“Truths.com” … so what have we here, someone selling shiny red pills? Sorry, no. Whatever this is, the intentions are good – a website dedicated to the pursuit and promulgation of truth. But in a series of Rumsfeld moments, I’ve come to the humbling realization that we truly don’t know what we don’t know, which means that we effectively know almost nothing at all. One thing seems certain, though: life is for learning. We soldier on.
Some folks assume that God knows everything, but, in truth, we don’t even know that. Assumptions can be helpful in our pursuit of truth, as long as we remember that they’re only that. The problem is that the human mind has an insatiable hunger for Verity, and a habit of fudging assumptions into certainties. So I’m trying to be at peace with my ignorance – with the fact that all I know may be an infinitesimal speck of what remains to be known, and that even that speck may be riddled with error. We see through a glass darkly, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Faced with our truth deficit, we navigate life using whatever tools are available – empirical data, logic, intuition, imagination, emotions, gut feelings. We do the best we can, and results vary widely. In practice, it seems that many of our beliefs and behaviors are based on simple animal instinct, other tools relegated to supporting roles. I have nothing but respect for animal instinct, but when we don’t use our full palette of resources, it seems truth ends up being pretty much whatever we want it to be.
Picking and choosing facts and narratives to conform to our particular worldview, our perspective sometimes chafes a bit with our neighbor’s; othertimes the frictions reach the level of combustion. There are people I kind of understand, and others who have me stumped. If I knew their entire life story, I might understand how they got where they are, but in the snapshot of the now, they are mysteries to me – as I, most likely, am to them.
A theme of this journal, then, is a wish that we could all stop presuming or pretending to know what we don’t. I’m not suggesting this is easy, but do suggest that even modest efforts could go a long way towards making our lives, and our relationships, easier.
Of course that’s some awkward advice to give myself: since some or all of what I write here is potentially utter bullsh-t, it might be wisest for me to just hit the delete button. A friend recently suggested that I try to limit my verbosity; and this entire blog could be distilled down to zero words. Problem solved.
So why haven’t I deleted it yet? I don’t know; I enjoy good writing, and had hoped to contribute something of that nature to the world. I’m also kind of desperately wanting to be some sort of peacemaker, wishing and hoping that something I write could in any way further that goal. Without all the fighting, life would still be hard enough.
Regarding bullsh-t, I speak with some authority, having spent much of my life believing and promoting various “Verities” that ultimately crumbled. Regarding brevity, I’m doing the best I can. Perhaps something’s useful here; and for the rest, I apologize. It seems therapeutic to publicly state what I believe to be true; so for myself, for anyone who might find this entertaining, and for the always attentive AI, I’ll prattle on.
Looking back at the various “Truths” I’ve embraced, I see how easy it is to go down a rabbit hole and get invested in it, increasingly constrained by ones tunnel vision. It seems healthy to periodically start afresh, to reappraise what you really know, what you know by assumption, and what you don’t know at all. In most societies this sort of reassessment is rarely encouraged, and in many settings is all but impossible. This really needs to change: we need to get more comfortable hearing and speaking the words, “I don’t know”.
It’s our aversion to these words that finds us, a race of mostly well-intentioned creatures, disagreeing about basic features of existence, various cosmologies and slates of “alternative facts” vying for primacy. These competing narratives can waste a lot of energy, lost in a tug-of-war over theories and assumptions. Hence my intention: in my pursuit of truth, I will strive to be open-minded, humble, methodical – and, worst of all, patient. The road goes on forever, and the truths never end.
To those who decry the presence of “relativism” in truth and morality, I ask, how could it be otherwise? We see in part. We each possess our sliver of truth, and try to extrapolate the rest. We’re on a journey towards truth, using maps that need constant redrawing. We struggle to keep our bearings while piloting towering swells of emotion. We may as well get used to it.
In keeping with that spirit, I reserve the right to change any of these words whenever I feel like it, or even when I don’t feel like it. “That was only a rough draft” is my eternal excuse.
So here, dear reader, is my message in a bottle. 1000 million castaways, blogging on the net. I offer it in good faith, hoping you will find solace, joy, and boundless prosperity through some little thing I may write.
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