Back to Truth...
My lone post on this "third version" from a couple months ago really left me thinking, and actually I have to thank you guys for responding because there were a lot of great things said in the comments section. That, coupled with this past term on my way to a BA (Hopefully by the Fall of '10?), is what has kept me from posting and also responding. But with some new perspective I'm going to give my response.
I had said that "we all have our own truth", and unfortunately the rest of that post didn't delve deeply enough into that statement and it made me seem too passive. I stressed a link between pride and truth, and although there are ties, that isn't the place I wish to have gone. But, I do stand by that statement.
Truth is based on perspective which is based on morality which comes from either religious, scientific or a mixture of the two belief systems which are rooted in what a set of people have decided are conditions that some or all humans or other animals should be able to live by. And yes this is a cycle, morals influence religion or science also, but still the basis of all truth is our moral foundation. Not a single decision made, in the end, really matter unless you have a certain set of moral codes or beliefs.
This is where I was going, and it's important to say that I have my own moral beliefs that cause me to believe that probably most of what the "Bushwack" guy thinks and does are wrong. It wouldn't be worth living a conscious existence without a set of principles and standards or truths. But nature has no truth, nature has no set of religious or scientific principles, and to find truth is to separate ourselves from nature.
Now obviously, you may find fault in my assessment, after all my hypothesis isn't any good at all without someone telling me I am wrong. But let me finish with one last thought: isn't truth and morality just a means to no end, a way for us to continue our species in a manner that certain individuals or collectives or people have determined is best. I think that social injustices are horrible detriments to our human race, and I believe that preserving the environment is necessary to continue human existence on the planet. I believe these things like you do because of a certain quality of life that I wish to maintain. But to the earth do these things really matter? To the universe? I don't know, everything will still go round, moon around the earth, the earth around the sun, the solar system through the galaxy and so on...
Update: I quickly wanted to tie this conversation up with my reasoning behind the importance of realizing, at least for myself, that truth is human based.
Truth can lead to very disastrous consequences, Nazi Germany, global warming, you name it and personal or collective truth is probably a direct cause. But if we don't recognize that no one person's truth is above anyone else's there is no way to to fix these perceived problems. We need a collective voice full of everyone's truths to advance and improve quality of life.
It's important to recognize that you are not completely right most of the time. Jim, Todd, Tim, Beth, Bushwack, Dez, dad, self, etc... Self-righteousnos does not not solve anything, and personal arrogance is more often destructive than not regardless of the best intentions. We all have the best intentions.
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I cant shake the feeling, or the idea I guess that your still trying to hard to be conscientious of every opinion. Your right about truth, and that everyone has a personal truth based on perceptions, based on their own personal situation. I would also agree that you should be able to understand the notion that they feel as if they are 'truths', but I can't go along with the idea that we need a 'collective voice, full of everyone's truths' to have a chance at a better life.
Some 'truth', regardless of why or where it originates, is actually just wrong, and to allow it to even be respected as a valid opinion gives it too much power. It's a dangerous form of appeasement, to just say we have to accept the idea that everyone has a reason to think what they do, and we should work with them to find a better world for all. I say we work either to help them see a better truth, or work to stop them.
Also self righteousness is useless, sure, but there is still righteousness and to fight on the side of righteousness while maybe instantly destructive will in the long run open the way for a better creation and world. Nothing gets better without healthy debate, and all topics should be brought to the table. I love that your willing to argue a point, and Ill argue any with anyone, but in the end some are just wrong, and some are right, and to ignore that, or to allow that to be unclear I think will lead to more and more of the false 'truths' that really have been behind all the worst things in history.
Sorry for the rant Sal, and everyone, and Im glad your back Sal...keep it up this time would ya?
Hey Tim,
I'm glad you feel that way, and I agree with you. I really want to stress that I'm not trying to be an apologist for the things that you and I consider wrong... I'm just trying to stress that there is often so much stress in what our truths and beliefs are that we have created a disconnect from what the world truly is and what we truly are... a part of an overall universal environment and that if we lose battles that we believe are detrimental to our human existence, in the grand scheme of things it is truly meaningless. The world goes round.
My needing to deal with this is as a way to remember that, if the world in which we live is not going in the direction I feel it needs to go (based on my personal morals and beliefs)that all is not lost. Those people that are in what I perceive as wrong have not won anything significant. Those corporate CEO's that have gained so much wealth haven't actually gained anything. People that have lost social standing, jobs, lives have not truly lost anything.
This isn't saying that I don't believe in my own personal morals, I do. And it's not saying that I don't plan on continuing the fight for what I believe is right, I wouldn't be back in school if that were the case.
But I guess I feel like I can take away the power of those who are doing things I perceive as wrong by saying there is no value in it to begin with.
This is a good post; there are some complicated ideas here that I don't want to respond to after only reading it once, so I'll have to come back, read it again, and respond later.
It seems to me, after the first read, that part of what you're talking about (directly or indirectly) is the "foundations" of morals, or the lack of any solid foundation to morals, something along those lines. "...nature has no truth, nature has no set of religious or scientific principles, and to find truth is to separate ourselves from nature," and such.
I have a response to that, but I don't know exactly what it is yet. Something along the line of "a bee bees."
Anyway, glad you're writing something again.
Are you sure I'm not completely right most of the time? I think there's a strong chance that I am. ;)
Sorry, that's my comment in lieu of more serious thoughts. My brain is tired.
Okay, well I don't know if my response will have any more clarity today than it would have had yesterday, but hey, I'll give it a shot.
I think I feel comfortable with where you're coming from if I look at what you're saying as being similar in nature (perhaps influenced by? I don't know what you've been reading) French existentialists like Camus or Sartre (I loved these guys when I was in college but haven't read them in a long time, so forgive me if I give a less than 100% faithful synopsis). Camus and Sartre argued that meaning and value come from within, from the human experience. This brand of existentialism is by it's nature I think very atheistic (there's such a thing as "Christian existentialism" but it doesn't make much sense to me). I think these guys took "no god" as a given, and then tried to construct meaning from there. If there was no god, they reasoned, then there could be no ultimate, undeniable value granted from without, above, beyond. Therefore, if there was going to be any such thing as meaning and morality, it had to come from within, it had to come out of the human experience.
This can lead to a degree of relativism, of course. If morality is created within, then 10 people in a room could have 10 moralities, and who is to say which one is better? Mine is better to me, but without the ability to call on some higher power, some final arbiter of value, how can I say more than that, how can "mine is better" bear any weight?
But these guys weren't trying to escape morality, they weren't trying to hide in an "anything goes" relativism. Quite the opposite. These were very moral people. This was coming out of WWII, after witnessing some of the worst things that human beings have ever done to each other. These were guys who opposed the Nazis, who fought in the French resistance, who wrote in the resistance papers, who risked their lives for their beliefs. In a "god is dead" world, having witnessed awful, awful, awful things, they wanted a basis for morality, a basis for goodness, a basis for meaning and value. And so they didn't let "no meaning granted from on high" lead to "no meaning." They said "we find our meaning within, we create our own value."
I love that stuff. If you haven't read these guys (both, but Camus especially) do it, read it, spend time with it. I always found it incredibly inspiring.
But, like Tim, I have a hard time with some of the implications of this.
I don't want "meaning" to only mean "my meaning." I want an appeal to an unyielding moral standard. I want "wrong" to mean more than that. I want morals to have weight, to have definition and substance.
I want that, but how do I get it? I get uncomfortable when I hear you say that in the end there is no capital t Truth but only small truths, but what do I have to replace that?
Belief in God, of course, could go a long way. In a god is dead world there is either no meaning, or there is meaning from within; nothing is handed down from heaven, there is no divine plan. But in a Living God sort of world, we could all just say "no, Sal, you're wrong; there is right and wrong and the universe cares and it will all be sorted out in the end."
Whatever my faith is (it's hard to pin it down) it doesn't look as rosy and hopeful as that, so my own answer can't be there.
My own moral philosophy is very much a Peter Singer/John Stuart Mill style Utilitarianism. If you're not familiar, Utilitarianism says that that which causes suffering is bad, that which causes pleasure and happiness is good. It's not hedonism; as Mill often said, it's not a "pig's philosophy," because humans are capable of pleasures pigs can't have. The accumulation of knowledge, secure and lasting relationships, forgoing instant pleasures for long term contentment-- these are all pleasures in the same way that the crash the follows the buzz, the divorce that follows the affair, and the weight gain that follows the pie are sufferings.
The problem, though, is at the root. Why should one be a Utilitarian? If pleasure is good and suffering is bad, okay. But what prevents anyone from saying "so what?" There's a scale, a way to judge the rightness or wrongness of things, but there's still no greater meaning, there's no final arbiter, no big picture sense of right and wrong. Even after listening to the standard Utilitarian claim that the goodness of happiness and the badness of pain are just self-evident, obvious things, one could say "so what?" What if I don't care about the suffering of people in the third world? What if I don't care about making my wife happy? What's the drive, the foundation, the something bigger that somehow wipes out the possibility of relativism and such?
I don't know. Haven't figure it out.
For myself, the answer is sort of tied to Taoism and evolution and George Carlin and Bill Hicks.
I look at it this way. We are natural beings. Organisms. We are a part of the world, a part of the evolving whole. While there might not be a divine "plan," there is a system, a way of things. God may not have designed bees to behave in certain ways, but we know that there are certain ways in which bees are "supposed to" (small "s") behave. A bee bees. A bee that doesn't act like other bees is a defective bee, is maybe driven out of the hive. A beaver that insists on living in the dessert and mating with rattlesnakes doesn't last long. He makes for a sucky beaver. Beavers are "supposed to" beaver. Dogs dog, lions lion, ants ant, and minks mink. Almost without exception. And that works pretty well for them.
Humans should human. Too often we don't. And when we don't, we create problems for ourselves and for each other. Part of humans humaning, I think, is living with certain moral principles, basic ones like "don't cause others unnecessary pain." This is just sort of the way we're built, how we operate when running smoothly. It's built into our continuing evolution. It's a species need.
That answers it close enough for me.
One can still say "but so what?" One can still choose not to care.
But that doesn't worry me. That viewpoint gives me enough of a "meaning from without" sense to morality to avoid the traps of relativism, without resorting to a "god carved this in stone" sort of philosophy that I just can't buy into.
At times people are blind to the truth:
When they fail to have courage.
When they fear conflict.
When they fear the truth.
When they just go along to get along.
Oh man, Sal, my brain is humming.
Of the small truths; I'll call them incidental truths, because I feel it a very appropriate label. As you stated, these incidental truths provide comfort in a situation. An exhausted example of how these truths become viral is the anti-semitic sentiment during the world wide great depression. The "Protocols" a piece of fabricated propoganda scripted in Russia diring the turn of the century, is distributed to a German people desparately searching for a higher level of prosperity. This eventually leads to an unparalleled genocide. So there is an example of a destructive incidental truth. My question remains, why were the protocols ever written in the first place? How was this "truth" crafted? That is a bit of a tangent. My plan was to arive at the conclusion that incidental truth=comfort even with the most foulest consequences.
So looking to Jockey streets assertion of Utilitarianism, we have proven in the past the inability to make such benevolent decisions of good and bad.
Looking to the God is dead world. Without a central word on truth, an absolute moral judge, there is no way to arbitrate one's truth from another. (thank you, Tim)
Therefore, I do not believe a god is dead world is really here yet. Because we are in need, for now, of a central truth authority, whether this be god or government-both corruptable. (this is not to say that God is corruptable, but his message has proven to be susceptable to many a perverse translation)
While I agree with Sal of the need for a "collective voice, full of truth" I have doubts as to whether or not we can handle it as a species when someone's own truth is corruptable. But perhaps the collective voice could concievably eliminate the incidental truths form the absolutes, of which I do believe a few exist. That is my hope.
blaaah, that was fun, I haven't had very much intellectual confidence lately, bear with me, these posts may help me out.
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