In your search for truth, don't forget to use all your tools

Here are six that I warmly commend to you

Shot on my Canon AE-1 circa 2023 near Boston

Hi, I’m Jordan. I’m a former lawyer, and current full-time dad and as-much-as-possible-time essayist. I’ve been writing this publication, The Fare Well Files, on Substack for about six months now and it’s been a bit of a dream; not only is it a great home for my writing, but there’s a great community here that has been very supportive to me. I hope to continue to write and grow on here—my goal is to reach 1,000 subscribers by my year mark. If you’d like to support me, please subscribe and share! Free subscribers receive many essays and paid subscribers receive a whole bunch more essays. This one is free. Hope you enjoy!

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If the advent of AI has taught me anything, it’s that we’ve all got a million questions. We fret over interpersonal issues. We wonder how to achieve difficult goals. We ponder why we’re here, where we’re headed, and what we should do next.

We’re thirsty for Truth. We seek that warm light to shine down and show us the way forward. Call it answers, wisdom, or enlightenment; for so many problems, truth is the remedy.¹

But truth rarely unfolds itself. It’s a precious metal that you toil to mine, an elusive game that you patiently hunt, a mountain that you climb. The search for truth is work, no doubt about it, and you should be using every tool at your disposal to tackle the job.

I want to talk about six tools in your truth-seeking toolbelt.² (Today I’m focusing on non-empirical tools.) You’ve heard of all of them and likely use each. But at times we might favor one tool or the other, and let certain others lie neglected, and thus fail to achieve the breakthroughs we seek. So I hope that by examining them, we’ll be inspired to use all of them a little more consistently and strategically.

I’ve divided these six tools into two loose categories: truth inputs and truth processing. I’ll talk about what I love about each of these tools and what I think they’re best for. I’ll also explore the issues with over- or under-reliance on these tools.

Truth Inputs

The practices in this category are about showing you new possibilities, acquiring raw materials, accumulating ideas. The three modalities I’ve chosen to talk about here are Reading, Conversation, and Observation.

Reading

Other names: Research, Consumption

Best for: Exposure to new ideas, Learning how to think

Notes: Reading can be an extremely high-density way to expose yourself to new propositions and potential truths. It doesn’t have to be books—you might get more value out of one single Fare Well Files post than out of a library (for modesty’s sake, I’ll acknowledge that it depends on the library).

I won’t belabor this one—I think for most serious seekers of truth, reading is sort of the default modality, the bread and butter. I do want to point out that, while the written is the classic version of this, there are many kinds of “texts” in the broadest sense which can be very powerful and instructive—you can find truth in television, art, or even a good YouTube video.

Dangers of underuse: Someone who never reads would likely struggle to sufficiently challenge their thinking and broaden their horizons. Conversation can’t go as deep, and life lessons can be tough to parse, like trying to eat an elephant. Good writing cooks, seasons, and cuts the elephant into bite-sized chunks.

Dangers of overuse: Someone who seeks truth exclusively through reading might find themselves oversaturated, confused and without conviction or direction.

Conversation

Other names: Chatting, Debating

Best for: Developing ideas, Diagnosing gaps or flaws

Notes: As an interminable gabber, I have a soft spot for this modality. It’s likely the loosest of the six, but it’s also the most versatile: it has amazing all-around utility, giving it a gap-filling role in your toolkit.

For instance, it is a unique hybrid between input (partner talking) and processing (you talking)—a good conversation almost perfectly balances both. (I only included it in this section for the three-and-three symmetry, it’d be equally at home in the other category.) It’s also extremely low-stakes and low-effort. You can audition a hundred ideas, big and small, in an hour of quality conversation—an incredible iterative process. And it’s highly flexible: you can shift from exploration to defense to questioning to asserting depending on the exact needs of the discussion at that moment. Conversation also gives you real-time feedback—both from your conversation partner and as you hear yourself saying things. How many times have I heard a point flop out of my mouth and had to throw a smoke bomb of shame to escape? (Enough that I’m low on smoke bombs.)

If you’re working through a book or struggling to write a piece, don’t sleep on finding someone to talk to about it. Conversation isn’t particularly well-suited to be the first step in truth-seeking, and even less so the last, but it’s the Swiss Army knife GOAT of the middle of that process.

Dangers of underuse: Someone forbidden from conversing can fill gaps with reading and writing, but they lose a cleansing flow of energy that lubricates ideas and helps them cycle through their system.

Dangers of overuse: Someone who over-relies on talking probably never gets beyond the surface of ideas. We need other tools to reach their wellspring.

Observation

Other names: Experience, Examination

Best for: Integrating practical realities, Challenging assumptions

Notes: This is one that

Henrik Karlsson

often talks about in the context of writing essays:

Experience happens whether you want to or not; you can’t opt out.³ But you can turn up or down the signal on this by adjusting how much novelty you seek out, how much attention you pay, and how much intention you bring—how much you observe.

I’ve often talked about the “museum mode” we go into when we go to an art exhibit—we step back, we zoom in, we absolutely scour for beauty and meaning. And so we find it. Here’s a fun challenge for you: consider approaching one calendar day (or even an hour) of your life as if everything you encountered was a museum exhibit made just for you. I think this would blow your mind. It’s probably not possible to sustain this mentality 24/7, but it’s worth trying out once in a while.

Dangers of underuse: The student who eschews observing life through experience in favor of simply reading about it would likely find themselves lost in theory and abstraction.

Dangers of overuse: The student who lives a rich life but eschews other modalities of seeking truth may never entirely process or understand life’s gifts of wisdom, as they can be impenetrable and overwhelming. And the lessons this student does manage to learn, they are apt to soon forget.

Category 2: Truth Processing

This category of tools allows us to take our inputs and digest them, turn them into meaning, and integrate them.

Meditation

Other names: Thinking, Pondering

Best for: Processing information/emotions, Generating ideas

Notes: When I say meditation, I really just mean thinking. But I like that “meditation” implies a little bit more structure and intent than you get from ambient thoughts.

Thinking this way is so useful for processing big ideas or problems. Sometimes, when I was cramming for a beastly law school exam, I would need to just close my eyes and lay still for a little while and let my brain do its thing. And somehow, this worked. There’s a reason we get our best ideas in the shower—there’s nothing to do but sing and think.⁴

Meditation is also a fabulous tool for dealing with the emotional components of truth-seeking. Because truth is an emotional thing. It can be hard to find out you’re wrong. There are some truths that are very scary or painful. And sometimes truth just stretches us like a rubber band. Meditation is an incredible way to face, process, and release attachment, including to the problems that can arise through the pursuit of wisdom.

Dangers of underuse: The student who never thinks without distraction may find themselves unable to sort out the many ideas they are exposed to. They certainly won’t be able to write, because “writing” could probably be defined as “meditating and typing.”

Dangers of overuse: An overemphasis on thinking can create navel-gazing, recursion, and intellectual froth without substance. Thinking is, ultimately, incredibly imprecise compared to writing.⁵ And without inputs, the well will quickly run dry, and drought ensues.

Writing

Other names: Journaling, Opening a vein and bleeding on a page

Best for: Culminating the truth-seeking process, Owning an idea

Notes: I personally think that, while each of these modalities has their place in the royal family, writing is the king. It is the barbell back squats of the pursuit of knowledge. If you do barbell back squats, you know what I mean. For those who don’t: both are agonizing, miserable, and designed to crush your spirit; they also happen to be possibly the single best activity you can do for body and mind, respectively.

Thoughts are notoriously formless and vague. Like, close your eyes and picture a turtle. If I could take a picture of what you’re seeing in your head, how would it compare to an actual turtle? That’s the gap between an unwritten idea and a written one. In writing, you have to prove it.

Writing is amazing for basically any stage of the wisdom-seeking process. Brainstorming? Try a no-pause freewrite. Developing? Make an outline. But it is the undisputed champion for learning something at the deepest, most comprehensive, most polished level. In some ways, you could think of all the other modalities that I’ve mentioned here as preparation for writing.

Dangers of underuse: In the words of Paul Graham, “no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it.”⁶

Dangers of overuse: Writing too much, without enough external inputs, will usually either reinvent the wheel, remain narrow, lack novelty, or just be plain wrong. (But quite frankly, writing too much is pretty difficult to do.)

Prayer

Other names: Devotion, Petition

Best for: Aligning with truth/goodness, Clearing away roadblocks/falsehoods

Notes: Prayer’s inclusion on this list will be controversial, but I intend to defend it with my whole chest, and to believer and non-believer alike. I also think it’s meaningfully different from meditation or conversation.

Believers see prayer as communion with the divine. And if you’re trying to gain wisdom, you could do worse than to consult the source of all knowledge. I believe God is eager to reveal truth to us, and that he is responsive to our petitions and requests. Big if true!

But even for someone who doesn’t have faith in a higher power, I think it can be a meaningful exercise to picture yourself conversing with such a hypothetical entity. Imagine that it knows everything, loves and cares for you, and wants what’s best for you. As you think or talk through issues or questions, address that entity, and imagine it responding. Think of this as rubber-ducking taken to its logical conclusion.

If you try this, you may find that you have different insights than you would in a normal conversation or meditation session. Non-believers will say that the psychological power of this exercise accounts for any effect of prayer that believers experience. Believers will say that this exercise works for non-believers because they’re tapping into a true principle. I don’t think I have to settle this, but I’ll assert that the effect is available to anyone who tries it.

Dangers of underuse: The student who cannot pray will find that their pursuit of Truth may drift from the pursuit of Goodness (which are ultimately one and the same).

Dangers of overuse: The pupil benefits from the master in direct proportion to their own preparedness and effort; the student who only prays approaches God with an underdeveloped mind.

When you get stuck, reach for a tool you’ve perhaps neglected

Used together, these tools can move mountains. But each has their strengths, weaknesses, and optimal contexts. So like the humors,⁷ they work best in balance.

The good news is that I think our minds, our spirits, and even our bodies are naturally calibrated to hunger for these different approaches, in the same way that someone with a calcium deficiency might crave milk or an anemic might want to eat dirt. If you apply one of these to a problem that you haven’t tried in a while, you might not only have a breakthrough, but also the distinct sensation of an itch being scratched.

Before I started this Substack, I was in a period where I wasn’t writing enough. I found myself twisted up in knots about certain issues in my life. I started tackling some of them in essays, thinking that I would never run out of things to say about them. But after writing about them, many of them kind of just…resolved. Such is the power of writing!

I could tell similar stories for times when I’ve neglected other tools. I think it’s normal for these to ebb and flow, and everyone has modalities they gravitate to more and less. Frankly, I don’t do any of these things as much as I wish I would.

So when you get stuck, it can help to think about the nature of your stuckness, and to reach for a tool that is well-suited to fixing your problem. There’s a memetic quote that illustrates this: “If you’re overthinking, write; if you’re underthinking, read.” I might add something like: if you’re overwhelmed, meditate. If you’re lost, pray. If you’re feeling blocked, talk to a friend. If you’re stagnating, seek life experiences.

On a huge hill, John Donne said, Truth stands:

and he that will

Reach her, about must and about must go,

And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.

The pursuit of truth isn’t always easy or simple, but it’s worth it. My hope in this essay was that highlighting some of the tools at our disposal could serve as a reminder—mostly to myself—to use them more wisely and more often, in the name of a swifter ascent. I wish you luck on your climb.

1. I’m talking about “acquiring truth,” rather than the simpler “learning” because I think the latter term has the connotation of being about information, rather than wisdom, or insight, or clarity.

2. This list is not intended to be comprehensive or MECE. (Why yes, I am married to a management consultant, how did you know?) For one thing, I’m focusing on non-empirical tools, so excluding things like the scientific method and statistical analysis. Big fan of these, but they’re for another essay. I would love to hear from you about how you might amend or add to this list. Get in those comments!

3. Well…you technically can, but it’s permanent.

4. Of course, if they ever make fully waterproof electronics, we’re all cooked.

5. From Paul Graham’s “Putting Ideas into Words”:

Putting ideas into words doesn't have to mean writing, of course. You can also do it the old way, by talking. But in my experience, writing is the stricter test. You have to commit to a single, optimal sequence of words. Less can go unsaid when you don't have tone of voice to carry meaning. And you can focus in a way that would seem excessive in conversation.

6. I highly recommend the linked essay. Also, shout out again to Henrik Karlsson for turning me on to this.

7. A framework I think we can all agree is valid and beyond reproach!