Postcard: Clarity
No. 012 - on seeing through noise.
Postcard is a weekly curation of things I think are beautiful or interesting. Each postcard will be named after a word and contain something to listen to, something to look at, and something to think about. I welcome you to share any thoughts in the comments. Thank you!
clarity:
(n.) The state or quality of being clear and easily understood.
(n.) Transparency or purity.
†Meanings from OED
Something to listen to:
I imagine we all have a song that induces a sense of deep clarity in us. This is mine.
Something to look at:
Something to think about:
Three ideas about clarity:
I.
The desire to have nUaNcE about something bad is antithetical to moral clarity and an accessory to evil. You don’t always need to get down on your knees in the weeds to know that you’re in the weeds. You can simply perceive the situation as it is. So consider that good and evil are real, and that you will know them when you see them.
Reject attempts by others to supersede your gravity with their own; they want to pull you down into the mud with them, where as the saying goes, you’ll both get dirty…
…but they’ll enjoy it.
II.
In parallel with the previous idea, a caveat: one of the most prevalent cultural traps in the modern world is the notion that your sense of moral clarity is an invitation to treat others with cruelty. This lie is repeated again and again through politicians and celebrities, through academics and journalists, and reinforced through how horribly we treat people who have been deemed “acceptable scapegoats.” I refuse to participate in condemnation rituals, purity tests, and pile-ons out of principle alone. No further justification is required.
Contra default culture narratives, there are not many truly evil people in the world—but there are very, very many ordinary people who evil does work through. If you deny the possibility that evil could ever work through you, I regret to inform you that you are just lacking awareness of your own shadow and therefore—ironically—the perfect conduit for evil to work through. Does your sense of being a good person serve others?Or your own ego?
At the end of the day, nobody will ever make the world a better place with righteous cruelty; the associated false sense of virtuousness is no more than lipstick on a pig.
III.
Khabib Nurmagomdev, a mixed martial artist with a professional record of 29 wins and 0 losses who is considered to be one of the greatest fighters of all time, once said, "I take people into deep waters and they discover themselves."
It’s an iconic quote partially because that’s just a badass thing to say when you have the ability to back it up, but also because it contains a powerful truth: difficult circumstances are a mirror for our deeper selves to be revealed in.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” Virtues that fail in deep waters cannot be claimed.
To truly know oneself, you must examine—with a sense of detached neutrality—your own behavior when you are “in deep waters.” It is a privilege to know yourself, in large part because it requires coming face to face with the unflattering aspects of your self: your failures, your shortcomings, what they all say about you. The ego is not meant to survive such encounters intact; but when it drowns or shatters, it does not kill you.
It merely invites clarity.
I admire your refusal, in idea II, to participate in condemnation rituals, purity tests, and pile-ons. And you’re right: it’s enough to refuse to do so out of principle alone. Oh that more people followed your lead!
You’ve paired your clarity with a beautiful painting and piece of music. I wasn’t familiar with Caspar David Friedrich’s work, so thank you.