On truth. An essay worth reading.
♥ A society that is recklessly and persistently remiss in any of these ways is bound to decline or, at least, to render itself culturally inert. It will certainly be incapable of any substantial achievement, and even of any coherent and prudent ambition. Civilizations have never gotten along healthily, and cannot get along healthily, without large quantities of reliable factual information. They also cannot flourish if they are beset with troublesome infections of mistaken beliefs. To establish and to sustain an advanced culture, we need to avoid being debilitated either by error or by ignorance. We need to know - and, of course, we must also understand how to make productive use of - a great many truths...
...We really cannot live without truth. We need truth not only in order to understand how to live well, but in order to know how to survive at all. Furthermore, this is something that we cannot easily fail to notice. We are therefore bound to recognize, at least implicitly, that truth is important to us; and, consequently, we are also bound to understand (again, at least implicitly) that truth is not a feature of belief to which we can permit ourselves to be indifferent. Indifference would be a matter not just of negligent imprudence. It would quickly prove fatal. To the extent that we appreciate its importance to us, then, we cannot reasonably allow ourselves to refrain either from wanting the truth about many things or from striving to possess it.
♥ Spinoza believed it follows from this that people cannot help loving truth. They cannot help doing so, he thought, because they cannot help recognizing that truth is indispensable in enabling them to stay alive, to understand themselves, and to live fully in accord with their own natures. Without access to truths concerning their own individual natures, their particular capacities and needs, and the availability and correct use of the resources that they require in order to survive and to flourish, people would have very serious difficulty with their lives. They would be unable even to design appropriate goals for themselves, much less to pursue those goals effectively. They would be pretty much helpless, in fact, to keep themselves going at all.
Therefore, Spinoza maintained, a person who despises or who is indifferent to truth must be a person who despises or who is indifferent to his own life. Such a hostile or careless attitude toward oneself is extremely rare, and it is difficult to sustain. Thus, Spinoza concluded that nearly everyone - everyone who values and who cares about his own life - does, whether knowingly or not, love truth. So far as I can see, Spinoza was on the whole correct about this. Practically all of us do love truth, whether or not we are aware that we do so. And, to the extent that we recognize what dealing effectively with the problems of life entails, we cannot help loving truth.
♥ Lies are designed to damage our grasp of reality. So they are intended, in a very real way, to make us crazy. To the extent that we believe them, our minds are occupied and governed by fictions, fantasies, and illusions that have been concocted for us by the liar. What we accept as real is a world that others cannot see, touch, or experience in any direct way. A person who believes a lie is constrained by it, accordingly, to live "in his own world" - a world that others cannot enter, and in which even the liar himself does not truly reside. Thus, the victim of a lie is, in the degree of his deprivation of truth, shut off from the world of common experience and isolated in an illusory realm to which there is no path that others might find or follow.
~~On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt.
...We really cannot live without truth. We need truth not only in order to understand how to live well, but in order to know how to survive at all. Furthermore, this is something that we cannot easily fail to notice. We are therefore bound to recognize, at least implicitly, that truth is important to us; and, consequently, we are also bound to understand (again, at least implicitly) that truth is not a feature of belief to which we can permit ourselves to be indifferent. Indifference would be a matter not just of negligent imprudence. It would quickly prove fatal. To the extent that we appreciate its importance to us, then, we cannot reasonably allow ourselves to refrain either from wanting the truth about many things or from striving to possess it.
♥ Spinoza believed it follows from this that people cannot help loving truth. They cannot help doing so, he thought, because they cannot help recognizing that truth is indispensable in enabling them to stay alive, to understand themselves, and to live fully in accord with their own natures. Without access to truths concerning their own individual natures, their particular capacities and needs, and the availability and correct use of the resources that they require in order to survive and to flourish, people would have very serious difficulty with their lives. They would be unable even to design appropriate goals for themselves, much less to pursue those goals effectively. They would be pretty much helpless, in fact, to keep themselves going at all.
Therefore, Spinoza maintained, a person who despises or who is indifferent to truth must be a person who despises or who is indifferent to his own life. Such a hostile or careless attitude toward oneself is extremely rare, and it is difficult to sustain. Thus, Spinoza concluded that nearly everyone - everyone who values and who cares about his own life - does, whether knowingly or not, love truth. So far as I can see, Spinoza was on the whole correct about this. Practically all of us do love truth, whether or not we are aware that we do so. And, to the extent that we recognize what dealing effectively with the problems of life entails, we cannot help loving truth.
♥ Lies are designed to damage our grasp of reality. So they are intended, in a very real way, to make us crazy. To the extent that we believe them, our minds are occupied and governed by fictions, fantasies, and illusions that have been concocted for us by the liar. What we accept as real is a world that others cannot see, touch, or experience in any direct way. A person who believes a lie is constrained by it, accordingly, to live "in his own world" - a world that others cannot enter, and in which even the liar himself does not truly reside. Thus, the victim of a lie is, in the degree of his deprivation of truth, shut off from the world of common experience and isolated in an illusory realm to which there is no path that others might find or follow.
~~On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt.