All of us, even Newton and Einstein through a whole gang of scientists beginning from Galileo and Copernicus have seen the full face of truth.
Do you agree? We all have seen parts of or the outer of it or the coat of it not the inner of it.
And that is why we say truth is relative and the same thing can be seen differently from person to person. Like beauty lies not in physique but in your eyes.
I set this tread for discussions and of course for heated arguments.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
hmm. I think all of us have seen truth at one time or another but were not even conscious at what was staring us in the face.
There is an ancient Greek saying, "The truth is hard to find" or "The truth is always hidden." We want to ask the Nietzschean question, "Suppose truth to be a woman, what then?"
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Throughout life, I have always seeked truth. I always feel as if I am constantly living in it.
However, there has always been something which has bugged me. Something which has knawed away at me, something deeper which I was always aware of, but never fully brought into consciousness. This, I later discovered, was the realisation that we all lived in a fake world.
A world of painted smiles, a world of appearances, a world of insincere gestures structured on a self serving foundation,. A world of agendas and a world of falsehood.
I came upon this discovery after some deeply painful experiences left me in a state of confusion as to why I felt so intensely hurt. A journey of philosphy ensued. At first the epihanies came slowly, but eventually gathered pace. Suddenly I realised I was living in a cruel, unforgiving, and selfish world. I became conscious of the real side to humanity.
Today, I live with the belief that virtually everything is an actual reversal of what is meant by it. for example, "I love you" tends to mean "Do you love me?". The media will suggest women want sensitive and caring men, yet when they get them, they reject them in favour of real men."He just lacked ambition, he wasn't exciting enough" We are led to believe that womens heavily made up faces are the extent of their beauty, yet, if only they rejected that, that confidence to do so is a truer beauty. Everything is masked and I have my own name for this constant, unforgiving and definite phenomenon. I call it the paradox theory.
The paradox theory seems to lie everywhere. Nothing is as it seems. I shall elaborate. For all of my life, twenty nine years, I have never left the UK. Why? I was scared of flying. Lately, I have been researching the statistics. Apparently I have twice as much chance of matching five numbers plus the bonus ball on the national lottery. Yet, I used to freeze at the thought of flying. Statistically, I have more chance of dying whilst putting on my trousers, than dying in a plane crash, yet I worried constantly. Convinced I would die if I were to fly. The very place I was probably the safest, was the very place I feared the most. All this while smoking twenty cigarettes a day actually doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The things I feared the least, were the thing which where placing me at my most vulnerable.
Another example. I was once at home, waiting for a visitor to arrive. While waiting, I was frantic with tidying the house. I became consumed with appearances. I would shout at my family, and show them general disrespect. Courteousness became an obsolete word and honour disintegrated.
It was not until after the visitor left I had time to muse on the whole episode. It came to my attention that the very people who I should respect and honour, my family, the ones who I love deeply, were the very ones who I was treating with the least honour. Why do I never serve them their tea in china cups? I do I never let them get away with sitting in a chair and perhaps leaving a mark? Yet, I was letting my visitor off the hook, and serving him tea in a china cup. It was paradoxical to say the least.
I'll give you one more example. All my life the one thing at my core was a sub conscious desire for security. To ensure this, I set about with one goal in life. To find a girl to settle down with. I went through five. All while I was between the ages of sixteen and twenty eight. Five back to back long term relationships spanning twelve years. The last few were particularly painful. Now, the reason I was in those relationships were to guarantee me some future security, all sub consciously, of course. However, the things I suffered in those relationships, such as extreme manipulation, infidelity, lying, were actually jeapordising my security. They were very unhealthy for me, yet I carried on becasue I could not let go of my apparent security. In turth, since I have made a decision to stay single and discover life, I am finding that coming out of my comfort zone the healthiest thing I have ever done, and yes, I'm flying for the first time in five weeks. The paradox with these girls is that in the one place I thought I was safest, I was at my most vulnerable.
So, with the paradox theory safely highlighted I feel that this theory trickles down from the divine to the trivial. It seems all around. It is everywhere. The very thing people resort to doing when they age, make up, plastic surgery, hair dye, botox, hair transplants andso on, are the very things which act in reverse and actually make them unattractive. It reveals a shallow soul for the true beauty is inside. The true beauty is the one who sees their crows feet as canyons of rich experience. The true beauty lies in the hair that although greying, gives a wise and majestic look of confidence.
This is leading me on to conclude my theory that ultimate truth can never be known. If it were to be known, it would have by now. However, every man woman and beast has tried to explain it, conceptualise it, enforce it, persuade it all to no avail. The root of such explanations have stemmed from their own fears, insecurities and ignorance of the time. Religions claim to have nailed it, yet only serve the inventors. Think of the Islamic laws for women, and immediately you can see exactly where their doctrines stem from, male paranoia and a desire to control the one thing which has the most dramatic and powerful effect over a man, women. Think of any system claiming to hold the truth and you will see self serving agendas at the heart.
If absolute truth is discovered, who can authenticate it? Is this not what religious leaders have tried? Also, bear in mind, if one of them has hit the truth, what about the other ones, with all of their factions and branches. Nobody can authenticate it. It is beyond our means.
With this said, it can only, and I do mean only, be down to our own subjective logic to explain the truth. It will be made up from personal fears, personal morals and a desire for an external authority amongs the chaotic doings of the universe. A belief in god feels so strong to some people, as if it is in their heart. Of course it is going to, for the desire for an explanation, or the superstitious, or anything to distract us from the lonely void will always appeal and send souls on fire for a comforting figurative answer.
Going back to the point I made about the paradox theory, and saying it trickles from the divine to the trivial, is it not the greatest paradox of all to say "The truth is, is that there is no truth"?
Therein lies the perfect paradox, flawless, pure and crystal, representing all of humanity, all of life, all of the universe.
Of course, this also cancels out my whole post because I am claiming it to all be true, yet, in essence, it is merely my subjective opinion, and I realise that, so it does not concern me. I am a lie, you are a lie, it is all a lie. Whatever you believe in can be stripped down to a subjective belief which will usually appeal to your fears and insecurities about the nothingness, the lonliness, and the meaninglessness of it all.
The meaning of life could well be that there is no meaning. Now that is also the paradox of all paradoxes.
Its all just a qustion of mathematics and personal opinion. There is no magic or mystery folks.
Excellent and honest post, thanks very much.Originally Posted by ezydriver
I agree with lots of what you say - about the falsehood many [most?] people force themselves to live with, the ugliness of people trying to reverse ageing and the attraction of "commercial" beauty.
I most assuredly agree that that maths beats the hell out of mystery!
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
It seems to me that you're ascribing some form of existence to "truth", which just doesn't work.
The search for that kind of "truth" is a religious experience, while the simple facts are that some things are true, some are not and some are unknown. There is no single strand which defines "truth" as an entity.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
This is why I am in love with Brian Greene. That a subatomic particle can be a particle and a wave at the same time is counter-intuitive, but he is sexy enough to make it fun.
since truth is a poly-faced idiom, truth for me is a conceptual notion , we can not know truth without knowing what is not, and i mean masking which has been well discuessd through Jean Baudrillard writings about simulation and simulacrum . He said and i quote "The simulacrum is never that which
conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The
simulacrum is true"
takeing the subjet from a personal perspective , i say " beauty is the truth"
and let me ask..
How do you know that you are real?
thanks a lot for the topic
You must have an odd dictionary - mine just offers:
a fact that has been verified, a true statement, conformity to reality or actuality, that which is true as opposed to false
There doesn't seem to be much ambiguity there.
Here's this strange question again.
I blame Keanu Reeves.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
Nice segue!
I fear that Greene's string is doomed to the same fate as Einstein's Theory of Everything. Still, only a few months until CERN start to hit 90+% of the speed of light.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
Truth seems to be hiding somewhere and if it shows up all falsehood will go away from this world. What we think is true is relative and differs with the subject and object. We see truth in a liars statement ; juries are misled by criminal's alligator tears and innocent are hanged. All this happens because we often presume false as true what we think in our minds or that from the minds of others and take it to be true. As day be truth night is also truth... but sometimes this phenomenal truth is too long at the north poles....does this mean truth vaires from place to place and time to time......so where does truth lie??
Seekers of truth are still struggling to find truth and whatever one finds he terms it as Truth but the Truths so far discovered by men are all at loggerheads ! why?
===============
When asked how World War III would be fought, Einstein replied that he didn't know. But he knew how World War IV would be fought: With sticks and stones.
-(:===============
The Atheist
a fact that has been verified, a true statement, conformity to reality or actuality, that which is true as opposed to false.?
so you know the truth by knowing its contrary!
here we match .
but your dictionary says:
the truth is naked, ha?
then i must be in the wrong forum..
you can hunt all the birds..
but you will never ever be able to stop the music of nature.
You've got yourself all confused here.
Juries do not decide truth - they decide on whether there is reasonable doubt or not. Swearing on the bible, a witness may swear to tell the truth, but that has no bearing on whether it is or not.
Like the next poster, you've got tied up with true/false dichotomy as well. Even if "truth" existed, it wouldn't stop faslhood.
Truth values are surprisingly easy to calculate - mathematics is chock-full of them.
I'm not sure which people are loggerheads over which truth, either. A lot of opinion masquerades as truth, but again, it's pretty easy to tell the difference.
Nope, you've missed it entirely. That is not what the definition says at all. Just because something is false does not make the opposite true. A simple example is "all men have black hair". This is demonstrably false, and while that makes one other position true "not all men have black hair", it doesn't actually have any truth value, because it tells us nothing. Displying statistics which break hair colour down into numbers and percentages would have truth value.
No. You must have a different version of OED to me.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
Truth exists and there are many layers of truth. Truth is actually God.It says in the Gita that even if we do penances and austerity, if we do not do it for God, it is temporary and useless. God is the source of all pleasure, and also of all creation. God is infinitely merciful, but we are in the material world because we chose to be separate from God. We are suffering because we forget about God. Where does truth come into this? Because truth is the same as God. What is God? God is exactly reality. God is actually different from this, because God is of a nature which we cannot conceive. And anything we can conceive, God is greater than that. But God is definitely reality-- God is higher reality, if we do not know God as a person, then as an impersonal Brahman, a higher, spiritual reality. So truth in all this is God, although God also has those qualities of being all-attractive, and since the source of all pleasure is God, any desires we have, God is the source of them. This is why God is the source of all truth-- or, effectively, truth.
How can god be "exactly reality" and also be a "higher reality"? And how can he also be of a "nature that we cannot conceive"?
As if there are three or four "realities." Which one is really real?
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
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