The exhortation to “love ourselves” has been used to enrich therapists, sell beauty products, and fill vacancies at spas and resorts. But no doubt plenty of well-meaning people also propose it genuinely as much as they do ignorantly, without ulterior motive; seeing lack of “loving ourselves” as the root cause of self-esteem issues ranging from eating disorders to suicide, especially in young people. Yet I rather suspect, like contemporary culture writer Freddie deBoer, that “Mentally healthy people, if they still exist, aren’t healthy because of the constant presence of positive feelings of self. They are healthy because of the habitual absence of any feelings of self.” That is, that what we perceive in another person as “confidence”, “self-esteem”, and “loving oneself”, is really what a person looks like when they don’t think about themselves at all. That the key to a “love of self” is to simply detach yourself, as much as possible, from the internal monologue in your head. That the antidote to self-consciousness is minimal consciousness of the self. But there is also a second way we can think about “loving ourselves”. A more spiritual way. One that a person can resort to if, for whatever reason, simply detaching from or quieting down one’s inner monologue doesn’t work and rumination persists.

There’s a fallacy currently running through the “storytelling culture”—both in cinema and in literature, but primarily in cinema—that says simple stories can’t have depth because they’re simple. In order for a story to be deep and profound and to have “permanency” in a media landscape constantly churning out new content, the plot has to be non-linear, it has to go in a lot of different directions/have a lot of subplots, it needs to be “subtle” in its philosophical verdicts, and/or have an anti-climactic or inconclusive ending. “This is storytelling for smart people, see,” begins the tone dripping with condescension, “And if you fail to appreciate it as such, well, you just don’t get it and maybe you should content yourself with watching mindless corporate franchise films with explosions and tits.”

In my previous essay on Beauty & The Beast, I talked about how true beauty—being a combination of aesthetic perfection and virtue—has a kind of “purging” and “salvific” effect on people (especially creatives) who are devoted to becoming the best version of themselves. I also delved into another lesson of Beauty & The Beast, which is that the ultimate expression of human beauty is the family; and thus, just as beauty requires a person to burn away the vices and flaws that sabotage them in order to become a high achiever or make great art, so beauty also requires men and women to burn away their selfishness in order to build great families. But if Beauty & The Beast teaches us about beauty’s saving power—both in terms of individuals sacrificing for their own development and in terms of partners sacrificing themselves for one another—then The Iliad teaches us about beauty’s destructive power.

In reading Beaumont’s adaptation of Villeneuve, a central theme emerges that you won’t find in modern storytelling: Beauty saves the beast because beauty is the transcendent piercing into the ordinary. Beauty is not a construct. Beauty is not conjured by personal judgement. Beauty is not a human invention. It comes from an Elsewhere. Another realm. A world of forms. And it appears like an invisible spirit to those whom it wishes to appear to; those individuals then channelling that beauty into works of art, powerful music, great literature, budding relationships, athletic performances, and so on. As such, when beauty comes into a person’s life, it often entails disruption. A process of creative destruction wherein beauty prods its host to eliminate all about themselves that stand in the way of its objective, and leaves intact only things about the host which assist beauty in its goal. In exchange, beauty revives that which is dead inside us. It turns the brown grass green and the barren meadow full. Hence, the tale of Beauty & The Beast resonates because we are all the beast. We are all the beast in search of that beauty which ultimately will lead us beside the still water and restore our souls.

Song of Solomon is not just a love story. It’s a kidnapping story.

The world does not like defiant Jews. It does not like Jews who talk back. Jews who call attention to false narratives and tell tyrants and bureaucrats to fuck off. The world likes its Jews docile, groveling, or dead. The world likes its Jews docile, groveling, or dead, because docile, groveling, and dead Jews don’t challenge whatever narrative agenda-driven actors concoct about them. Whereas living, vocal, opinionated Jews insist on being the ones to tell their own story. Stories that a world who hates Jews don’t want to hear.