What I Hold Sacred

Someone recently told me that I stood out compared to other writers in never seeming to treat anything as sacred. Which seemed to them awkward, odd, and implausible, as much as the opposite writers who seem to treat most all topics and issues as sacred. More plausibly, most people do treat some minority of things as especially sacred, and if they don’t reveal that in their writing, they are probably hiding it from others, and maybe also from themselves.

This seems plausible enough that it pushes me to try to identify and admit what I hold sacred. When I search for ways to identify what people hold sacred, I find quite a lot of rather vague descriptions and associations. The most concrete signs I find are: associating it with rituals and symbols, treating it with awe and reverence, unwillingness to trade other things for it, and outrage at those who disrespect it.

The best candidate I can find is: truth-seeking. More specifically: truth-seeking among intellectuals on important topics. That is, the goal is for the world to learn more together on key abstract topics, and I want each person who contributes substantially to such projects to add the most that they can, given their constraints and the budgets they are willing to allocate to it. I don’t insist anyone devote themselves wholly to this, and I’m less concerned with each person always being perfectly honest than with us together figuring stuff out.

I admit that I do treat this with reverence, and I’m reluctant to trade it for other things. And I’d more often express outrage at others disrespecting it if I thought I’d get more support on such occasions. Yes, most everyone gives great lip service allegiance to this value. But most suggest that there are few tradeoffs between this and other values, and also that following a few simple rules of thumb (e.g., don’t lie, give confidence intervals) is sufficient; no need to dig deeper. In contrast, I think it takes long-sustained careful thought to really see what would most help for his goal, and I also see many big opportunities to sacrifice other things for this goal.

How can you better affirm this value? Its simple, but hard: Continually ask yourself what are the most important topics, what are the most promising ways to advance them, and what are your comparative advantages re such efforts. Do not assume that answers to these questions are implicit in the status and rewards that others offer you for various activities. The world mostly doesn’t care much, and so if you do care more you can’t focus on pleasing the world.

So why do I seem reluctant to talk about this? I think because I feel vulnerable. When you admit what is most precious to you, others might threaten it in order to extort concessions from you. And it is hard to argue well for why any particular value should be the most sacred. You run out of arguments and must admit you’ve made a choice you can’t justify. I so admit.