easier question: “What should I tell them?”

I am more familiar with this question. It is the question I ask myself as a father, teacher, and person: “What should I say?” Literally, “What words and meanings should I attempt to speak?”

In the past, I usually responded by holding fast to the idea that I should speak the truth, and this was for good reason. However, I find that there is an epistemological arrogance hidden in that ideal—the ideal of speaking truth, pure and simple—that often disfigures the honest pursuit of truth into a selfish search for self-esteem, often at the expense of others.

“Truth speaking” seems impoverished when it is not attentive to beauty. Even when the truth spoken is stark and indisputable. If truth is spoken with total disregard for beauty, it is often rendered sterile. Sterile truth may indeed be true, but it cannot bear fruit. It cannot love. Even these “truths” I have just claimed here are null and void—and will be disputed!—if they are not seen as sufficiently beautiful.

Take my previous post as an example: The nauseating effect that the “news” has on me is real and bespeaks a truth about the world we live in. But it is not enough to say this in graphic, vomit-laced terms. Otherwise I have only spoken sterile truth. In doing so, I add to the problem of bitter, cynical, self-indulgent media. I become my stomach-turning oppressor.

So, I must re-evaluate. I cannot simply “tell them the truth.” After all, I hardly know it. Instead, I must attempt to offer an alternative suggestion that sits between the arrogance of sterile truth-speaking and the stupidity of soft, willy-nilly “anything goes.” My answer needs to pierce the facade of fundamentalism and relativism, those twin mirror-images that believe themselves to be unrelated.

Responding to this question (“What should I tell them?”), I suggested this to myself: “Tell them something beautiful.”

In other words, speak not the ‘truth,’ pure and simple. Speak beauty beautifully. This might produce more than sterile truths like data and information. It might allow for fertile truth, pregnant with love—the greatest, most fecund truth of all.

I hope I can take my own advice and think of beautiful things to tell you. If I cannot, then, I must remain silent—which is very beautiful indeed.