Thanks for this Serenity. You make me see that this obsession with truth (in a society which depends on lies) is a cultural thing and there is nothing absolute about it. This whole idea of absolutes has come from Plato via Christianity. I was brought up in a Christian tradition like you but tend to see through that layer to the human animal beneath, whose necessity is survival and whose guideline is instinct.

Truth is certainly vital, but it ties us up in knots if we think of it as an entity. What is important is simply that we are not deceived.

We are many more times likely to deceive ourselves than be deceived by others. And the surest way to deceive ourselves is to believe something.

In the supermarket you consider buying a processed food item. By law it must have a label which tells the ingredients and their food values. For marketing purposes, the label tells you the item is good for you, as well as tasty. Thus you are dependent on “truth” when deciding to buy or not.

Now suppose you have an apple tree in your garden. There is no label, therefore the issue of “truth” doesn’t arise. There are no words involved. You pick an apple and eat it.

Unfortunately, the world has become so corrupted that even the eating of apples is covered by propaganda. Put the phrase “five a day” into Google and you will see hundreds of references to a health campaign by the UK government to counter the propaganda of the processed-food manufacturers, and get people to eat five portions of fruit or vegetable a day.

“Truth” versus “truth”: heaven for a legal practice. But for you and me, there is no peace till we get well clear of all claims to truth.

Vincent,
As always you inspire more thought. I think you open another interesting concept in “belief”. People can, and have, believed in all sorts of truths later to be dispelled. The deception is actually quite simple. Even relying on one’s senses doesn’t always turn out to be quite “right”. A reasonable assumption when I look at the horizon is to conclude the earth I am standing on must be flat. A view from space tells me differently. Which brings me back to a comment I posted over at your place. We can often think we are standing on a level of higher understanding…until we realize the mountain we believe we were standing on turns out to be a hill…with a mountain behind us…

we can believe the earth is flat because we are standing on it and it looks flat…never knowing that from another vantage point (space) we see our own eyes have deceived us.

You have just given another example to support what I was saying, Serenity—not an exception.

Our eyes rarely deceive us. When we are simple and primitive we don’t “believe the earth is flat”. We see what we see and that is good enough. It is only when we start a long sea journey, or see through our telescope on the horizon a ship with sails but no hull, that the curvature of the earth crops up as an issue.

In these hills where I live, the earth certainly doesn’t look flat.

What I am saying, dear Serenity, is that we don’t start to deceive ourselves until we start to believe something.

Madame Butterfly believes that Pinkerton will come back as he promised. That is the source of her self-deception and consequent suffering.

It is not necessary to believe so many things!

I say this not for the sake of argument, but to help.

Vincent,
Actually, thank you for returning and adding this…I think there is quite a bit to what you are saying, and I don’t think I am in disagreement…more like just exploring this a bit further as I go and as usual sort of shifting this way and that way…when you say we don’t start to deceive ourselves until we believe something…i think there is a lot of truth there…if i look at a horizon while i am at the ocean…why would the thought even occur to me in the first place to think the whole earth is flat…which is a conclusion…i wonder why a conclusion is called for in the first place…i have gone from gazing at a horizon to making up a story about the shape of the earth…how did i get from one point to the other, and why did it occur to me to go there? does this not only serve to close my mind by drawing a conclusion, or as we have been saying…creating a belief where i have now deceived myself into a belief that something is true?