Hello friends,
I know all of you who are authors on this blog, though you may not all know each other. That's fine: you'll get to know each other here!
I thought I would get our juices flowing with something of a cop-out post mixed with a healthy degree of shameless plug: instead of sharing a provocative, thoughtful article I found on the interwebs, I'm sharing one of my own posts, from my blog :P read it here.
As the one of the purposes of the Salon is to seek truth, I thought it was relevant. I mean it when I say that we're never completely right about anything. We see through a glass, darkly. The perfect light of pure truth won't come until the next life. So while we're sharing our thoughts and beliefs and making our voices heard, let's keep a spirit of humility, admitting the limitations of our understanding, and an openness to additional light and truth.
As always, comments actively encouraged! Feel free to check out the rest of my blog if you wish (another shameless plug!). It's just my personal musings, so read at your own risk :)
Cincinnatus
I wouldn't call grappling with the concept of truth a cop-out. It could be the subject of endless volumes. I am curious though what you mean by the suggestion that there is absolute truth. In the parable the 3 blind men were mistaken from the perspective of someone who knows they are touching an elephant, so would the absolute truth be that they are touching an elephant? It might not be wrong to say they are touching a mammal, or billions of cells, or a taxidermied display, a wax sculpture, a giant, maybe they are touching a stampede, a weapon, a tool, someone's livelihood. An elephant can be many things to many people and they can all be true. Must there be an absolute truth? Or can absolute truth be relative?
ReplyDeleteInteresting comment. I'm glad you brought it up - it's a very crucial point to discuss. Your first statement, "the 3 blind men were mistaken from the perspective of someone who knows they are touching an elephant, so...the absolute truth [is] that they are touching an elephant," is correct. That's what I meant by absolute truth, in any case.
ReplyDeleteI am ambivalent as to what you choose to "call" the elephant; how you choose to label the object "being touched". You can use a thousand euphemisms, and certainly elephants mean different things to different people. But there remains the simple, unalterable fact that we are all talking about the same thing, an elephant, no matter what we choose to call it, or what it means to us personally. It's still an elephant, and nothing else. It is everything that an elephant is, naturally. But it is NOT a tree trunk, or a rope, or a snake.
Today, I think there is a tendency to want to say that "whatever you believe, that is your truth," as if someone's "personal truth" can alter reality. The blind man's conviction that he was holding a rope didn't change the reality of the matter one diddle. He may have influenced others' perceptions of the truth, or their belief; but he certainly didn't change the elephant at all.
We can, and should, have dialogue and debate about the value of things, their meaning, their relevance, etc. But we should never forget that whatever your opinion of reality, reality remains unchanged, and knowable. Hard to know, granted. But knowable. And that reality is not a function of how many people are aware of it, or believe that it is true. Climate change is not an ounce less real, no matter how many Republicans claim it's a fiction. And no matter how many liberals resent conservative emphasis on "family values," nothing will ever change the fact that the way we raise our children is decisive for their long-term health and success.
"On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow."
ReplyDelete- Nietzsche
A well-accomplished man has this quote etched into the walls of his home. Ever since seeing it, I've been impressed, though as with most impressive things, I struggle with the "what does it mean?"
I think one step Dan has highlighted is to eschew personal biases for universal truths. These "universal truths," however, can be hotly contested. One example, what is man's inherent nature? Is it good, evil, or it depends? Somehow the last answer strikes me as simply not good enough.
Here I also oscillate to Peter's point that everything means something different to everyone else. The elephant being an elephant is undoubtedly true. But to each man, it did represent different things. Could we apply this same analogy to theology? The truth is God exists, but to three different people this God means different things. To some, it is a Messiah, to others a Holy Trinity. Can we in this form argue that someone else is wrong?
Is the key to recognize our blindness? For example, if I were born on another continent, in another age, I would still be worshiping animal spirits. I would be thinking I had a snake in my arms as opposed to a rope.
Interested to see whether you agree with these extrapolations, and thanks, Dan, for starting things off again.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love that Nietzsche quote. So incredibly true, and a resolute call to all of us to stop living in comfort down in the lowlands and to start tackling the mountains. Like he said, even if we feel we aren't getting anywhere, as long as we are honestly and humbly seeking the truth, and as long as passion and anger don't get in the way, we will be getting better and better at recognizing and discovering the truth.
I also loved your comments. Well considered, and thoughtful. You posed more questions than you answered, which is the mark of a careful thinker :)
I think the three key points I tried to make in my blog piece were these: 1) things are the way they are, independent of OUR understanding. The truth is independent of us: we neither change it, define it, nor make it. 2) The truth IS knowable, but it is NOT easy to know. And 3) none of us knows the truth perfectly. In other words, none of us knows the elephant perfectly. Some of us have a better, clearly, more complete idea of what we're dealing with than others, but none of us has a perfect perception or understanding. In some respects (often, in many respects) our understanding is flawed, incomplete, or out-right wrong.
I think the take-away of those three points is that we all ought to be humble in our search for truth. We shouldn't despair of ever finding the truth - like Nietzsche said, you can't help but benefit from trying. But we should always carefully consider every point of view, and be cautious when making strident claims.
Your comment about the truth of God is fascinating, and I'm so glad you brought it up. It's a perfect analogy to understanding truth generally. Like you said, the truth is that God exists, yet God means such different things to different people. As one of the greatest teachers of theology I've ever met once said, "you'll never meet two people who understand and worship God the exact same way."
So it is totally relevant to ask your question, Matt: "can we argue that anyone is right and anyone wrong?" I think deciding who's right and who's wrong is completely missing the point. I wonder what the elephant must have thought if the blind men had held a vote and decided that the rope guy was "right." Clearly, they all incorrectly understood the elephant. In some respects, they each weren't far from the truth (certain sections of the tail can be fairly accurately approximated by a rope). But none of them had enough truth to even approximate the right answer. They couldn't even agree on whether the thing was animate or inanimate matter...
God is who he (she/they) is. WE are the ones who misunderstand him (for simplicity's sake, I'm sticking with "him" ;) Our objective should not be to determine "who's right" but rather to get closer to the truth - to truly come to know God as he actually is. We are not in a competition to prove who is right and who is wrong. We are all in this together, and our objective is (or ought to be) the same: to come to a complete and perfect knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they will be.
Perhaps that goal is not attainable in this life, but as Nietzsche said, striving for it can only do us good.
I agree that pursuing and knowing truth is important, but I still feel that the pursuit of truth is not complete without understanding the implications and application of truth, the meaning of truth, and that is where relative truth comes in. Switching mammals, say I am a cow. The unalterable truth is that I am a cow. If I am a cow in a America, I am shot with hormones, antibiotics, and steroids until I am ready to be butchered and eaten (unless I am a baby cow and my hooves are nailed to the ground so I don't exercise and toughen the meat for veal). If I am a cow in India, I am left to wander freely, viewed as sacred. Old women guide me through town and charge people to feed me hay. So, while it is important to know that I am a cow and not a horse because the result of me being a horse in each country is drastically different, simply knowing the ultimate truth that I am a cow is not enough. I need to know what it means to be a cow, and that truth depends entirely on who you ask.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Knowing the truth (or even just knowing that it exists) is not all that matters. In fact, as you astutely pointed out, where the rubber hits the road is the "implications and application of truth," which I understood as meaning "what people actually believe and the affect it has on peoples' lives" - however incorrect they might be. Our lives seem less impacted by the Truth than by the relative differences in belief held by ourselves and the people around us. The cow in the US is treated very differently than the one in India. Gays are treated very differently in Iran than in the Netherlands not because the truth is different in the two places but because peoples' understanding (or lack thereof), their beliefs, differ sharply.
ReplyDeleteMy post on Emotions and Photons did not try to delve into all that. Not because it isn't important, but because it's too big to include in one post. The values we ascribe to otherwise hollow and malleable symbols differ greatly from person to person, and from one community and nation to another. Take "government," "marriage," and "justice," for instance. Or "God" for that matter. Too often, we feel locked in a power struggle to determine whose perceptions and meanings will dominate in our communities and nations. In fact, we probably feel that way because that's exactly what's happening. It's a war of meaning and belief that matters precisely because it strikes at what lies at the very core of who we are.
The tragedy, though, is that we've totally lost all perspective - a perspective that could turn enemies to friends and erase borders and boundaries, drawing all of humanity into one great circle. We've locked horns either because we believe we're right, that we have the correct view, and that all others are wrong (thus justifying our quest to defeat their meanings and beliefs and prevent their ascendancy); or else because, though we don't believe in right or wrong (it depends purely on who you're asking), we recognize that it will impact our lives whose relative notion of truth wins so we'd better make sure we join the fray.
What if we remembered that there IS an absolute truth, but that none of us has all of it? Then, instead of fighting for ascendancy, we'd be asking each other for the missing pieces, or working together to discover them. Instead of drawing battle lines and going to war, we'd be drawing everyone - and their truth - within ever-expanding concentric circles of inclusion. Sure, we would still disagree. But the focus would be discovering where we're wrong and where we're right, not on proving who's wrong and who's right. We'd be each moving on our individual paths towards the same place, the same source of truth, rather than duking it out to ensure that my incomplete picture triumphs over yours.
There's a HUGE difference there. Truly. It's the difference between hatred and love; between unity and division; between humanity and tribalism, nationalism, sectarianism.
The meaning we ascribe to symbols, the relative truth embodied in our respective beliefs, does indeed matter a great deal. Which is exactly why we need to remind ourselves that we're all wrong.