Nick_A wrote:Nick_A wrote:The truth is unpleasant and therefore unpopular:
Humans have invented a social "reality" that denies reality itself.
The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear. -- Herbert Agar
Truth is like the town whore. Everybody knows her, but nonetheless, it's embarrassing to meet her on the street. WOLFGANG BORCHERT, The Outsider
Have you ever wondered why this is so and what is lost as a result?
bobevenson wrote:"Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."
Inscribed on Bascom Hall, U.W.-Madison
How?
This refers to Ginkgo as well. I'm not referring to the absence of facts the university seeks to fill us with but of the limitations of our interpretations. For example I found this article that attempts to explain this
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... t-you-free
“We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.” This quote has been attributed to both the Talmud and Anaïs Nin (although an actual citation for neither quote can be found). This quote summarizes the idea that truth, the truth that one perceives, is subjective and can be wrong.
We have long been taught that the truth will set us free, and that seeking the truth is a worthy goal. What if there is no absolute truth? What if there are just degrees of truth (or lies) that we tell ourselves? What if, as some insightful, anonymous person once purported, “People tell themselves stories, and then pour their lives into the stories they tell”?
Meaning is created in life. Neutral events are made subjective by interpreting them through the lens of perception. “Truth” is merely a product of perceptions; perceptions are colored by experience, which is then filtered through the current state of mind and altered even further. By the time the neutral event is processed in this manner, it is little more truth than fiction. Yet personal truth is accepted wholeheartedly.
In an excellent discussion on being wrong, Kathryn Schulz states, “The miracle of your mind isn’t that you can see the world as it is. It’s that you can see the world as it isn’t.” (You can watch her talk on TED here). The point of her talk is that we are often not only wrong, but completely unaware of it. She grasps the idea that reality is filtered through perceptions and biases; and that it comes out the other side distorted but believed to be truth.....................
We seem to glorify misconceptions and even calling them art at times.
"Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy, as the good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. This is the truth about authentic good and evil. With fictional good and evil it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive, profound, and full of charm." Simone Weil From "Morality and Literature,”an essay published in Cahiers du Sud, January 1944
As usual she says it like it is. Our imagintion is such that even though so many debate good and evil, how many know what they are? Why is this so?
In my opinion,
The word truth is often misused;
Many people call many things truth that aren't;
There are absolute truths, some of which are known, and some of which are unknown;
When seeking truth one must always be mindful of potential false truths;
Truth is not something trivial, that should be taken lightly;
In all cases expect to do a lot of work and research to find the truth, and when you believe you've found it, expect to do some more;
The truth of the universe, what ever it may be, is absolute;
The truth of men is where much scrutiny is required, as there is no necessary accounting for the perspective of men as they account for their version of truth;
Mans truth is bound by framework created and maintained by him, assuming it necessarily contains truth;
It is absolutely true that men are born, they shall be alive for some time that requires air, water, and food, and that eventually they shall die. And that much of what they do to deal with this truth, is where their untruth is born, fear being the primary motivator.