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eThoughts
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What is the Truth Again?
So what about the truth? What is it?
I was recently engaged in a conversation that seemed to turn into a miscommunication. This kind of thing is not particular to me, it happens to us all. My take was the problem had to do with interpretation (one of us, both of us—I'm not sure).
So what do we do if we value the truth and need the truth to make accurate decisions? Indeed, good eyes, ears, taste, touch, and smell are not the only instruments with which to make choices—learning how to separate data from interpretations is important. That ability may be the function of cognition and emotions working in tandem with our sensory abilities. Still, learning to understand the distinction between facts and interpretations does not mean we have all the truth at hand.
For instance, does a picture or a film give us the ability to separate fact from interpretation?
In sports, instant replays show that the camera angle is important. From one camera angle the truth may look quite different than from another angle camera angle. That's an important lesson about perspective I think.
And then there is memory. Memory is one of our driving agents and is heavily involved in our take of reality, truth, and experience.
The definition of memory usually includes the concepts of encoding, storing, and retrieving information. The encoding part is tricky since it can include a lot of interpretation about what the information actually was. Of course attention is at work along with the attribution of meaning. We decide what's important. What isn’t tends to get by us and doesn’t even reach the encoding stage.
Okay—what’s the point?
This truth thing can be a mess. Sensory abilities and ranges, experience, memory, perspective, attention, meaning, cognition, emotions, and intent are all at work. That’s a lot of factors and inputs to consider. Someone needs to explain to me how we "know" the truth, especially those of an ethical and moral type.
There are lots of answers to questions of an ethical or moral nature. And most of those answers seemed to wind up based on external guidelines and rules generated by the political, philosophical, or religious arena—even if the basis for those rules were created by people (though most religions would contend that the rules were handed down by a God of one kind or another). Rules are fine, I think there is no freedom without boundaries, but why so many external points of reference? It's as though only select individuals are capable of detecting the truth themselves (and there are still those problems mentioned above), and the rest of us have to look to those few and/or the externalized standards they espouse. But how did they get to be so good at the truth? Or did they?
I'm suspicious when I hear something like the X-Files dictum: "The truth is out there." I suspect that the truth is also in us—not just some of us—and like love, it can be an uncertain and shifting landscape. If we go walking in the woods on a foggy night, we have to be careful where and how we put things as there are trees and rocks "out there" to run into. And if we go walking around and within the perspectives of others, there are alternative explanations of reality that can bite us on our individual and collective hind ends even while we’re embracing our own truths.
I doubt there is a magic bullet that will relieve us of our task. Our task is the magic bullet, even if that task is daunting and uncertain.
So, what is the truth? I don't know exactly—sometimes even approximately. And that’s the truth. Sometimes I’ve got my view, which takes a lot of editing to refine. However, it seems to me that the truth is more likely found when using a Socratic method of asking questions rather than a declarative one of issuing dictums.
Maybe we could keep that in mind the next time we find ourselves in the midst of a miscommunication. Making someone wrong is a tough and dubious way to make ourselves right
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Gibbs
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