“Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not.” —Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I’ve just finished my upcoming book, THE ONE AND THE NINETY-NINE: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion (June 2026), submitted to St. Martin’s Press last week.
First: thank you for your patience this past year, as my work here slowed down so I could focus on the most important words I have ever written. I expect to be back in full force soon. Your support of my work here means more than you know.
I’ve never felt so vulnerable as I did in writing this book because it required me to tell parts of my own story I’ve never shared publicly before. Nor have I ever felt so convicted of the importance of sharing them, because I know they can help others make sense of this moment, and the liminal spaces in their own lives—when we are not who we once were, but not yet fully who we will become.
As the world becomes more chaotic, and more contagious, developing the ability to stand in the tension without reverting to the easy ways out—full retreat and isolation, or full capitulation to the moment—is a necessary faculty, muscle, disposition. It is all of those things, and all of them demand courage.
That question—what it means to stand in the tension—came back to me one summer when I stumbled across a painting in an unlikely place.
Out of the Well
"The Lie said to the Truth, "Let's take a bath together, the well water is very nice. The Truth, still suspicious, tested the water and found out it really was nice. So they got naked and bathed. But suddenly, the Lie leaped out of the water and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth. The Truth, furious, climbed out of the well to get her clothes back. But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth, looked away, with anger and contempt.
Poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared forever, hiding her shame.
Since then, the Lie runs around the world, dressed as the Truth, and society is very happy..... because the world has no desire to know the naked Truth."
In the summer of 2022, I walked into a tiny store in Douglas, MI, a shop with no discernible theme—there were antiques, books, art, clothes, and food items. While my wife Claire browsed, I stood in the door captivated by a piece of art that I saw hanging on the far wall which seemed out of place in this small shop near the beach: it was a painting of a naked woman with gaping mouth, incredulous expression, crawling out of a well holding a whip.
I asked the woman working behind a desk if she could tell me anything about it, but she lamented that the owner—the one who had purchased it—was not around, and she would be the only one who could tell me. I resisted the urge to google. (This was shortly before ChatGPT became ubiquitous.)
Later that day, I paced back and forth, unable to stop thinking about it. Then I remembered a piece of advice that my mom, a lifelong artist, had given me about buying art: “If it’s bothering you, if you can’t walk away from it, if you have the strong sense that it has something to say to you, Luke—then don’t feel guilty about buying it.”
This piece of art was a print, not an original, so it was very affordable. I went back to the shop and purchased it. I needed more time with it. I didn’t want to forget it.
Since that day, it has been hanging on the wall of my study where I write—and where I finished, these past two years, the book I’ve been working on since that day.
I had been on the fence about the theme of the next book I wanted to write when I walked into that shop that day; I was not even sure I was going to write another book at all. But in the week that followed, as I stared at it hanging next to my desk, a mission grew within me.
Origins
The original art was made in 1896 by the French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, titled (in English), “The Truth Coming Out of Her Well.” It was part of a series of paintings that depict a woman in and around a well (The truth at the bottom of a well is another work in the series).[1]
It may have been inspired by an aphorism of the pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus, who wrote: "Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in an abyss." (Abyss has sometimes been translated as “well”).
Some critics assumed Gérôme’s painting was commentary on the Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish naval officer was falsely accused of treason and the truth buried for decades before he was exonerated.
There is also strong evidence that Gérôme’s painting may have been a statement about the rise of photography against the backdrop of impressionism which was popular at the time. A photo purports to show things as they really are (that’s debatable, of course), while impressionism works only through impression.
While I find these explanations interesting, the painting is compelling to me for other reasons. It stands on its own, and it speaks to me personally. It always forces me to ask myself: what truths have I hidden, or which truths have been hidden from me?
What must come out?
In my upcoming book, it stands at the beginning of a chapter titled “The Family System: The One and the Two”, which describes how we learn to be in the world, and the broader society—including the lies and truths we are most liable to accept or reject—in our own families. In some sense, our ability to be engaged in positive ways with other groups in our life, whether our workplace, a political party, or a school environment, stems from the way we learned—or didn’t learn—to be in relationship with others in the family without either losing ourselves or becoming one with it, dissolving ourselves.
There are lies we tell ourselves which make it easier to live in a world where the dual pressures of coercion and conformity can make daily life feel like a negotiation. It’s easy to never even look down inside the well, afraid of what we might find—let alone finding the courage to draw up whatever it is that lies at the bottom.
The painting still hangs above my desk. I’ve looked at it often through the long, uneven process of writing this book. Sometimes she seems to be climbing out of the well; other times, retreating back into it. I’ve never been sure which.
But I’ve come to think that’s the point. Truth doesn’t emerge once and for all—it surfaces and disappears, depending on whether anyone still has the courage to face it.
The world prefers its lies dressed in truth’s clothes. But the work of the “one” is to keep drawing from the well anyway—to see clearly, even when seeing costs something.
I’ll have much more to say in the coming weeks about all of this. Thank you, as always for reading.
—Luke
N.B.: Cluny’s 2026 summer conference—which I am hosting in Napa, CA, shortly after the book’s publication—has the theme ZOË: Life Abundant in an Artificial Age. (It is pronounced “zoh-AY”, which comes from the Greek word zoe, a word meaning ‘life’… but a form of life that is higher than mere biological life. ) Tickets are available to subscribers of this newsletter at a steep discount for two more weeks. Be sure to use code ‘antimimetic’ at checkout. Everyone who attends will receive a signed copy of my book, among other things. Early-bird tickets are available here: https://www.cluny.org/events/zoe-conference
[1] La Vérité sortant du puits armée de son martinet pour châtier l'humanité (English: Truth coming from the well armed with her whip to chastise humanity). Gérôme did a series of at least four paintings of women stuck in wells, or in this case emerging out of one, in the last 10 years of his life. He never spelled out his definitive motivation for this series of paintings.
I appreciate your post here and look forward to reading your new work. I am sure it will be a thoughtful piece. When will it be available?