Will the truth set you free?

Awesome observation T.

 

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There is an abstract sense of truth. You can find it in history, just read through the legion volumes written to promote the rise and establishment of Christianity. (Any logic, you know, that can be thrown off by the revolutionary consideration of what a blind horse means in God's scheme ....) For instance, Anselm:

Therefore, Lord, you who give knowledge of the faith, give me as much knowledge as you know to be fitting for me, because you are as we believe and that which we believe. And indeed we believe you are something greater than which cannot be thought. Or is there no such kind of thing, for "the fool said in his heart, 'there is no God'" (Ps. 13:1, 52:1)? But certainly that same fool, having heard what I just said, "something greater than which cannot be thought," understands what he heard, and what he understands is in his thought, even if he does not think it exists. For it is one thing for something to exist in a person's thought and quite another for the person to think that thing exists. For when a painter thinks ahead to what he will paint, he has that picture in his thought, but he does not yet think it exists, because he has not done it yet. Once he has painted it he has it in his thought and thinks it exists because he has done it. Thus even the fool is compelled to grant that something greater than which cannot be thought exists in thought, because he understands what he hears, and whatever is understood exists in thought. And certainly that greater than which cannot be understood cannot exist only in thought, for if it exists only in thought it could also be thought of as existing in reality as well, which is greater. If, therefore, that than which greater cannot be thought exists in thought alone, then that than which greater cannot be thought turns out to be that than which something greater actually can be thought, but that is obviously impossible. Therefore something than which greater cannot be thought undoubtedly exists both in thought and in reality. (Proslogion)​

It's the repetition of the phrase that is important. In the modern era we use phrases like "ultimate reality", and escape the headache of figuring that than which something greater cannot be thought by acknowledging almost colloquially the long-acknowledged notion of "infinity".

It is, I believe, Anselm whose unfortunate inquiry most directly embodies the philosophical rejoinder, "Yes, but what happens if it turns out God exists, and you've been worshipping the wrong God?" Painstaking, indeed, but more an indictment of the human condition within civilized society than anything else. Fortunately, I've come to believe that we humans must necessarily fumble things before we learn how to use them. Guns, bongs, ideas, the one common thing about each item is that one must know what to do with it before doing anything with it. (What, do I just point the thing, yell "Bang!" and then you fall over? Is that how it works?)

Sympathy for the Devil aside, however, the Proslogion serves as an example: what people call "God" generally has certain attributes. From these, we can get a general working notion of what basic things God does. Beyond the "God of the Bible", the "Goddess of the Witches", and other notions--that is, beyond the gods asserted within the various religions, all reach out to an abstract, unknowable notion, and claim to tell the ineffable.

Let us consider this relationship, then, in the context of Truth. If six witnesses to an event give you six different accounts of what happened, have six separate events occurred? Two people in a traffic accident or fight will tell you honestly--as best they can recall--what happened. Few of the malicious lies we've heard told in the heat of a moment were calculated as such; it's why we're generally flabbergasted when in the presence of a truly corrupt soul--for all the corruption we presume is around us, we don't actually believe it as a visceral experience. Neither person in a dispute is likely to tell "the truth", no matter how honestly-intended. There is, beyond the truth of human perception, communication, and experience, a Truth. That Truth is, quite simply, whatever has actually happened, or is happening now.

It is not as strange as it sounds, though, to recognize that this absolute Truth is generally regarded by humans as useless at best, otherwise burdensome and even threatening. No matter how much the disputing parties might protest, there is actually a real truth as to what happened.

For instance, I was once in a dispute that made no sense to me. When I was younger, I was attacked by an older student for ethnic motivations; I had no idea who the attacker was, and multiple witnesses identified him as being Person A. Weeks later, Person A railed at me on the school bus: "You owe me an apology, you little (epithet)!" and stayed pissed, as far as I could tell, for the rest of our unfortunate acquaintance. Not knowing what the hell he was talking about, I of course responded to his growing ethnic hatred with growing hostility, never giving him the apology he thought he deserved, and instead splattering him with insults about his stupidity. As it turns out, the witnesses identified Person A wrongly. In turn, Person A wrongly identified me as the accuser. Here's what's even more unfortunate. I never knew, for several years, Person A's name. When, later, I happened to match a name to Person A's face, I couldn't stop laughing; it was too difficult to explain. Had I known Person A = Name, I would have told them no, Person A didn't drop me. Strangely, nobody ever corrected me when, in other conversations, I used A's name to identify B. Seriously--any number of simple events could have disarmed the entire confusion. Had I known A's name. Had I known what he wanted an apology for. Had I known anyone at all had actually been busted for the attack. Had I known, had I known ... had he known? What would be different? Who knows?

There are a number of "truths" asserted:

• Someone attacked me.
• That person has been identified as Person A.
• A is angry with me for accusing him.
• I never directly accused Person A; does he know that?
• Person A has been punished, apparently, for something he did not do.​

And there is a "Truth" ne'er fully known:

• Person B assaulted someone, for which act Person A was punished.​

The witnesses spoke truthfully, if erroneously. My answer was truthful: "That's who they said it was." Person A was correct to be angry. Hell, as far as school officials knew, they dealt with the truth. But was it "truth" or "Truth" they dealt with? Was it the best they could figure, or what actually happened? Quite obviously, they dealt with the truth as they could figure.

And that's the simple distillation out of all of this. To quote our topic post:

I think the problem is one of the accuracy of the truth. The pure truth, at some point, becomes irrelevant; most of us, after all, are satisfied with a step-by-step, play-by-play, or second-by-second recollection. Do we, for instance, really need the atom-by-atom explanation of the next presidential election? There is, after all, a truth that can be described in terms of its most basic natural components. This is obviously a stretch, though, so "Hillary Clinton" ought to suffice. What did Hillary say? When did she say it? How did she say it? For instance, there is, well, one of Bush's greatest -isms: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Okay, how many of us know what he meant? And what did he actually say? Of all the things in the world he actually said, the one thing we can cross off the list is what the words that came out of his mouth actually mean.

So what happens, then, is that we become overloaded with truths: if you look at anything from any perspective, you can probably find your way to an outlook that seems as shockingly perverse as naturally intuitive.

Thus, for the white supremacist, the answer to why crime and minorities go together is ethnicity, and has nothing to do with poverty, for poor whites can then be said to be corrupted by the niggers, spics, and slant-eyes. For the capitalist, wealth and security are matters of simple will, and speak nothing of what such ethics demand of will. The Christian sees Jesus Christ, and doctrinal fidelity is a matter left to the crotchety and damned.

For the average--that is, for just about anyone, including the racists, capitalists, and Christians--there is a plethora of asserted truths, but Truth itself remains aloof. One might believe that there are only two views on immigration in the United States; after all, the debate focuses on amnesty for illegal hispanics versus complete isolationism. Rarely discussed are the English illegals, the Irish terrorists, or even the corrupt employers who facilitate illegal immigration for profit.

Take the truths of liberalism and conservatism. Beneath any contemporary definition is a basic comparison of what liberals and conservatives stand for. But this comparison is framed by the conditions from which it arose. It is well enough to say, for instance, that liberals seek change and conservatives stasis, or that liberals put the individual in the context of society while conservatives make society dependent upon the individual. But these themes, regardless of how True (note the capital letter) they are, still derive from the perception of their absence. The identities are shaped at least as much by what is not known as by what is.

In the end, we might presume and even agree that there exists potential Truth. But we are inundated and overwhelmed by the clamoring assertions of necessity about smaller interpretations, by truths.

The Truth will set us all free. But finding that Truth is something we have a hard time imagining. This is how "knowing the truth (can) be a bad thing".

 

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But many were either set free or given lighter sentences for ratting out who was in charge of the crime. People who help the prosecutors in many cases end up alot better off than others involved in the case.

 

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Ah, but that is not true freedom or lighter sentence, it is in fact usually a death sentence, or a lifetime of paranoia.

 

is truth often subjective and dependent on individual perspective?

 

How did you feel when you were finally told about Santa? I am sure it was a good moment.

By the way, you are average looking, fat, and your real father is the postman. Happy now?