Truth: A Tangential Essay
Truth doesn't exist. Not the way you think.
There is no single Truth. Truth exists only in your mind. Yet the truth you know isn't true to anyone except you. You see a child drop a red ball onto the ground. Someone next to you is color-blind, and sees a child drop a green ball. The person next to them is blind, and hears an object bounce. Meanwhile, the child sees the ball leap out of her hands and escape her. Which of these is the truth? All of them. And to someone who is a mile away and never sees the incident, none of them.
How many times have you seen or heard of someone doing something you thought was totally insane? How could they do that? What were they thinking? Yet to them, it made perfect sense. Even yourself. How many times have you looked back at something you did yesterday, a week ago, a year ago, and wondered what the hell was going through your head? Was it crazy or was it logical? Which is true? Again, both. And neither.
Truth is not an absolute. It's a matter of your point of view. Truth is like beauty; it's in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't really exist. It's a name you give to what you've experienced.
But wait. If truth doesn't exist except in your perceptions, then how about lies? What is a lie? It is something that goes against truth, right? It's something not true. Then if what's true to you isn't the same as what's true to someone else, can there be a lie? Well, if you believe the sky is blue, but say it is green, would that not be a lie? Are you not yourself going against your own truth? Yet the person you're talking to may believe the sky to be green. To them, it isn't a lie. Where does that leave us? Lying to yourself. That's the only kind of falsehood. The kind you feed yourself.
This puts quite a bit of responsibility on you. If you want to be an honest person, by which I mean someone who doesn't lie, then you need to be true to yourself. If you believe the sky is down and the earth is up, you have to acknowledge that. The only way you can be honest is with yourself.
This makes communicating with someone else rather difficult. You have to agree on some kind of a basis. We call it language. We use the word "blue" to refer to the color of the sky (during the day, when there are no clouds, on Earth, at present) not knowing if the color we see is the same. So you tell someone the sky is blue. Yet the color they see could be what you think of as "red", or "mauve", or "purple". They'll call it "blue", though, because like you, they've learned the sky is blue. The two of you have agreed on that point. But this means you have to come to a similar agreement with everyone you try to communicate with. So here you run into some issues. The sky is "blue" to you, "celeste" to someone in Buenos Aires, "many colors" to Charlie Brown, and so on.
You can extend this idea into everything. If someone punches you in the face, it hurts. Yet to a masochist, it may feel good. To someone with a toothache whose tooth gets punched out, it may be a huge relief. Even pain isn't an absolute truth. Neither is death. To a Catholic, death is a waiting room before you're judged. To a buddhist, it's a turn on the dharma wheel. To the dying person, it's the present.
Wait a second here. If pain, and even death, depend entirely on your beliefs, then everything does. You could almost say all of reality exists only in your mind. After all, what's real to someone else isn't to you. It's fake.
This can lead to all sorts of interesting conclusions. But I'll leave them for another time.
There is no single Truth. Truth exists only in your mind. Yet the truth you know isn't true to anyone except you. You see a child drop a red ball onto the ground. Someone next to you is color-blind, and sees a child drop a green ball. The person next to them is blind, and hears an object bounce. Meanwhile, the child sees the ball leap out of her hands and escape her. Which of these is the truth? All of them. And to someone who is a mile away and never sees the incident, none of them.
How many times have you seen or heard of someone doing something you thought was totally insane? How could they do that? What were they thinking? Yet to them, it made perfect sense. Even yourself. How many times have you looked back at something you did yesterday, a week ago, a year ago, and wondered what the hell was going through your head? Was it crazy or was it logical? Which is true? Again, both. And neither.
Truth is not an absolute. It's a matter of your point of view. Truth is like beauty; it's in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't really exist. It's a name you give to what you've experienced.
But wait. If truth doesn't exist except in your perceptions, then how about lies? What is a lie? It is something that goes against truth, right? It's something not true. Then if what's true to you isn't the same as what's true to someone else, can there be a lie? Well, if you believe the sky is blue, but say it is green, would that not be a lie? Are you not yourself going against your own truth? Yet the person you're talking to may believe the sky to be green. To them, it isn't a lie. Where does that leave us? Lying to yourself. That's the only kind of falsehood. The kind you feed yourself.
This puts quite a bit of responsibility on you. If you want to be an honest person, by which I mean someone who doesn't lie, then you need to be true to yourself. If you believe the sky is down and the earth is up, you have to acknowledge that. The only way you can be honest is with yourself.
This makes communicating with someone else rather difficult. You have to agree on some kind of a basis. We call it language. We use the word "blue" to refer to the color of the sky (during the day, when there are no clouds, on Earth, at present) not knowing if the color we see is the same. So you tell someone the sky is blue. Yet the color they see could be what you think of as "red", or "mauve", or "purple". They'll call it "blue", though, because like you, they've learned the sky is blue. The two of you have agreed on that point. But this means you have to come to a similar agreement with everyone you try to communicate with. So here you run into some issues. The sky is "blue" to you, "celeste" to someone in Buenos Aires, "many colors" to Charlie Brown, and so on.
You can extend this idea into everything. If someone punches you in the face, it hurts. Yet to a masochist, it may feel good. To someone with a toothache whose tooth gets punched out, it may be a huge relief. Even pain isn't an absolute truth. Neither is death. To a Catholic, death is a waiting room before you're judged. To a buddhist, it's a turn on the dharma wheel. To the dying person, it's the present.
Wait a second here. If pain, and even death, depend entirely on your beliefs, then everything does. You could almost say all of reality exists only in your mind. After all, what's real to someone else isn't to you. It's fake.
This can lead to all sorts of interesting conclusions. But I'll leave them for another time.