Try to remember and believe that the purpose of writing is to communicate ideas as clearly and as quickly as possible. Do not try to show off, or confuse, or pontificate. Do not be afraid to let your ideas stand boldly and clearly on the page. Writers who clothe their ideas in layers of elaborate silk and satin are hiding the reality underneath, not beautifying it. Away with their verbal fig leaves!

All of those post-modern theorists who try to confuse you with their denial of any known truth (except theirs) are playing games with their minds. Don't let them play games with yours. You may think yourself incapable of thinking and writing at the sophisticated level of these clever pedants. But even if you are crazy, you are no crazier than the average asshole sitting on a tenured throne. Nor should you be ashamed of your beliefs however much the theorists try to persuade you to believe that there is nothing to believe but their belief in non-belief.

Being something of an old-fashioned essentialist myself, I am naive enough to believe that outside of the virtual reality language helmets we all wear, something exists. That something, whatever it is, call it reality or truth or the force, is not the artificial socially-constructed self but the SELF, the context out of which we arose and within which we live and move and have our being Our perceptions of that reality may be distorted and blocked by our virtual reality language helmets. We may all be trapped within the matrix. Deus may be absconditus. But S/He/It is still out there somewhere, still handsomer than the affectation of love. The goal is not just to make our virtual reality cages more comfortable or equitable but to break out somehow, someday, and be free in Zion.

Remember that we are all sinners, naked before God; none of us really knows the answers. We are all groping in the dark. Academic tyrants and bullies will try to pretend that they know, that they are superior beings entrusted with some secret TRUTH. They will try to terrorize you into lies and confusion. Don't let them. Of course you might be and probably are wrong, but so are they. So speak your own ideas with clarity. Emerson at least had the right approach: "To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men; that is genius. Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense." Therefore, Sin Boldly! Stand fast in the liberty of the spirit and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.