The onion is one of the most useful metaphors I often find myself referring to. An onion has many layers within a thin outer layer of paper like material that protects the inner layers from drying out. Onions last a long time and in the right conditions can be stored through the winter. Many onions can be produced by sprouting a single onion in water. An old English tale suggests the thickness of the onion skin can predict the severity of the coming winter. More interesting though, is that wild onions are found on every continent, indicating that it’s a very ancient vegetable.
But its metaphorical value supersedes its trivial aspects, as it represents the nature of truth.
Truth is almost never black and white. As an example, lawyers refer to “culpability” to indicate layers of nuance when it comes to guilt. One of the most serious of crimes, murder, has many layers, such as murder 1, murder in the 2nd degree, 3rd degree murder, and manslaughter. We also have vehicular manslaughter and murder by insanity. There is no cut and dry murder or completely objective culpability. It’s all relative.
But to be clear, when I speak of layers of truth I’m not referring to “alternative facts,” which is a form of deception or subterfuge, but rather layers of truth that lie beneath layers of truth. Each layer is itself a truth, but then there are deeper truths.
For example, Donald Trump has a penchant for not telling the truth. I’ve known people like him. Worked for them. Was in relationship with one. There are lots of people who would rather lie than tell the truth even when the truth is a good story. For me, telling a lie feels shitty. I’d rather face the music and tell the truth regardless of the consequences because I know I’ll feel better later and won’t have to remember my lies to keep my stories straight.
But back to Trump. On the surface, he lies constantly. The Washington Post tallied up his lies during his four years of presidency and it came to more than 30,500. The question is . . . is there a deeper truth beneath his lies?
There has been much documented about Trump’s childhood and early adulthood that suggests he’s a traumatized man. And, of course, his trauma does not excuse his deceit, it merely explains it. Then he learned early on that a story told forcefully enough, backed up by lawyers and status would garner significant favorable results (favorable for him that is).
He started putting his name on buildings and gained a larger-than-life status such that people couldn’t say no to him. And he bought his own cover story. The more he did what he did, the more status and clout, the more people idolized him, the more he came to believe he was invincible.
And so . . . the deeper truth has to do with humanity in general and how we idolize people with the appearance of success and status even when we know so little about who they really are.
On the other hand, Keanu Reeves is widely celebrated for being kind and humble, hanging out with homeless people, gifting lavishly to production and stunt staff on his movies. We regularly see quotes from him cycling through the social media sphere along with his tragic stories such as the loss of his girlfriend and baby, his sister’s battle with cancer, his close friend River Phoenix dying of a drug overdose, and so on.
What is the deeper story about Reeves? Why is he such a kind and humble person? If I ever get a chance to hang out with him I may discover the answer. In the meantime, let’s surmise that somewhere in his life he experienced a kind of wholesome love that not many people are privileged enough to receive.
With every corporate scandal there is the influence of money and status at the heart of it. Political corruption: money and status. Marital infidelity: usually ego mixed with unspoken fear. Drug abuse? Alcoholism? Physical abuse?
There is always what lies on the surface, and beneath the surface something more telling. But there are infinite layers of depth beneath the surface. There is more than just fear and ego. More than selfishness. More than mere ignorance or immaturity.
Racism has always seemed ludicrous to me. When considering that we share 99% of our DNA with every other living human being means that what makes us look different comprises an infinitesimally small portion of our makeup. The majority of what makes us, us is substantially the same as every other bi-pedal humanoid homo sapien. We are essentially the same.
So why is racism so persistent? Why is it so hard for so many people to move beyond their judgement and hatred? Peel the onion and we find fear. The fear of not being good enough or valid enough so that by positioning others below us we are thus positioned above and can feel better about ourselves.
But this too, is a simplistic explanation. Peel another layer and we can look to the structure of European languages which are based on nouns and categorizations. Which means as we place people, places, and things in categories that we are also comparing. Which means as we compare we are assessing some people, places, or things as better than others. Which means the very construct of language puts in motion a life-long battle with trying to be enough, feel enough, to feel valid, lovable, worthy.
Peel another layer and we can see that we are all battling with conformity and comparison, feeling a deep sense of our truth pushing to the surface while everything about our social conditioning says we are truly insane for the hubris of daring to think differently. So we can either conform and try to find a certain level of stasis within the current zeitgeist, or otherwise stand aside and invite ridicule, separation, and loneliness.
Peel another layer and we can see that we have forgotten our oneness, because the more we live outside the boundaries of human connection the more we crave it, and the more we crave it the more we come to see that we are all in this together.
Peel another layer and we can see that we are not just connected with each other, but with nature and the Cosmos.
Peel another layer and we can see that (truly) there is only one truth — the truth of unity with all things.
Peel another layer and we can see that the truth of unity is the truth of love.
Peel another layer and we can see that our essence is love.
Peel another layer and we can see that there is only nothingness, void, space, openness.
And on and on we can go. Underneath every truth is another deeper level of truth.
In family dynamics there are typically many layers of misunderstandings. Sometimes surface level behaviors are obviously self-centered and even harmful to others in the family, while the deeper truth is that we all have wounds that affect our perceptions, and from our perceptions our behaviors, and from our behaviors our connection or disconnection, and from our connection or disconnection our sense of self is defined in either healthy or unhealthy ways.
In relationships, there is projection, assumption, and perceptions based on past experiences. Often there is truth in our perceptions, while such truth is often mixed with our past or what we heard from a friend or read on social media.
Everything is intertwined in a complex matrix of truths and deeper truths.
Which brings me back to the onion. I love onions. I cook with them all the time. They make everything taste better. But ya’ know what’s also unique about onions?
We never eat them by themselves.
Onions are a complimentary ingredient that enhances other things. Not unlike deeper truths. Standing on their own they tend to be too much to handle, like biting into a raw onion.
Sauté some onions with mushrooms and spinach, add a few eggs and you have something wonderful. Cook some onions with celery in butter, add vegetable stock and you have an excellent base for a soup. Sprinkle finely chopped raw onions and cilantro over some carné asada, and with a warm corn tortilla you have a delightful meal.
Deeper truths make everything better, but they are not palatable without context.
Imagine saying to a white supremist, “Your essence is love and the only real truth is that we are all connected.” Or saying to a coworker, “I love you and you mirror those parts of me that I don’t like, which is why I feel irritated when I’m around you.” Or to your friendly neighborhood billionaire, “I see that you are afraid and that only through constant accumulation are you able to experience brief moments of freedom.”
Context is built through layers of understanding, like layering flavors in a dish, one truth in context with others builds a rich texture that is both nourishing and enjoyable.
And as we blend our deeper truths with context, they become wisdom.
If you’ve enjoyed this post please like, share, and subscribe. And thank you for your support.
Wise words, onionman. On racism: I think anthropologist C. Loring Brace has had the last word, so far, on the complex subject of racism in his magnum opus, Race Is A Four-Letter Word: The Origin of The Concept. He peels back the layers of human history and finds the false concept of race embedded in the birth of the science of anthropology which, in its early days, unfortunately did much to promote the idea that white Europeans were superior to other third world people of color. You’re right, Glenn, to not understand it. Race is a pseudo-scientific concept, not a scientific truth. There is only one species of human, no subspecies, races or varieties.
Without pointing fingers at the first people who understandably thought of other humans outside their tribe as “the other,” he describes how sailing ships enabled Europeans to arrive in foreign lands suddenly facing very different looking people. Brace explains how those physical differences evolved as adaptations to different climates as humans migrated. He invented the term “racialism” for the tendency to regard other strange-looking Homo sapiens as a different race of human and assigns no blame to those who unwittingly subscribe to it.
“Racism,” on the other hand, is the purposeful use of outdated and debunked racialist ideas to subjugate and demean other people. Brace has no tolerance for that.
Side note: he also had no tolerance for new CA governor Ronald Reagan who announced upon assuming the job in 1967 that taxpayers should not be subsidizing “intellectual curiosity” in the state’s universities. Brace promptly left UCSB — where I had had the privilege of attending his Physical Anthropology class — and continued his decades-long career at the University of Michigan.
I highly recommend his book if you can find it.
Awesome!