@ Jonny Woodrow
2025-01-30 00:15:23
Do the last five years really matter? People were killed by government-pushed medical interventions, grandparents were banned from seeing grandchildren, businesses were closed never to open again, educational years were lost and the socialisation of a generation of children destroyed, people were arrested, people were made suspicious of people. You know the list of horrors, you were there and lived through it. But why does it all matter to us? And why do some of those who defend all the measures do so, so vehemently? How do they make their twisted appeal to convince us it was all for the good? There are a lot of people who don’t think it does matter.Do the last four years really matter? People were killed by government-pushed medical interventions, grandparents were banned from seeing grandchildren, businesses were closed never to open again, educational years were lost and the socialisation of a generation of children destroyed, people were arrested, people were made suspicious of people. You know the list of horrors, you were there and lived through it. But why does it all matter to us? And why do some of those who defend all the measures do so, *so* vehemently? How do they make their twisted appeal to convince us it was all for the good? There are a lot of people who don’t think it does matter.
Why does it matter? Because of what is always at stake. Truth, goodness and beauty is short hand for describing what matters. It’s a way of pointing to the non-negotiables of life that were (and continue to be) violated.
These aren't abstract concepts. Truth, goodness and beauty are real concrete things we deal with all the time. They are more real and more consistent than you or me. We can easily drift from the truth into delusions, we can dull our ability to see beauty and promote it, our moral score cards never balance out the good and evil that we have done. And yet, truth, goodness and beauty remain concrete standards and ongoing concerns in our lives. These are the things that were offended by the Covid conspiracy. We need to be able to articulate, to ourselves and the powers over us, what is always at stake.
## **TGB and Common Sense**
We all have an innate concern with truth , goodness and beauty.
We are concerned with facts because truth matters to us. We don’t like being sold something that doesn't turn out to be as advertised. Truth matters to us because we are also concerned with the good, with life flourishing as it should. Facts matter morally.
We know these things to be true. They are built into us. We think it terms of truth, goodness and beauty (the flourishing of our human nature) and react in those terms when things go wrong. For instance, as I write, the news today is filled with the story of infected blood transfusions. It turns out that health care professionals knew about it (again!). The victims want the truth and justice. People want the freedom and power to access restorative treatment to attempt, where possible, to get their lives back on track and regain what they have lost.
What of beauty? We find joy in things being restored and people and nature achieving their full, given, potential — things that become what they are meant to be are beautiful. When things and people are allowed to develop according to their given natures then truth and goodness are upheld and beauty is displayed. This is why there is a deep connection between beauty and health, fulfilment, joy and happiness. Beauty is the display of truth and goodness through the flourishing of given natures.
Truth, goodness, beauty and freedom belong together — including freedom of speech. If you pick up truth you find goodness, beauty and freedom hanging from it. They are tied together like a ball of Christmas tree lights.
## A Classical View of Given Natures and Freedom
I am, unapologetically, taking a classical approach to the being and nature of things and people. Natures are given realties. Things flourish as they fulfil their potential in accordance with their given natures. For humans this includes freedom to have a family, do a days work and attend worship. Acorns fulfil their potential when they grow in to big old oak trees. An acorn can’t become a larch, it’s not in its nature. An Acorn has no potential to grow into something else.
On this classical view, freedom refers to unhindered development of potential in accordance with our given nature. Tyranny always violates nature and the actualisation of given potentials that are inherent in the nature of things and people. Boys can’t flourish by ‘becoming’ women. Puberty blockers and surgery attempt to force development against a child’s given nature. Trans ideology is not about freedom and fulfilment. It is an agenda that denies the natural processes of personal actualisation — this is the real philosophical, moral and metaphysical weight behind the phrase ‘its not natural’. The rise of a deeply subjectivist view of reality and being (I am what I think I am) and the denial of given natures is the doorway to tyranny.
A proper grasp of the true, good and beautiful connects us to the basic givenness of nature. That is why — although it’s out of fashion to use these terms — the sense that something isn’t natural and so must be morally wrong or odd, is a good built-in moral compass.
## The Problems of Memory and Evil
There are two important contextual realities which mean we will always have a fight on our hands to make truth, goodness and beauty foundational to our thinking and life together in society: 1) the problem of societal memory loss and 2) the parasitical nature of evil.
### Memory loss
Truth, goodness and beauty — and also the necessary condition of freedom for fulfilling our potential —are not a construct of our personal perspectives. They are not social constructions or figments of our imagination. They exist above and beyond us. They were here before we showed up in this world, and they will still be here after you and I have gone. We are thrown into them at conception and birth. We receive them as integral to our being, the fabric of reality and to our physical, moral and intellectual progress in the world.
We don’t understand them when we first arrive. We need to be trained in living in line with them, in ways developed by our forefathers. In other words, because truth, goodness and beauty transcend us, human society has to have a memory or custodian function. This is captured in the fifth commandment, “honour your mother and father”.
Societies that break the intergenerational connection prevent the solutions of the past, for living together, from being transmitted. Every generation attempts some level of wilful forgetfulness. Every revolution has included some form of memory holing of the past. A true grasp of life according to the true, the good, and the beautiful requires a custodian’s mindset.
### Evil
The true, the good and the beautiful are encountered in real life. They are found in people, events and objects. Ultimately they are personal attributes of God that are displayed in creation. However, people and events don’t consistently display truth, goodness and beauty. Lies, evil and ugliness, the thorns in the garden, grow up among us. They are parasitical on the true, the good and the beautiful.
Parasites feed off of their host and add nothing to it. Lies, moral corruption and ugliness are negations of the good, the true and the beautiful, but often appeal to us in the disguise of alternative ways to achieve truth, goodness and beauty. “They called evil good’ and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). The source of the parasitical inversion of truth, goodness and beauty is the human soul. This means societies must always have a justice function, a way of reasserting the true, the good, and the beautiful.
## Why the Covid Horrors Matter
You don’t need to be a Christian to know the value of the true, good and beautiful, or, the need to be a custodian and the constant problem of human corruption. Societies flourish when some form of law, that is grounded in truth, goodness and beauty, (which entails protection of life, property and freedoms), is in operation, and where the next generation are trained to become part of society. The Christian tradition calls this natural law. We might also refer to it as a built-in conscience or common sense. As humans, we often sabotage this sense, but it is there, and always, eventually, reasserts itself. We can’t undo the fabric of reality which is built on truth, goodness and beauty, however hard we try.
The Covid regime — planned above national government levels and implemented across the world in lock step and with startling rapidity — was an assault on natural law, truth, goodness and beauty. The Covid regime was built on lies, moral corruption and the destruction of all that is beautiful: the freedom of humanity to grow, celebrate family, work and worship, and do the work of passing on knowledge through education etc. It was all about curtail freedoms, denying life and the enforced regression of human flourishing. It was driven by people who see humanity as a blight on the earth that needs killing like weeds.
If you want to know why it all mattered, if it has all becoming a distant memory, the simple idea of truth, goodness and beauty — as a short hand for natural law — tells you, in concrete terms, why it matters and why we must not forget.
Truth, goodness and beauty is the summary of the code that is built into all of us, that stands ready at hand. It is the common ground where we can all meet, whatever our religion or belief, and stand against tyranny.
We need to make promoting Truth, Goodness and Beauty a live project where ever we can 1. It is a solid place to take a stand together. This requires exploration, articulation, defence, remembrance, celebration etc., of all that TGB stands for. These ideas must be actively deployed through out-loud ethical thinking, to call out the false, the bad and the ugly. It needs positive promotion to remind us of what is at stake if we hand over human flourishing and civil society to agendas that are parasitical perversions of the true, the good and beautiful.
I know some energetic and very capable people who are working hard on how to do this.
Ta ta for now,
Jonny