Will you be like the chihuahua who chases the bus down the street?
I mean, what would it do if it ever caught the bus?
But you’re no chihuahua, when you discover truth, you will:
Accept
Truth is floating all around you right now. It is everywhere. It permeates creation and saturates reality. The existence of lies has no more impact on the existence of truth than darkness does on light.
But truth will not dispel darkness unless you accept it as truth.
Remarkably, the mind is so made up that acceptance of truth as true flips a switch that settles the question. It will remain so until it discovers fresh evidence, more true.
Acceptance of what is true also implies acceptance of what is false. Sometimes, this is difficult. Pet beliefs may fall by the wayside. Dogmas may crumble. Sparkling fantastical claims lose their luster, dull, and drop away.
Admittedly, this can be painful. All learning changes you. The old dies a little death. A new, truer self steps to the fore. This is nothing to be afraid of, but one must remain vigilantly prepared, because this happens when you discover new truth and accept it.
Adopt
The next step is adoption. Truth accepted is not enough to elicit the full benefit. Make the truth your own. Make it your truth. Do so knowing that you are malleable and open to the possibility that new, more full, more complete truth may appear.
But for the time being, think of the difference between acceptance and adoption as that between one who acknowledges the existence of a child and one who assumes responsibility for the child to raise as their own.
Act
In my wanderings I may see a chair. My senses encourage me to accept that it is indeed a chair, and in fact, a very good one. Pleased with my discovery, I take it home, adopting it as mine.
The proof of whether my acceptance and adoption of the chair has any depth is whether I sit on it. Do I use it for the end to which it was designed and for which I accepted it, adopted it and carted it home?
Regarding practical value, truth unenacted is no better than a lie. Just as an unused chair may become merely an object upon which to bang one’s toe in the night.
The Takeaway… There is no 4th “A”
A person is wise in proportion to the truth accepted, adopted, and acted upon in their life. Notice there is no 4th “A” for accumulation. Truths catalogued and shelved, but not accepted, adopted, nor acted upon do not make one wise; They make one guilty.
# 76 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Use your intelligence to pursue Truth. Do not use your intelligence to produce misinformation.
Simple. The warning is a little further below.
Intelligence is both a gift, a tool, and a potential curse. Use your intelligence to pursue Truth. (Yes capital T, because all truth issues fromThe Truth, just as all lies issue from the father of lies).
Too often, intelligence is used to corrupt, camouflage, or constrain truth. This is a shameful abuse of the gift, a shameful misuse of the tool, and ends up being a curse both to the intelligent misuser, and to those harmed by the misuse.
Intelligence is a tool for finding truth, because it is the only tool we have to recognize it once found. To use it for another purpose is to damage the tool.
We live in an age of misinformation affecting everything we hear from politics to healthcare to religion. We are shamelessly lied to by the powerful who control the machinery. And some, parroting the powerful, use social media to scatter the lies like one pushing a broadcast spreader of grass seed infested with weeds.
What are the intelligent to do? In the land of lies, truth seekers are enemy combatants. The intelligent are labeled “elitists”, as if it is elite to believe in mathematics, scientific data, and live video (regarding vote counting, or virus spread rates, or a violent insurrection, respectively).
Call me elite.
Grow your intelligence bar and power up
I sometimes wish we lived in a world that rewarded or penalized us the way characters in video games are.
Use your intelligence correctly and cause your intelligence bar to fill and glow. Fill it to maximum and level up, enabling discovery of even more truth. You progress and advance, careful to increase, not decrease, your intelligence meter.
Use it incorrectly, either by believing, or spreading a lie, and the bar level drops. Believe or spread lies often enough and the intelligence bar drops to zero, disabling even the simplest actions.
Of course if that was happening in RL, there would be millions who could no longer dress themselves. Kitchens would be on fire in every neighborhood. And drooling, blubbering, naked and shoeless fools would be strewn everywhere, having abused the gift of intelligence they had started with to their own detriment. If only…
But that is not our reality. There is no immediately discernible, internally affective penalty. So liars prepare and feast on deceptive nonsense with impunity.
Truth starts with me and you
But what if we didn’t tolerate that anymore? What if we demanded truth of ourselves, those with whom we remain in contact, and from those to whom we turn for information? Truth starts with me… and with you. It starts with policing ourselves, refusing the commission or admission of lies.
The degree to which we live and act in harmony with truth is the degree to which our intelligence displays its existence and vigor. Conformity to truth determines the degree to which we can hear, recognize, and embrace new truths as we discover them.
Just as a conscience is be-numbed each time its own warnings are ignored, until ultimately it becomes cauterized and useless, so intelligence is defiled with every lie believed and uttered, until it too is useless — twisted by its own misuse into self-deception. Every lie believed or uttered contributes to deceiving oneself, extracting a toll on the ability to recognize truth at all.
Here’s a perilously frightening warning to those I’ve described, who do not love, seek, and cling to truth, confirming the deterioration and ultimate disaster coming their way. Notice the susceptibility to further delusion once love of truth is abandoned.
“… and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
I strongly suspect that verse is not magnet’d to the refrigerator of many of the self-righteous perpetrators of the numerous lies polluting the national dialogue.
They probably think they can pick-and-choose which truths to love… not so!
So, the takeaway, I repeat, is to use your intelligence to pursue truth. Cause if not…
Self-deception and delusion is its own condemnation.
# 66 on my, 99 Life Tips–A List is: Logic is a useful scaffolding to climb the tower of truth, but it is not the tower, and will not always result in what is true.
I mean here that logic is a framework and not substance. It is a system that is useful for testing rational statements. But it relies on the inherent limitations of language and sometimes its champions forget that language, whether written or spoken, only represents the thing or idea represented and is not the thing or idea itself. If Language is limited, and if Logic relies on Language, then it follows, logically, that Logic has its limits.
So, I can build up an impressive array of premises and definitions about Hydrogen and Oxygen and how combined they form a substance that can exist in three different states depending upon temperature. And when finished I still won’t be able to drink it. The truth of water, experientially, evades both language and logic in the abstract.
There are those who enjoy creating syllogisms that are absurd like:
If God is all-powerful, then He can create something impossible for Him to lift.
But if He did, then He wouldn’t be all-powerful since there would be something He could not do…
These word games use logic not in the attempt to discover truth, but to camouflage it.
Logic doesn’t admit the consideration of all variables that might affect a premise all times. Contexts change. So not all truth boils down to binary, true/false declarations with predictable, repeatable outcomes.
That’s a good noodle-baker. And it provided the intellectual fodder for my headline, which has the same logical problem. If the first clause (“Logic Has Its Limits”) is true, then the entire headline is false, if the first clause is false, the entire headline is true. Either way, the scaffolding collapses.
So logic is useful within its limits. But let’s remember logic has its limits. It will not as a necessity result in what is true. And in the minds of the disingenuous, it becomes a rhetorical tool to go the opposite direction.
Real friends appreciate honest support that comes from the willingness to offer even painful truths. (Adobe Stock image: licensed by author)
# 59 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Do not tolerate behavior in yourself that you would not support and respect in a friend.
Do your friends ever seek your advice with their problems? If so, do you tell them what you know they want to hear? Or do you tell them what you believe they need to hear?
There is a Proverb that speaks to this issue:
”Faithful are the wounds of a friend [who corrects out of love and concern], But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful [because they serve his hidden agenda].”
Real friendship implies the permission to say (and listen to) the hard things…to tell (and hear) the truth.
This excludes 99.9% of your social media followers.
Admittedly, there are even RL relationships that don’t meet this standard. We may call those people ”friends”, but they’re not really friends. Not in any meaningful way. You can tell if someone is a friend by what you tolerate, and what you respect. You may hang out with someone you don’t respect, but you sure as hell won’t solicit their advice on anything important. And you can also gauge the quality of the relationship by their openness to your input and advice.
Friends offer each other correction and constructive criticism. Even if it stings. No, especially when it stings. You tell your friend the hard things because you love them. You ”wound” them with your words because you are concerned about the course they are on. Your silence could lead to worse wounds than your words could ever cause. To remain silent, or to offer encouragement, would not only be un-friendly, it would border on the actions of an enemy.
Think of the last time you had the opportunity to faithfully wound a friend. Did you tell your friend the truth? Even if it was a hard truth? If you did, you are a true friend, and one of life’s most valuable treasures. After all, we can get enemies to tell us what we want to hear. But, when a friend stings you with their words, you’ve just received helpful insight that a thousand hours with a therapist won’t equal. Hopefully this is what you did, and it was received in the spirit in which you offered it.
If you didn’t speak up, or felt you couldn’t; or you did, and it was brushed off, rebutted, and refuted, it’s time to re-evaluate the relationship. Is it really a friendship, or is it something less. More than an acquaintance, perhaps, but less than a friend…far less.
Take the medicine you would offer
Using this framework, apply the same approach to any problems for which you need advice, and to any areas where you suspect you have flaws you won’t ignore in people you care about.
If a friend brought you these issues, what would you say? To one in the same situation, would you offer truth? Or, would you be mere acquaintance? Would your silence or your appeasing words amount to the kisses of an enemy?
Can you follow the same advice, and take the same medicine, however hard, you would offer your friend if the roles were reversed?
Granted, there are issues we can’t see clearly for ourselves. So I’m not suggesting that self-diagnosis, or self-care is always enough. It’s not. Some issues require another ”set of eyes”. Our so-called blind spots, for instance, are impossible to see alone. But sometimes, we indulge and excuse behaviors we would never support or respect if a friend did the same.
”Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” comes to mind. But that’s not all those who care about each other won’t let each other do.
Be a friend to yourself, and fill in the blank with anything and everything in your life you know you would never let a friend do without speaking up and trying to stop it. Now, as hard as it may be, take your own advice. Remember, faithful are the wounds of a friend.
The letter kills but the Spirit gives life, making the Bible both the most life-giving, and potentially dangerous, book ever. Within its pages is not the only place truth can be found.
# 33 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: The Bible, while true if rightly understood in terms of scope and purpose, is not a science book, nor is it the sole repository of truth.
I believe in God (generally), and I’m a Christian (specifically – with my own non-standard definition). As such, my tips for life and my writing touch on this topic. This is another Bible associated tip. It is related to the one preceding it, which suggests that the reader see the Bible as a spiritual menu. I believe that the Bible is true. However, not in the same way that a scientific research paper, or a mathematics text book is true. And, the main point with this tip is to insist to the reader that it (The Bible), is not the sole repository of truth. It’s ok to find truth outside the box.
God hasn’t gone mute and is still speaking
It is odd that anyone who believes the Bible at all would think that it is the complete record of all truth for all time. There are several verses in both Testaments that make the assertion that God is both a ”speaker” and that He is still speaking. Here is a very small sampling (Psalm 29 (all); Hebrews 1:1,2; Hebrews 12:25 (”speaketh” – Greek present, active, participle signifying continuous and repeated action).
Creators gonna Create…this “extra-biblical” truth is baking intelligent noodles everywhere
If that is not enough, the fact that cosmologists have discovered an ever-expanding universe is enough to bake anyone’s noodle. Talk about a metaphysical and philosophical quagmire. Into what is the universe expanding? What exactly is the previously non-existent space (area) that is being annexed? This fact even poses problems for evolutionists. What is in this frontier space area that is evolving? In response to environmental pressures in an environment that does not exist? Right…
This also poses problems for classical physicists. The first law of thermodynamics states that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. And yet…the universe expands. Something is being created by something to fill something. This premise seems more like an article of faith than empirically verifiable science. Here is an article from Scientific American with some impressive mental gymnastics attempting to explain the contradiction.
Thus endeth the digression
OK, enough of that digression. Back on the road here. Truth isn’t confined to the Bible. You can find it everywhere. I find it in the midst of the most elaborate lies…in great literary works of fiction. I also find it in sunsets, Grateful Dead songs, Quentin Tarantino movies, and in the gliding flight of a hawk in a lazy summer sky. Not that those those other sources have equal authority to be esteemed as on par with the Bible. Truth is not stagnant. It is still being disseminated.
”Sometimes the light’s all shining on me, other times I can barely see…”
~ Grateful Dead: Truckin’
Look, the Bible is ”living literature” as Jordan Peterson says in his book list. I like that. Although not written in the canon of scripture, it rings true to me. As living literature, it speaks to each person differently at different times.
Two important things I’ve learned about reading it. The first is, it is most definitely not a book for me to read to find out how you should live. One passage compares scriptural truth to a mirror. You don’t look at yourself in a mirror to find out how someone else looks. The minute a Bible reader does that, they’ve veered from the purpose of the texts.
The second is: When you hear truth in its pages, be a doer and not a hearer only. (John 7:17, James 1:23,24). Otherwise, reading it is doing you more harm than good.
Suppose God is the Author of all truth, wherever it is found
Here’s an interesting thing to contemplate. What if we agreed that God is the author of all truth wherever you find it? And, that as such, it is impossible for God to lie. Yes, I know. That means there is something an all-powerful God cannot or at least will not do. If we accept that premise, it becomes easy to see that the Bible is not the sole repository of truth. It becomes possible to believe that God can speak to you at any time, from any source. It might even make you open your ears, and pay closer attention, no? After all both of the following are true.
”You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t want to know.”
~ Grateful Dead: Black-Throated Wind
and;
”It is senseless to pay to educate a fool since he has no heart for learning.”
That Greek word for Truth is alētheia. This word does not limit itself to doctrinal, logged, codified truth. It is the word for REALITY. If we accept as true what Jesus says about being, Himself, Reality, then, of course we must admit that the Bible is not the last, sole, comprehensive repository of all truth.
”Maybe you’ll find direction around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you.”
What a beauty. Listen closely, you can hear it’s trying to say something. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
It occurred to me this morning that you cannot lie to a tree. Please allow me the attempt to explain.
Since beginning The Overstory, by Richard Powers, trees have become my heroes among creation. I know that seems strange, but my fascination has only grown as I marvel at their presence on this planet and I ponder what they are up to. As one of the characters in the book might say, ”What they do?”
The more I learn about them, and even as I try to share what I’m learning, the more I realize that my learning is taking me backwards so that I can properly start at zero. My preconceptions have to be shattered and laid aside. They are obstacles. I am like a guitar student coming to a Master. ”I’d like to learn to play guitar,” I say. ”Show me what you can do,” says he. I begin to strum through chords I’ve learned, pleased to show off a few rudimentary elements. ”Stop!” he shouts, before I complete 4 bars. ”This is not guitar! We will need to unlearn these mistakes before we can begin.”
This is how it is with trees. To borrow a concept once more from the book,
”You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice.”
The Overstory, p. 439. From Adam Appich, a character who is a psych professor.
Thinking you understand trees, you don’t see them. I mean, you see the shapes, but you don’t see them. It’s the same with the people you race each morning to get to work. You see them just enough to avoid hitting their cars when you change lanes. But you don’t have time to see the people. You don’t have time to look. You understand them. They are going to work just like you are. Knowing that tidbit is enough to stop the quest for any deeper enlightenment.
You see trees about as much as you see people in these cars. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
A weird thought that just wouldn’t go away
I was thinking on these things when I realized that you cannot lie to a tree. I know, that’s a weird thought to have. But you cannot lie to a tree in the same way that you cannot lie to God. Lies will not impact either one. They will remain unmoved, unbent, unbowed, unswayed. The wind will move a tree more than your lies will. Go ahead and try to prove me wrong.
Which of your lies will either impact or impress a tree? (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
I find that so satisfactory to contemplate. You can senselessly cut down a tree. Or you can treat it like a cash crop. You can scorch it with acid rain and blight. You can foolishly clear out the undergrowth that makes up its nutrient bed. But you cannot lie to a tree. In every conceivable way, a tree is above you. It is unmoved. It is unflappable. A tree is nothing but living, breathing, branching, spreading, sharing truth. No liars need apply.
Juxtapose that with what we call civilization. On the one hand, a forest is a collection of beings so willing to give and receive truth from one another that they become one thing. A Douglas Fir cannot fool an Aspen that it is something else. The Aspen does not pretend to be a Maple. The Oak has leaves that sample and absorb the off-gassed, chemical condensates of its neighbors, and shares with them in turn. Every tree in the wood shares carbon with every other tree underground through the mycelia of their root structures, assisted by fungi, the most un-heralded, unseen, world-class mediators and facilitators of the planet. The network of sharing is so complete, so entwined, that the forest becomes an organism in its own right. Trees have nothing to gain from pretentious self-centeredness. They have everything to gain from being exactly what they are.
This collection of varieties alone proves the social superiority of trees to humans. There is no murder, no isms, no inequality…makes ya think. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
The veneer of civilization and culture is sophisticated fabrication
By contrast, human civilization is hardly anything but lies. Lies that appear in facebook posts, instagram stories, and snaps. Tweeted lies. Spoken lies. Documented lies. How rare to find someone not trying to be more than they are, or not trying to be someone else – or wishing they were. We drive cars we can’t afford to pretend we have more money. We mortgage our lives to dwell in houses that are shoddily and hastily built; they have no architectural finesse, or aesthetic beauty, or soul whatsoever. They do fit neatly on the 3rd of an acre lot sandwiched between two neighbors you smile and wave at, but whose names you do not know. But for God’s sake can they just please keep their lawn mowed?
No, human culture is a polished veneer of appearances. Its strength is not deep connection, but deep deception. You are more deeply committed to your favorite celebrity (who you will never meet) than to your neighbor. We cannot share life the way trees do because we cannot be trusted to share equally. I wish I had the talent to paint in words the absurdity of the tree-equivalent of Elon Musk, or Marc Zuckerburg, or any one of the despicable Kardashians.
This? This is the height of human civilization? Please! Give me a forest! (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
Here’s a thought: If you picture the canopy of trees in a forest having an average height that represents their individual net worth, the average height would be 88* feet tall. The Elon Musk tree would tower 23,525,920** feet above the average height of the forest. That’s a large number. Correction. It’s an obscene number. It is twenty-three million, five-hundred twenty-five thousand, nine-hundred twenty-three feet above the eighty-eight foot ceiling of the forest average. In other words 800 Mt. Everests stacked on one another, or 800 times higher than the cruising altitude of a commercial jet.
See anything sticking 23 million feet above this? No? Didn’t think so. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
That Elon tree aberration is 4455.66 miles above the average tree. That’s a mutation! (That is farther than the distance from New York, New York to Anchorage, Alaska). The Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Buffett trees would also tower way above the ”average height” canopy. Can you even imagine what that would look like from space?
[This deserves a WaitButWhy illustration from Tim Urban. Like the ones in this excellent piece on AI. (C’mon Tim, discover trees!)]
Trees aren’t greedy – They’re more honorable than people
No tree would be so ashamedly greedy. Humans have no such limitations on either shame or greed. Trees are way more honorable than people. Trees exist to scrub poison out of the atmosphere, turn it into biomass and energy, and give it back in the form of life to everything else on the planet. The immorally rich exist to squeeze life out of everyone ”beneath” them, use them for their own ends, and excrete the poison of selfishness with its envy, lust, and competition, all while being loved and praised and enamored for doing so. Talk about insanity writ large…
You will live your entire life and maybe know one or at most two other people. I mean really know them. But you will be coldly calculating to make sure you get as much as you give in every transaction with everyone else. You will cultivate a persona for work, for your kids, for your spouse. Then you will put on a face for the public at large. You will go to church and put on a religious face for the members, and for God. While there, you will have the uneasy feeling that God sees through your piety. He sees beneath the veneer. The degree to which you allow Him to see, will be the degree to which you experience the unfathomable bliss of love undeserved.
A classroom for a better way
Go to the woods. The trees will release pheromones to bribe you into carrying pollen for them, or maybe just to get you to stand nearby and breathe for a while. But go there and tell them your stories, and show them your curated life with its glamorous photos of the vacation that will take you ten times longer to pay for than the time you spent enjoying it. Show them your checkbook register, or your stock portfolio.
I’m just here to learn. I have a feeling there’s so much you can teach me. I hope I’m not too late; for your kind, or for mine. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
Go to the woods and look. See if you can spot a tree trying to seduce its neighbor. See if you find one trying to impress. Find one that is hustling its neighbor, or conning it. Especially, look for the trees trying to oppress and exploit and abuse and use their surrounding, neighbor trees. You know, the ”hard-working” trees just trying to climb the ladder and get ahead.
You won’t find any. No, they just stand still, wave in the breeze, reach and stretch, and branch, and take in what’s there, and give back to everything around them, and practice being invisible.
The Takeaway: I learned these truths by reading fiction
You cannot lie to a tree. But you can lie to yourself and to others. You can tell yourself there’s nothing to learn here. Trees aren’t people, you say. No, thank God, they’re not. I learned all these things about trees, their essential truths, their fundamental importance, and the dire emergency they truly face, by reading a work of fiction. That’s the power that fiction has to reveal truth and change lives!
NOTE:
*The dataset for tree heights found the average height was 87.6 feet (88′).
** Elon Musk’s net worth is approx. $185B, the average American net worth is the whopping, $692K (which seems very high). 185B/692K=267,341 (this is how many times more Musk’s net worth is than the avg. If $692K = 88’, then $185B = 88 x 267,341 = 23,526,008’ (the height of the Musk tree) 23,526,008 – 88 = 23,525,920’ (The height in feet of Musk’s tree above the canopy average height)
Disinformation spreads when people become overly dependent on supposedly authorized sources for truth. Confusing authorized with authoritative makes the disinformation spread worse. Authorized is not the same as authoritative. To be authorized simply means to be endorsed or to hold an official position. To be authoritative means to be trustworthy and reliable for accuracy. These are not the same thing. Anyone authorized to dispense information ought to be authoritative. Then, disinformation would disappear. Herd immunity to lies would be a done deal. This is not the case.
An example from the typical church experience
People obtain information, curated and packaged for consumption, with too little investment in its gathering, and therefore too scant a regard for its veracity. I often think of the words of Luther who famously said, ”Don’t tell me what the Bible means, tell me what it says.” He was insistent to work out the meaning on his own. Today, many a churchgoer is content for their ministers to tell them not only what the bible says and means, but also how they should think, feel, and act as a result. It is apparently more agreeable to be spoon fed divine nuggets of scriptural insight, than be personally responsible to crack open the big, dusty book with the red letters. Having somebody else do all that bible study and prayer, and report the findings is so much easier. Especially when the somebody is a paid, authorized professional.
I’m only being half-facetious. People are that way with all types of information, not just the spiritual variety. We look to authorized experts to tell us what is what. But we never fact-check the ones who tell us what we want to hear, or already believe. A talking head’s popularity with our social clan is more important than their reliability. We are contented to accept that which everyone else like us embraces. The fear of ridicule is far greater than the fear of personal poisoning from swallowing falsehoods.
Consider this hypothetical
Here, where truth matters, do you want authorized, or authoritative?
Imagine yourself dropped into the Amazonian Rainforest. How do you stay alive? How do you know what will kill you if you eat it? Not, truth or dare; but, truth, or die. In the jungle, you’d be better off watching one monkey’s dietary choices than to read ten books about the Amazon from award-winning authors who have never spent a night alone in it. There, swallowing a lie may be manifest as swallowing a deadly mushroom. In matters of life and death, since authorized is not the same as authoritative, which one will you trust with your well-being? Do you want authorized, or authoritative?
This female capuchin monkey in the Ecuadorian Rainforest is more authoritative about safe vegetation than 10 authors of books on the Amazon.
And therein lies the problem. Our protected lives make us soft. We live at ease. Truth, for its own sake, isn’t seen as a matter of life and death. We come unglued if a lover lies to us, or friend betrays our trust, but we look the other way in the face of lies of national proportion. What is it that makes us like those who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel? Are we really too lazy to think for ourselves, research for ourselves, listen for ourselves? Or do we just believe the authorized can be trusted to do all that work for us? Are we their beneficiaries? Aren’t we sheep vulnerable to fleecing when we don’t demand accountability from the authorized?
I believe authoritative, verifiable Truth is everywhere. It all comes from the same Source, though it presents and resounds from countless outlets. It wants you to find it. But you have to want to find it like your your life depends on it.
Didn’t you hate hearing that when you were a kid? Someone bigger than you, older than you, in a position to command obedience from you, tells you either to do something, or not do it, because I said so.
As a kid, if someone wanted me to do something, especially something against my will, I wanted to know, ”Why?”
I hate hearing those words come out of my mouth as a parent. I feel compelled to offer reasons to my children for the things I expect them to do. Sometimes, after making such an offering, I get the retort, ”You’re being unreasonable.”
This means I’ve offered reasons that don’t suit the child’s preference. I tell them I may have flawed premises, but if I offer a reason, then, by definition, I am being reasonable.
I am not unwilling to have disagreements with either children, or adults, over our views of the facts, but I don’t like being called unreasonable. Disagreements over facts is to be not only expected, but embraced, in my view. I may not be in possession of information that is either accurate or sufficient to make an informed decision. Someone else, even my child, may bring facts to bear that can factor in to the correct answer. But once the facts are agreed upon, then reasons for beliefs, opinions, and actions can be formulated and articulated.
Which begs the question; where do we get our facts? Because someone said so?
Having spent too much of my life in the company of pathological liars, I come by my skepticism naturally.
I’ve learned the hard way, some things just aren’t true, no matter who says so.
One of my favorite lines in a Grateful Dead song comes from the tune, Scarlet Begonias.
“Once in a while you can get shown the light,
In the strangest of places if you look at it right.”
This has been true for me. All that it sometimes takes to see a previously hidden truth is my own willingness to look at the subject a different way.
This act of taking another look at something is what is colloquially referred to as ”open-mindedness”. I find a lot of people are afraid of this term. I find they are afraid of it because they misunderstand it. Being ”open-minded” doesn’t mean abandoning anchors of belief, or intellectual boundaries, putting you in danger that your brain will fall out. It means accepting the possibility that there may be more than one valid viewpoint to a particular issue.
Ideally, this would be a universally applied truth. But, before any truth can be applied, it must first be known. Here then, is my attempt to say,
”Hey, here’s something cool. There’s more than one way to see a lot of issues. Have you tried looking at it from another perspective? Have you tried putting yourself in the other guy’s shoes, for instance?”
A few months ago, I was sitting on the front porch with my seventeen year old. We were discussing a problem he was facing. His ability to solve the problem was limited by two things. One, he had only seventeen years of experience to draw from. Two, this lack of experience forced him in to a very narrow perspective, which blew the problem out of all proportion.
I was sitting in my normal spot on the front porch. It is wide enough to accommodate my frame. He was sitting in a chair to my left. A cloud moved in the sky, the sun peered from behind it, illuminating a perfectly crafted and quite large spider web just as I glanced up to notice it. The web had been there the whole time we had been talking, but I couldn’t see it against the gray overcast. It took the light hitting it just right for it to come into view. What had been real the whole morning, was now real to me.
I asked my son, sitting to my left at the end of the porch and at an acute angle to the web, if he could see it. He shook his head. Interesting, I thought. Nature has provided the perfect metaphor.
”Come look at this,” I said.
He got up, came over a few steps and looked up at the intricate web.
”Wow!” he said. He was amazed by both the intricacy of the web, and that something so large had been completely hidden from view.
Learning takes courage. It is humbling to admit that you do not know. And it is impossible to learn what you don’t want to know. Learning affects the ego with the possibility that you have been mistaken about a subject you thought you knew, or, it can introduce facts and concepts you’ve never heard before. Uncomfortable, unfamiliar, challenging truths make us confront our biases. Since it is the accumulation of knowledge and experiences that make you, YOU, a metamorphosis akin to an ego-death might be needed to emerge as the new, more enlightened version of YOURSELF.
Learning also requires intelligence, which can be defined as an aptitude for grasping truths. The greater this aptitude, the greater the chance that learning occurs even without specific intentionality. To be sure, there are very smart people who use their intelligence, not in pursuit of truths to grasp, but in devising systems for denying truth and for creating, protecting and propagating lies. To me, using intelligence this way is the essence of evil.
Rather, a good life is built around using intelligence to pursue and discover truth, and once found, to act on it. If a new discovery forces a change of belief, or a change of direction, so be it. How many ideas in your life are you absolutely certain about? How certain are you that you’ve been exposed to all the truth you’ll ever need? It is written that, “Every man’s ways are right in his own eyes.” But that verse is a warning that absolute certainty is a luxury reserved for a very limited handful of truths.
Seeking out, learning, and acting on truth sounds good until you realize it forces you to act like an intellectual nomad. Your concept of self must be fluid and dynamic, as new facts overturn previously staked out beliefs. So, the learner lives in an intellectual tent that can be quickly taken down, moved, set up elsewhere, maybe enlarged, maybe subtracted from. Brick and mortar rigidity is unhelpful here.
There is a kind of false security that comes from past knowledge. But tradition must never become a replacement for truth. Truth can move with us into the present and will guide us into the future. So let those who claim to be learners be courageous and determined to tear down any house of lies they encounter. Ruthlessly reject untruths, falsehoods, and biases as soon as new facts and new information is discovered. Pitch your tent upon newly learned truth.
