The Truth as I See It.

First of all, I'm going to apologize in advance if there turns out to be no point to this post.

I've just been going through a huge change in the last few years and more specifically in the last few months when it comes to my way of thinking. I've been doing a lot of self-analysis lately and this is one of the things that I've been thinking about.

I've been obsessed lately with the concept of "truth". What I mean by that is when I hear or read about any subject anymore, I just want to know the "truth" about it. To me, that is fundamentally the most important thing when it comes to any subject or issue in life. So, I started to think about what I consider to be truth.

The first thing that came to my mind were facts. I think we can all agree that by its very definition a fact = truth. Not too hard to follow right? If something is a fact, then it must also be true. If something is untrue, it cannot be a fact. What I then began to realize however was that there were different kinds of facts and that's where it started to get interesting, at least to me. It may not interest anyone else in the slightest bit, but here we go.

Facts As I See Them

Absolute Facts:

An absolute fact is the only kind of fact that to me is 100%, without any question, the complete truth. In order for something to qualify as an absolute fact, it has to be something that I have experienced first hand. For example, I can say that a lemon tastes sour because I have tasted lemons on many occasions, therefore I know that this is an absolute truth. On the other hand, I personally cannot say that "lemons grow on trees" is an absolute fact in my mind, because I have never personally seen a lemon tree with my own eyes. I'm not saying I don't believe it, just that it doesn't fall into the "absolute fact" category in my mind.

Trusted Facts:

The next category in my mind is what I call a "trusted fact". This is something that I have never experienced first hand, but someone close to me, whom I trust, has experienced first hand and told me about. Using the above example, my aunt came to visit from Florida and brought me lemons that she said grew on a tree in her yard. Therefore, although I still can't say that lemons grow on trees is an absolute fact in my mind, it is a trusted fact and therefore I would still consider it to be true.

Collective Facts:

Here's where it starts to get a little tricky in my mind. A collective fact is anything that I have never experienced first hand and no one that I know has ever experienced either and yet there is such a large number of people who say that this thing does exist or is true that there is some probability that it is. Better yet if there are hundreds, thousands, or even millions of photos or videos from thousands or millions of different people, all showing the same thing, then in my mind, it is much more likely to be true.

The tricky thing in my mind when it comes to this kind of fact though, is that you must start to factor in individual motivations and also motivations of groups. Factoring in motivation can drastically affect whether or not I choose to accept something as truth, much more than numbers can.

For example, let's say that I meet a small group of 5 people who claim they have seen a UFO, they are all adults. One is an Air Force pilot, one is a professor at a local college, one is firefighter, one is a well-known aerospace engineer and the last one is minister. My first thought when meeting all of these people is that they have no motivation to lie about seeing a UFO. In fact, they have a whole lot of motivation to not make up a story like that because they will most likely not gain any fame or fortune from telling such a story and they will most likely even be ridiculed by their peers.

Now, let's say on the other hand I meet a group of 200 people from Sample City, USA. They tell me this amazing story of a mass UFO sighting in their quiet little town and even provide a few blurry photographs. Upon further investigation, I find out that they are all members of the Sample City, USA tourism committee, therefore I am less inclined to believe this group than the first group even though 200 of them have the same story and even some blurry evidence simply because they have an obvious motivation to not tell the truth.

OK, hopefully I haven't bored you to death yet. I have one more item that I relate all of this to and that is the subject of history.

Going by my above definitions, anything that I haven't experienced first hand in my first 33 yrs on this earth, I can't say is absolute truth. So when it comes to anything that happened in the world before I was old enough to retain memories, my next best source for "truth" is trusted facts.

For example, both my grandfather's told me many stories about their experiences fighting during WWII and my father told me about his experiences fighting in Vietnam, therefore I accept as truth that these wars did occur. Now, staying on the same train of thought, I can look at the civil war. The only way I can say the civil war ever actually happened is if I accept it as a collective truth, which I do. Seeing as I wasn't there personally nor was anyone else that is alive on the entire planet right now, the only thing I have to go by is many photographs and many written accounts from many different people, that this did occur. Seeing as this event is seen by many as one of the ugliest periods in our history, it doesn't seem logical that a large group of people would make up a war that never happened. Having said that if I read individual accounts of this war or accounts from certain groups or organizations, I have to again take into account the motivations of the writer when I decide whether or not to believe something they say. Anyway, I didn't mean to get of on a tangent about the civil war, it's not my point at all and I'm not trying to say anything concerning that topic. It was simply an example.

Staying on the subject of history though, once we get back to a time before photographs, it begins to be harder and harder for me to accept anything as being "truth" on any level. I certainly can't say anything is absolute fact by my definition, and I certainly can't say anything is a trusted fact. The problem is, that the further you go back, it becomes even harder to accept something as even a collective fact. The reason I say this is due to there being relatively few written accounts of so much of our history.

For example, let's say there's an event in the history of the world that we have written accounts from 5 different people. Well, relatively speaking, five people out of millions alive at the time writing about something happening, doesn't necessarily make it true. Furthermore, let's say that you have 5 slightly different accounts of this event that happened long before any of us existed. Then it becomes even more difficult to find any real "truth" in any of it.

Now let's say we have written accounts from hundreds of individuals about a certain historical event, but they all belonged to a group or organization of some kind. We then have to take into account what motivations they may have had to write what they did at the time.

Anyway, I honestly am not trying to refer to any particular event or group in our history, so please don't read anything into what I've said that isn't there. The primary point that I'm trying to make is that maybe it would benefit us all if we had different levels of what "truth" is to us and your definitions of what you might accept as "truth" may be different from mine and that's definitely alright. I think maybe I'm hoping that this post will help someone to start questioning things a little more and analyzing why they should accept something as being "truth"

Perhaps, we'd all be better off if we stopped looking at things in such a black/white manner. I know I use to think like that. I also use to accept a whole lot of things as being absolute facts that never really were. I can now honestly and comfortably admit when I just don't know something. There are a lot of things that we just don't know and never will in this life. But you know what? That's OK. If we knew everything to be an absolute fact or an absolute lie, life would be a whole lot less interesting.

In my opinion, the mysteries of life, not the absolutes, are what make it worth living.

Friend.

We have to be careful with those absolute facts. What we may think of as absolute may be only relative, such as your absolute opinion that lemons are sour. If we drop a ball to the earth we see it as going down, while if the earth were transparent some one on the opposite side of the world would see it as coming up.

I only say this to you because I admire your desire to make sence of things in your life. Keep on keeping on.

reply to post by jnyblujns


Love is truth my friend...

If you can find it in everyone and everything you can find truth

reply to post by jnyblujns


I read about one out of every ten threads i start. I read all of yours and found it very interesting. You really laid it all out, nicely done! I will defenitly remember this in the future when I'm deciding what is truth in my life. thanks

reply to post by jnyblujns

You're doing good.

There is a lot more that could be said and has been said on the subject of "truth."

I might just give a few unattributed examples to give an idea of how far this can go.

At a higher level, it has been said that truth can be self-generated. If you want the "truth" of a cat sleeping in a chair, you can simply create it. If you want the truth that "I am the smartest person in the universe" then this is how it will seem to you.

Below this are attempts to understand truths that have already been created by ourselves or others. A person may be haunted by a fear of bats. He doesn't understand why this is. By some process he may recall that he once had a bad experience with a flock of bats. These new "facts" explain the poorly-understood "fact" and thus a more understandable or sensible or logical "truth" is achieved. It may not me the real reason he fears bats, though.

History is studied with the hope that the "true facts" can be discovered about it, which will lead us to better understandings or wiser choices in the future. But those "true facts" may have been carefully placed there by beings who fully intended that we be deceived by them.

The best way to establish a "truth" that works for you or satisfies your curiosity is to go look for yourself and to trust what your perceptions tell you about what you are looking at.

But most of us are curious about a lot of things where this method seems unreal or impractical. In that case we rely on the reports of others who have actually done this, or at least say they have. Then the question becomes "who is lying and who is telling the truth?" Now you are on the level of a detective or an investigative reporter. Well, you better have some method for evaluating data that works for you, or you could get pretty confused. But it could be that no data being reported by anyone is reliable because they are all being fed data from unreliable sources. So this second-had way of improving our understandings of things can be frustrating.

Still, I think it's worth doing. Any understanding is better than none, particularly if the subject bears on your future survival or happiness.

reply to post by jnyblujns


People have been executed because the jury believed that a witness was telling the truth.

The one ting I know to be true as that you and me will die one day and even that as time progresses may prove to be a lie.

My truth your truth their truth can all be different, indeed truth may just be over rated.

Information is not facts.... information, nor facts, are knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom. Another thing to consider is that knowledge is not power. It's the USE of knowledge that is power.

A book that might interest those who haven't read it, is "Stranger In A Strange Land" by Robert A Heinlein. There's bits in it about "Fair Witnesses"... definitely applies to this post.

It's always like sparks fly off, when people begin to unlearn what they have learned... lol

Absolutes are brilliant, I've had many an entertaining debate about Absolutes! An interesting thing about truth.... even little kids KNOW when they stray from TRUTH. They KNOW when they lie... Maybe adults think they "get away" with it... lol But ADULTS KNOW as well. As far as believing everything you hear or see etc etc... We KNOW the answer to that eh? Some feel being clever, NOT deceptive is a good rule.

Brilliant post man... Your ideas will change as you keep seeking... but as the rule is... Seek and Ye Will Find.

Thank you for the replies everyone.

Definitely some good feedback so far.

Terry, you are definitely right about an absolute being relative. That did cross my mind as well, but I thought I might end up with another full page if I explored that.

Midnight, Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

I have always hated this truth-is-relative and moral reletavism stuff. A tree still falls in a forest, even though I don't witness it. I wonder if someone with this kind of reality crisis is experiencing a disassociation to reality either through mental illness onset, or past use of psychedelics. I'm NOT being insulting, I myself have not been exempt from disorders brought on by trauma. (And why are they more shamefull than ALS or lukemia, etc.)
If you say, "I'm not sure that cement is really cement and is really hard, and that I'll die if I fall from a skyscraper onto ---- it." Ohhhhkayyyyy. You wanna test that out?

Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Each one of us experiences life and reality a little different then the next man. Though we all collaborate and create the same "seemingly" same reality. We do not for each persons perspective is different.

Take for example a man hiking up a mountain he reaches the top admires the view while doing so a birght light appears before him. Shows him images of his whole life to come.

As his life pans out he is telling everyone hey I knew this would happen. I've seen something angel/god. But b/c no one else has ever seen an angel/god. Does that make the man wrong? He knows without a shadow of a doubt it was real. But to everyone else he's looking for attention.

So many variable come into play when your talking about truth and facts.

reply to post by Vicarious10000


I think by some of the replies that some are taking what I wrote a little more deeper than I was even thinking. The main point I was really trying to get across was that people need to stop accepting so many things they hear, read or see from third party sources as being the absolute truth, when in reality, the only things we know for sure are the things we experience ourselves. Therefore each individual experience we have creates what we see as truth.