And the Truth shall set you free.
Heidegger, the philosopher, has an interesting take on this ‘truth’ thing.
Nobody does, and never will, know everything about anything. Lest of all about ‘everything’. Hence nobody has access to a ‘true’ piece of knowledge.
Furthermore, ‘truth’ is about communication. About a message. An expressed piece of knowledge. And since there is no language precise enough to allow a communicator to cram into a message all they want to express… nor precise enough to allow a ‘reader’ to figure out everything the communicator had attempted to express…
Which drives Heidegger to posit that truth depends on intent. On a communicator sharing honestly everything they know about a subject. On a communicator allowing the receiver of the message to reach their own conclusion.
I ended my previous post by mentioning the ‘fairy tales’ our ancestors have spun in order to ease their ‘passage into the great unknown’. Thus making their lives bearable. Enjoyable, even.
In those times, ‘the truth’ – the unconcealed truth, in Heidegger’s terms – was that nothing made sense. That life itself was a meaningless joke. As a Romanian saying goes, ‘life resembles a hair from the private parts of the body. Short and full of shit…’
I’m not going to make a historical inventory of the various fairy tales the humankind has used to lullaby itself into accepting life as it used to be. Enough to say that they, the fairy tales, did the trick. Helped us reach the present stage.
I’m going to make a break here.
And notice that any, or even all, of those fairy tales might, eventually, be proven as being true. No matter how improbable this might be. I’m not an atheist. I just don’t know whether a god, or more, do exist.
What I do know is that, by their own admission, all of those stories have been spun by people.
Each of those stories is about what the original ‘spinner’ saw fit to communicate on the subject.
And the better stories, those who made more sense in the particular circumstances where they had survived, made it up to the present.
Helped the respective believers to survive. Helped some of them to thrive, even.
Now, today, we need to make up our minds.
Accept that our consciences are works in progress.
That consciousness is a space caught up in an accelerating evolution. A cauldron of sorts.
That each of those ‘fairy tales’ was useful in its own time. That the need to mitigate our cognitive dissonances continues to exist.
That we’re responsible for our future. Nothing new here.
And that there’s no one to save us. Not now. Or after we will have fucked up everything.
The ‘Truth’ being that ‘Give me Liberty or give me Death’ was a very effective call at arms.
On the face of it, on the ‘logical front’, it doesn’t make much sense.
‘Death’ was, and continues to be, inexorable. Why, for the sake of ‘liberty’, jeopardize the few precious moments left to be experienced as a living creature? Specially when, according to the lore considered valid when Patrick Henry had uttered the words, a second life was going to open just ‘after’…
‘The Devil is in the details’!
The belief in the ‘after-world’ works both ways. It encourages the freedom-fighters to take risks – believing they will get their reward ‘afterwards’ – and encourages the prudent to endure. Believing that they will get also get their reward ‘afterwards’.
Now, that I’ve ‘spilled it out’, I must confess that I’ve successfully convinced myself.
I’ve rationalized, according to my standards, my belief that it’s our responsibility.
To understand and accept that we’re responsible for the consequences we’re leaving for those coming after us.
I don’t know what we should do. I’m no prophet.
But I do know what we shouldn’t.
You do too!
nicichiarasa 