SpheresOfBalance wrote:lancek4 wrote:I think that the 'truth' has been the whole point of contension Auk. (I'm sure ThaT point has not been lost on you or any of us, reallly, I think.).
So, if the banter of the last few pages here can be any indication of the problem-
What IS stopping us from seeing the Truth?
Selfishness! Humans tend not to be able to just be a sponge and absorb the truth, with no self in the mix. Their egos and such have agendas, thus clouding the vision, that lend distortion in the name of power and wealth, and sometimes just a simple self stroking. We don't want to see the truth as much as we want to be the one to do it. Because ultimately the truth seals our doom. Death is that which we all fear, OK, maybe not actual death but in fact the dying part of it, and don't believe anyone that says otherwise, because it's just so much chest beating, for the benefit of the crowd and thus the self; FEAR!
I concur; fear.
So can we move from here?
Fear is what is stopping us from seein the truth.
Perhaps then, when we attempt to come to a common idea of what Truth is, we find we cannot come to an Absolute agreement because we are being stopped by our individual fears.
So I ask: what is this fear?
Fear of dying? I agree with SOB also: i do not fear death, but I would react from fear for dying.
But, if I may nod to my essay "a philsophy to die for", the idea of death itself may be an issue.
When we proceed to discuss truth we inevitably find that it is a very difficult thing to identify out of reletivity.
We might be moved to say as we look at this process of discussion, which I would propose stems from an Absolute that each of us holds within, of himself but that cannot be expressed adiquately (sp), the means by which we attempt to disclose what this 'feeling' of Absolution is, we are routed by our discourse, by the language we
must use in our discussing.
It does not matter what
terms I use, in discussion with another, truth will always be relative.
As I proceed to disclose to another what this absolute truth is, this 'feeling' or 'idea' that I have of myself and the world, I become frustrated by the process, because the responses i get from others reveals that what I am attempting to reveal as Absolute Truth is never revealed, or rather, it is always revealed as relative.
I submit for your appraisal that this motion, this attempt,
offends me (us; the individual in the attempt). i become frustrated because what seems so clear to me is evidently
not clear, or everyone would agree with what I said. Thus, the idea that what i know as Absolute,
the truth which
is that which informs my Being in the world, my individual identity, my Self --this Truth being obviously
not Absolute but relative, offfends me, and thus I get frustrated because the evident discrepancy between my Self and the conveyance of my truth
touches upon the possibility that what I know as/of myself is not True, and encounter fear.
This is to suggest that when I argue an Absolute Truth, I am asserting that which is my Being in the world.
so, if we understand human reaction to fear we might glean what could be occuring in our situation.
Fear is always a reaction to the possibility of dying. There is no fear that does not involve dying -- not death, not the state of not existing in this world, but dying, the process or threat upon one's Being.
So, i this so far is sound, then it may be that we are incapable of seeing the Truth between us because we are merely
asserting our Absolute Truth at each turn of our discusssion. And, entrenched in our bunkers which defend against the possibility of dying, sheilding ourselves from fear, we are incapable of entertaining thoughts which deny our Truth.
This is to say that as we are approached by such infringing ideas, our Truth absorbs it, appropriates the meaning of the clauses and terms and 'twists' or 'contorts' such meaning
into that identity of Truth which is our Self, and thereby maintains the sanctity of our individual Beings, True as they are, identical with the world we know.
The effort which proposes that the above condition is not real, is that effort which proceeds in fear; which is to say, in denial of his own state of fear which is informing how he comes upon reality, the individual thus 'projects' that fear
onto and into the world which is really of his own making. Thus, the world is come upon as a hostile place, relfecting the discord which is inherent in the individual in denial, the world is that place of unsurity, violence, and the potential of 'world destruction'; the individual in denial comes upon a world which is destroying itself, and moves out into the world as if to help correct it, but never sees that he is really battleing his own fear, which in denial thereof, is all the more aggrivated and enflamed.
I think I may have an answer to this!! The clue is in Kenneth W. Ford's introduction to his book The World of Elementary Particles, 1963. Although I found it in the reprint by him titled, The Large and the Small, in The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics.