*warning - philosophical rant ahead. Read at your own risk. If you're looking for kink or cuteness, that will probably be back shortly. I'm not feeling well again and, as such, have a much larger temper and a much shorter fuse. I'm like the cute Irish equivalent of a powder keg that someone is sitting on smoking a cigarette. That said...*
I remember once reading a Keats' quote that said "truth is beauty, beauty truth." I've been reading a few co-bloggers writings about the very nature of truth - painful, obvious truth and the more hidden, easily disguised kind - and have come to some bitter conclusions about truth.
Truth. Wow, what an interesting concept. Truth is simply the state of something "being the case," or being the only possible way that something is. But does that ever happen? Is there ever simply the truth, negating every other possible scenario? I've certainly never encountered anything like that in real life. Textbooks are one thing, studies and experiments may prove time and time again that there is only one truth (think 2 + 2 - does that ever not equal 4?), but in this experiment that we call life? I am completely doubtful that there is ever one truth for any situation.
Let's compare, for a moment, my life and the life of your average Midwestern woman (say, coming out of Walmart; even though I don't shop there and think that it's the devil incarnate, plenty of people around here would live there if they were allowed to.). When faced with any given situation, would we look at it from the exact same "truth"? No. We each have our own intrinsic truths; stemming from how we were raised, what our goals in life are, how we make a living, etc. How could there possibly be one truth when two peoples' outlooks are so varied?
In my eyes, it comes down to this - the truth is a construct of the same reality that has constructed god. We're made to believe that there is an omnipresent man in the sky watching out for us, for sanity's sake (and really, is there any other way to explain the horrors that happen on earth to a mind needing closure?), and we're also lead to believe that there can only be one possible truth for any situation, also for sanity's sake. So much of what we tell ourselves so that we can live out our lives in peace and sanity is ultimately our undoing. How easy it is to view a painful situation as "the truth" and simply let it be the past without scrutiny or evaluation. That doesn't further us, however, there is no growth involved there.
Nothing is, or can ever be, simple truth. It's all in point of view. It's certainly easy to follow through on something your heart may be telling you by disguising it in the veil of "truth". But I've never been the type to take the easy way out.
Truth is not truth, as the dictionary would have you believe. Truth, real truth, Leman's truth, bourgeois truth is that there is no one true truth. There are opinions, there are certainly decisions, but none of them could possibly be based in knowing that there is only one way to behave. There is never one way to behave and I certainly will never let the truth dictate my behavior. I'm much too strong-willed.
I remember once reading a Keats' quote that said "truth is beauty, beauty truth." I've been reading a few co-bloggers writings about the very nature of truth - painful, obvious truth and the more hidden, easily disguised kind - and have come to some bitter conclusions about truth.
Truth. Wow, what an interesting concept. Truth is simply the state of something "being the case," or being the only possible way that something is. But does that ever happen? Is there ever simply the truth, negating every other possible scenario? I've certainly never encountered anything like that in real life. Textbooks are one thing, studies and experiments may prove time and time again that there is only one truth (think 2 + 2 - does that ever not equal 4?), but in this experiment that we call life? I am completely doubtful that there is ever one truth for any situation.
Let's compare, for a moment, my life and the life of your average Midwestern woman (say, coming out of Walmart; even though I don't shop there and think that it's the devil incarnate, plenty of people around here would live there if they were allowed to.). When faced with any given situation, would we look at it from the exact same "truth"? No. We each have our own intrinsic truths; stemming from how we were raised, what our goals in life are, how we make a living, etc. How could there possibly be one truth when two peoples' outlooks are so varied?
In my eyes, it comes down to this - the truth is a construct of the same reality that has constructed god. We're made to believe that there is an omnipresent man in the sky watching out for us, for sanity's sake (and really, is there any other way to explain the horrors that happen on earth to a mind needing closure?), and we're also lead to believe that there can only be one possible truth for any situation, also for sanity's sake. So much of what we tell ourselves so that we can live out our lives in peace and sanity is ultimately our undoing. How easy it is to view a painful situation as "the truth" and simply let it be the past without scrutiny or evaluation. That doesn't further us, however, there is no growth involved there.
Nothing is, or can ever be, simple truth. It's all in point of view. It's certainly easy to follow through on something your heart may be telling you by disguising it in the veil of "truth". But I've never been the type to take the easy way out.
Truth is not truth, as the dictionary would have you believe. Truth, real truth, Leman's truth, bourgeois truth is that there is no one true truth. There are opinions, there are certainly decisions, but none of them could possibly be based in knowing that there is only one way to behave. There is never one way to behave and I certainly will never let the truth dictate my behavior. I'm much too strong-willed.
This entry was posted by Mellie, on
Thursday, September 07, 2006.
