Afterall, it might not even exist. The truth might just be another seducer, another liar, another sad end to your day.
The truth brings conflict. war. It demands fidelity and adherence. The truth trumps freedom and tortures free will. Could be the only true truth is the only thing we all share…. death. But after that, some of us turn to dust. Others go to heaven. Or Nirvana. And then there’s the matter of those virgins… would they be vestal then???
Back up. Let’s take another look at this idea. Truth.
Woman to Carlos Mencia: i feel sorry for you. You are not touched by Jesus Christ.
Mencia to Woman: Look at me… i am not touched by Jesus Christ?
Listen to me. I’m a beaner… a long time ago i used to pray to moon, the stars, the earth, the air, the sun, the water, and fire… and you showed up with… a bible and permission from god through the pope and the vatican to kill “savages” that did not believe in your bible and message. Not only did you kill my people, not only did you eradicate my people, kill my culture, and take my gold, but my people are the only people who name their kids Jesus.
The truth is i’ve been inundated with propaganda. There is no climate change. And do i really think it’s promoting freedom if i rail against one percent controlling the world’s wealth and resources? Isn’t that communism? what the fuck. People can’t have freedom if they aren’t free to accumulate wealth… and, btw, George Bush is an honorable man. heh. Realize i’m writing this on 14 May 2008. yeah. Okay, then.
How can i claim the truth? What i believe, even if i prove it in spades, doesn’t dent their truth. Truth is impervious to facts, common sense, and common decency. Fear makes its own truth. So does god. Love. Hunger. Anger. All these things seem to put truth in conflict with what theevolutionarysieve might call actuality. Seven years of sifting through a small fraction of the available information, propaganda, editorials, theories, and ideas and analysis of how and why we went to Iraq… how our Constitution was subverted… elections stolen. Seven years of working on this puzzle, trying to fit pieces into relationships and context. Trying to find the truth. At some point, small vignettes begin to emerge. And the whole picture gets clearer. Iraq or FISA are merely pieces of this puzzle, and the picture emerging is a story about power, not truth. Or maybe power is truth.
Power… monolithic and vague is, we’re led to believe, out of our reach; defining truth, out of our jurisdiction. Power is a mythic force, forging impenetrable armor around the company, the church, the government, the army… It is hard to deconstruct an institution… and the fall guys are almost always someone like us… yeah. Like the army grunts who took the blame for America’s torture initiative. Yeah. Power gets to dictate truth.
There is method to the madness of power. This ancient credo that might is right is ultimately about entitlement. It is having the resources to deny consequences, even reality and further, actuality. The primary thing is not I think, therefore I am; it is I have power, therefore I can do whatever I please.
As one of the of the 6.7 billion citizens on planet Earth, I plainly see that all of us will be faced with challenges of untold depths. That is my truth. Neither George Bush, my brother-in-law, or his neighbor Dan share this version of the facts. In fact, they, the three of them, are pretty sure that if we drill in the arctic, Americans will have oil for another 30 years. Really? Do Americans own that oil then? Does that oil go to the direct benefit of Americans? Now that I think of that, I wonder if anybody every asked those questions.
I also wonder… when facts are under attack, can truth be reliable? And without truth, can facts be reliable?
Heh. In my world, oil will be an afterthought as we fight over water rights. It is already a world where the Chinese River Dolphin has disappeared, even as polar bears are drowning. Deforestation of the Amazon rain forest has again accelerated as we grapple with the processes that deplete nutritional value in our food. There is the weight of untold stories on us, from DNA-altered crops to changes in our global wind patterns. Bizarre weather, interrupted migratory patterns, and the mystery of disappearing honeybees are, as the saying goes, just the tip of this iceberg.
How do we begin to bridge an understanding of the magnitude of our actions (the ability to extrapolate that to billions of individual actions) in relationship to an entire planet? If we are to resurface old progressive arguments to articulate them with world wide symbolic power, we must listen to different voices and perspectives, and to thinkers not yet chained to old ways of thinking.
Set yourself free, then. From truth. From gravity. From the last bit of connective tissue that ties us to the Clan, the Neanderthal. It is time for a different time. If only… we can let go of the truth. It’s a little like letting go of god, isn’t it?
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There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
Alfred North Whitehead
and I’ll rec…but “set yourself free….from truth” seems, ah, mis-worded. Chimpy et alii set themselves free from truth, from reality, and we are stuck with the horrible consequences their “setting free” created.
Delusion is what they have left us. Kafka-esque prisons in Guantanamo Bay. A declining dollar, fewer jobs, more money for the richest 1% of the population….oh, the list does go on and on and on.
I can’t free myself from the reality of needing work and income (I made a whole 20 grand last year and can’t even hope to equal that this year); needing a place to live and scraps to eat; needing hope (this is not a reference to O)–without at least some of these, I might as well slit my wrists right now and get it over with.
Y’know?
Truth is a two way street. Your truth comes driving down my street one morning and I wave and say “Hi.” Your truth says “fuck off.” I’m a bit offended, but HEY, it’s early and I’m a forgiving kinda guy.
I go get some breakfast at a local restaurant and my truth says to my waitresses truth “Eggs and sausage.” My waitresses truth says to me, “How about the oatmeal and some orange juice. You look a little pudgy and I think you should take better care of yourself.”
My truth gets just a little off track, being somewhat taken aback by the real truth, and it says, mostly truthfully “You’re right, but make it oatmeal and sausage. I’ve been dieting and could use a nice break from the usual.” A half truth, if you will.
Well, my truth told a half truth, because I’ve been dieting no more than a Cheetah on the plains of Africa has been foregoing Antelope liver due to chloesterol issues.
My half truth gets back to the kitchen of the restaraunt where the waitress says to the cook, “Give me a bowl of vein rooter with a side of valve clogger.”
The cook says, “The real truth will set you free. Get your ass back out there and push the Orange Juice, OK?”
is that so many people would have to admit to wrongdoing, to being wrong, and they would have to change. They just can’t take that step, not until forced to. That’s why they lisen to the talking heads of Fox, and to the angry rants of Limbaugh–these idols of theirs give them permission to disregard science, and to continue to just make up excuses for failures. They can live on in their fantasy world where they are always right.
Ignore the biases and focus on the levels.
http://proliberty.com/observer…
The ,what did I say, clueless clod citizen zombinals get to me. Pavlovians zapped over two generations now by the electrons of TV “news” and now 24/7 this is how you should think media. Well the brain cells are short circuiting and the levels should also include the negative (evil Satanic side). The personality type in which a person assumes his God given right to tell others how to live for example.
I did run across a fancy metaphysical site. They think 2012,the end of times might mean we evolve into the fourth dimension. No need to worry about anything as we get control over time itself. Very cool.
piss you off.
But this will calm you down again.
truth is big and complicated and ambiguous with hard shiny peices and slippery pools and bloody bits and shining beautiful parts that break your heart. People grab bits of it and it hurts so they stop getting any more and run about whacking others with the part they’ve wrested free or inherited all dusty and smelling like underwear. But every revolution starts with some of it, no? Truth is basic human dignity. Truth is what you knew was right before they taught you not to give a shit or adopt a vast social mattering map. Real truth is unavoidable and fractal and doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything, it just is.
Tired. I only write on ambien anymore. Truth is I work too fuckin’ hard and my sweetie doesn’t want me :} Heh.
whether it’s what Camus was getting at or not, it’s what I took from his writings. All is meaningless. What does it really matter?
And that is what gives us the freedom to choose what we do.
Is there a group of people that “lie”, “cheat” and “steal”? Or at least, do we think there’s a group? Then whether they’re right, or we’re right, or neither of us is right, if that’s what we believe then that trumps the notion of “meaning” or “reality” or “truth”. And then we can act how we must…since it doesn’t matter, then why not? It won’t matter that it doesn’t matter.
1+1=2
24 hours=1 day
in 100 years we’ll all be dead
Geo. W. Bush is a scum sucking son of a bitch
…is today’s poem.
Serendipity happens.
It seem to hide behind curtains the humans have made. I think human truths are a matter of perspective. A matter of placing the species outside nature, the famous ‘original sin’ separation of mans knowledge from the whole. A whole our minds cannot grasp, and our egos won’t allow us to admit.
‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain’ said John Lennon. As humans we cause most of our pain, yet blame it on the laws and constructs of a made up divinity or genetics which further shatter the essence of reality or ‘truth’.
As for Bush and his ilk, they know no truths either cosmic or human. They are as my accountant calls the IRS, the Dark Side. The monster we all contain, Throwbacks who dwell and worship the dark murky swamp, the lizard brain. I once read that conservatives have more nightmares then liberals, their perspective looks at this side and calls it truth. Good and evil become tangled in this toxic stew and this reality is sold to the fearful.
My Dad a scientist/engineer, used to say that perhaps the universe is the atom in a giant’s toe. He would then send me off to Mass to be inundated with the ‘truths’ of an absurd human God and his son, hanging crucified by another Empire and a religious political struggle to suppress the truths he saw the, ability of humans to love both each other and the larger reality beyond earthly kingdoms.