The Old Gods
Why Truth and Logic are still sacred.
I grew up among the old gods.
Not the ones with thunderbolts and temples, but the quieter pair whose altars fit on a desk: Truth and Logic. They do not demand incense. They do not grant wishes. They ask only for clear eyes and a steady hand. And in return they give you something rarer than luck: clarity.
If you have read my recent essays, you will know my preoccupation with precision, resilience, and the moral hygiene of honest speech. Consider this piece a bridge: a short span linking where we have been to where we are going. Before we venture further, I want to set the vocabulary and the ground rules. Words are tools; blunt ones bruise. Sharp ones cut cleanly. Let us sharpen a few together.
What I Mean by “Truth”
By truth I mean correspondence. The stubborn fit between statement and reality. Say what is, as it is, no dressing, no flattering mirrors. That sounds simple enough until feelings show up (as they do), and then truth starts to feel impolite. But truth is not unkind; people sometimes are. The discipline is to keep truth firm and your delivery human.
Truth imposes cost. It asks you to walk back claims that do not hold, to say “I was wrong” when you were, and to re-aim your effort without sulk or spin. It will not indulge your ego; it is not impressed. But it will keep your footing when the ground gets tricky.
What I Mean by “Logic”
Logic is the craft of valid inference. It is the scaffold that keeps good intentions from collapsing into wishful thinking. Logic is not cleverness and it is not pedantry. It is the patient habit of moving from premises to conclusions without smuggling in little gremlins: assumptions you did not test, definitions you never agreed on, vibes posing as arguments.
Where truth says, “face the world,” logic says, “walk straight.” Together they make an honest traveller.
Why Call Them “Sacred”?
Because we hold them apart. We protect them from corruption; especially our own. I do not mean ritual purity; I mean the kind of reverence you extend to a tool that saves lives. A clean scalpel is “sacred” in a trauma ward not for mysticism but because any contamination harms the patient. In the same way, when truth and logic are compromised, trust is the first to bleed out. Teams falter, families fracture, institutions decay.
Treating truth and logic as sacred means we do three things:
Define terms before we duel. Half the wars I have seen, corporate and otherwise, were fought over fog. Naming things reduces friendly fire.
Separate evidence from explanation. Data is the footprint; the story about who left it is downstream. Keep them distinct and your mind stays clean.
Reward correction. If punishment follows “I was wrong,” you have trained your culture to lie.
“But isn’t that cold?”
I hear this a lot: that truth is harsh and logic is sterile. Nonsense. A compass is not unkind; it just does not flatter your preferred direction. In practice, truth and logic warm human life by making trust possible. If I can rely on your words and your reasoning, I can rely on you. That is not cold; that is intimate.
Kindness divorced from truth curdles into condescension. Passion divorced from logic burns down the house. Keep the old gods in view and you can bring both kindness and passion to the table. And leave with your house intact.
The Altar You Choose
I once wrote, in a private manuscript, about three altars that stand side by side. One gleams with applause. One cushions with comfort. One is plain stone, weathered, and a little unfriendly in winter. You can guess which one I knelt at when I was young. You can also guess which one I return to now.
I share that only to say this: we all worship somewhere, whether or not we admit it. You may never call it worship; you may call it “how I do things.” But our daily rituals: how we argue, how we decide, how we talk when no one can fire us; reveal the altars we keep. Mine carry two old names.
Practical Devotion (No Incense Required)
Here are the small rituals that have kept me honest enough to sleep at night:
Start with the steelman. State the strongest version of the view you oppose, and state it so well your opponent nods. If you cannot do that, you are not ready to argue; you are ready to learn.
Say the quiet part first. Declare your uncertainty, your conflict of interest, or your margin of error up front. This disarms defensiveness and raises the temperature of trust.
Take the measurement that can shame you. If a metric would embarrass you, that is the one you need. The mind is very good at choosing scales that flatter it. Take active steps to minimise this.
Correct fast, praise faster. If someone changes your mind, mark it publicly and thank them. You have just purchased credibility at a discount.
Let words do work. Define “fair,” “safe,” “risk,” “done,” : every slippery term, before you build on it. Ambiguity is cheap until it bankrupts the project.
None of this is glamorous. All of it is powerful. As I wrote elsewhere: Great is the power, and even greater the clarity, that follows the veneration of the old gods: Reason and Logic. Clarity is not a mood. It is a way of being useful to other people.
What this Bridges to
I intend this essay to serve as a keystone for what comes next. I have been gathering these ideas: about precision, will, mercy rightly given, and the refusal to make peace with comforting falsehoods, into a longer work. If you have noticed little parables and phrases scattered across my posts, they are not accidents. They are mile markers on a road I have been quietly walking for some time.
In the months ahead, I will share more of that work. It will not be a self-help tract or a victory lap. It will be a ledger of what I believe makes a life sturdy: honouring truth without cruelty, using logic without losing the heart, and keeping one’s name clean enough to hand to one’s children without apology.
If that sounds austere, I promise it is not. There is real joy in it. The joy of competence. The joy of making and keeping a promise. The joy of seeing a mind you respect nod, slowly, then with a grin; because you brought evidence and reason instead of volume. Joy that costs something and is therefore worth having.
A Closing Invitation
You do not need to agree with me to walk this bridge. Bring your best objections. Bring data. Bring your lived experience and the patterns you have tested in the wild. I am not threatened by a better map. If it helps us travel truer, I will swap mine out in a heartbeat.
In your next hard conversation, choose your altar. In your next decision under pressure, choose it again. Let the old gods remind you that clarity is an act of care. That the most respectful thing we can do for one another is to mean what we say, to know what we mean, and to build on rock, not applause.
I will meet you on the other side.
In lapide, non in plausu
— Dr Stephen D. Jones
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