{"id":40922,"date":"2026-10-31T05:03:29","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40922"},"modified":"2026-10-31T05:03:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:03:29","slug":"i-need-to-make-art-that-helps-you-feel-what-it-means-to-be-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40922","title":{"rendered":"I need to make art that helps you feel what it means to be human"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not trying to change your mind anymore \u2014 about anything.<\/p>\n

There was a time when I was naive enough \u2014 and arrogant enough \u2014 to believe I was smart enough to convince anybody that I was right about anything. I thought I could lay out airtight arguments that any reasonable person would agree with.<\/p>\n

I thought I could change anybody\u2019s mind. And I thought it was important to \u201cconvert\u201d others to whatever I believed. I was a fire-and-brimstone preacher evangelizing for my holy cause.<\/p>\n

I was wrong about all of that.<\/p>\n

My goals are simpler today. All I really want is to help you feel<\/em> something.<\/p>\n

I want you to feel something that is real and true.<\/em><\/p>\n

I want to help you feel something human \u2014 and I want it to be something that you know in your own heart is the truth. What you do with that is up to you. Even if I\u2019m right about the things I believe \u2014 and I do believe I\u2019m right, of course \u2014 it\u2019s not really my business what you decide to believe.<\/p>\n

I want to help you get in touch with what it means to be alive \u2014 not as a consumer or a worker or a voter or a cog in a machine.<\/p>\n

I want you to feel what it means to be a fully conscious human being.<\/p>\n

My life was simpler back when I believed that truth could never contain contradictions. Today, I know better.<\/p>\n

Truth can be fuzzy.<\/p>\n

There are times when one piece of truth contradicts another piece of truth \u2014 and somehow they\u2019re both true. This has been one of the most important lessons of my life, but it\u2019s also one of the most confusing and frustrating.<\/p>\n

I used to be very concerned with resolving conflicts and disagreements. In Christian theology, for instance, I wanted to take positions on all the issues that have divided believers for centuries.<\/p>\n

I wanted a rational explanation for the Trinity, for instance. I wanted a clear and systematic explanation of the relationship between faith and works. I wanted clear and simple explanations for everything.<\/p>\n

I wanted the same sorts of complete and rational positions about everything else, too. I wanted to have a clear and consistent set of principles that I could apply to everything, whether it was culture or politics or ethics.<\/p>\n

About a lot of these theological issues, I’m prone today to accept that there are a lot of mysteries that I’ll have to ask God about one day. I’m not required to resolve all of the apparent contradictions and confusion.<\/p>\n

It’s not that I don’t care. It’s simply that I care too much to pretend I can know all these things without error.<\/p>\n

About many of these other issues in life, I’m willing to accept that the world is never going to function the way I want it to. The vast majority will never see things as I do.<\/p>\n

More importantly, I’m willing to accept that there is remarkably little I can do about most things that I see as wrong with the world. Few people care what I think. Few people are going to change their views just because I carefully explain the truth as I see it.<\/p>\n

I have to accept that the best I can do is to live as a fully conscious human being \u2014 someone who\u2019s trying his best to help other humans feel fully alive and human, too.<\/p>\n

I grew up as a hyper-rational person. I believed that being completely rational was what we ought to do. It helped us progress as a species. It made us happier and more prosperous.<\/p>\n

But I’ve come to see that being ruthlessly rational will never lead to meaning.<\/p>\n

So I accept that it’s incredibly important to human flourishing to be rational. But I also accept that there are some truths that my heart tells me that can’t be found through reason \u2014 and these two ways of looking at the world run in parallel.<\/p>\n

They’re not contradictions to be resolved.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying that truth is just subjective. Objective truth is very real, but we humans are limited in our ability to determine what that ultimate truth is. Everything that we call truth is shaped by the assumptions we bring to our observations and reasoning.<\/p>\n

There are some things that I feel strongly enough about to say are true. Some of those things are based on physical experiences with material reality. Some of those things are based on what my heart whispers.<\/p>\n

I don’t have to resolve those two ways of seeing the world \u2014 and I don’t have to convince you that I’m right.<\/p>\n

For the last couple of centuries, we have slowly pushed the idea that truth should be determined by reason and by observations of physical reality. There’s nothing wrong with that idea. It has given us some amazing material things.<\/p>\n

But it’s slowly blinded us to a different kind of truth that I think is ultimately more important to the experience of being human.<\/p>\n

Trusting in nothing but material reality has told us life has no meaning. It’s said that there’s nothing special about human consciousness. It’s told us that we must ignore the spiritual evidence that many of us experience.<\/p>\n

The longer I’ve lived, the more absurd that has seemed to me, because the things which give my life meaning are all things I experience with my heart \u2014 and they’re things that can’t be measured or proven.<\/p>\n

Most people are arguing about material reality. Even many of the people who claim to represent faith are trying to shoehorn that faith into a materialist paradigm. We end up with a society of people who are all certain they’re right \u2014 and who are trying to justify what they believe in terms of material reality.<\/p>\n

I’m going in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

I want to make art that helps you feel things. I want you to feel things deeply enough that you experience the spiritual and emotional reality that I’ve experienced. I want you to be able to see \u2014 through what I make \u2014 that life has meaning and purpose.<\/p>\n

I want you to love nature. I want you to love God. I want you to love yourself and other people around you \u2014 not because you can prove any of these things make sense, but because your heart gets a glimpse of something real and true.<\/p>\n

I want to hold a mirror up to the world with the things I write or create. I want to show you a truth that you know in your heart is real and is true.<\/p>\n

If I can eventually do this, I’ll be doing something far more sacred and far more human than I ever could by trying to convince you I’m right about everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not trying to change your mind anymore \u2014 about anything. There was a time when I was naive enough \u2014 and arrogant enough \u2014 to believe I was smart enough to convince anybody that I was right about anything. I thought I could lay out airtight arguments that any reasonable person would agree with. Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-aE2","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40922"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40935,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40922\/revisions\/40935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}