Truth
Truth
Truth
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| Truth Truth Truth |
St. Athanasius was rowing on a river when his persecutors came rowing in the opposite direction.
Where is the traitor Athanasius?
"Not far away," the Saint gaily replied.
In this essay we shall examine the disparate meanings of Truth, Lie, and Fact, and how persons, by their mental and overt actions come to deserve--or not deserve--Truth.
If we examine the ordinary definition of truth, we discover its disparate meanings:
Truth: Donald Trump is certifiably insane, an inveterate liar, and attempted and continues to
- The body of real things, events, and facts: actuality
- The body of true statements and propositions
- Fidelity, constancy, sincerity in action, character, and utterance
- The state of being the case: verified fact
- Fidelity to an original or to a standard
- The property of being in accord with fact or reality
- The quality or property of keeping close to fact and avoiding distortion or misrepresentation
attempt to overthrow American democracy with fascism.
Lie: Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
You lie if you say something that you believe is false with the intention of deceiving someone about something on which you have invited him to trust you.Fact: Our planet Earth is spherical, 4.5 billion years old, and orbits a rather typical star which is but one of many billions of stars in a galaxy which is itself but one of many billions of galaxies in an expanding universe of unimaginable size.
In the situation in which St. Athanasius is confronted by his enemies who have every intention of killing a person named Athanasius, he felt it "right" to avoid telling them the truth: that he was Athanasius. Persons should be given the amount of truth they deserve and truth should be witheld from persons relative to what they do not deserve.
Over two thousand years ago, Plato revealed that for most humans, theirs is a fiat, ersatz, false reality contrived by manipulators for their own purposes. This revelation was divulged through the Allegory of the Cave. This Perennialist teaching explicated that most persons collude with their reality-manipulators in believing in and living in a delusory, insane world, but that it was possible for certain persons, through assiduous effort, to free themselves from the "chains" of their mind-reality delusions and insanity and attain awareness and understanding of True Reality.
"What is true and false in objects is judged by something in us which opposes the material body, and therefore is not subject to its laws. Above all, this something must not be subjected to the laws of growth and decay, for it bears truth within itself. Truth cannot have a yesterday and a tomorrow; it cannot be this on one occasion and that on another, as material things are. Hence truth in itself must be eternal. As the philosopher turns away from the transitory material world, and turns to truth, he approaches an eternal element, dwelling within him. If we immerse ourselves wholly in the spirit, then we live entirely in truth. The material world around us is no longer present in its material form only." Rudolf Steiner, Plato as a Mystic
We are living in a time when reality-manipulators are making stupid people believe that specific lies are the truth:
- The 2020 presidential election was stolen by Biden and his Democratic Party henchmen.
- If then Vice President Pence had criminally rejected electoral college votes in 2020 it would not have been a crime.
- The Trump-created criminal domestic terrorist insurrection at the nation's Capitol was not a crime.
- Covid-19 vaccines are not necessary
All followers of Trump, which includes the majority of Republican Party members, are continually proving, by their criminal and insane behavior, that they do not deserve the truth, because they have not worked to gain the ability to discern the truth and either twist the truth, provided to them by others, into lies, or disbelieve it, substituting their own lies which they call the truth.
Like all positive and worthwhile elements in human life, truth cannot be given to us, we must work to attain it. Even if we're fortunate enough to be told a truth, we must work to attain understanding of it; truth is not something that you can mindlessly memorize. Also, truth is not a fetish to be slavishly provided to persons because of the delusion that one must always divulge all truth to all persons at all times, otherwise one is "lying."
We should provide as much information at our disposal, as much of the truth as we have been able to gain discernment of, to persons relative to our thoughtful assessment of their deserving of the truth. We should provide truth to persons and determine how they demonstrate their ability to "handle" (receive without reacting with hatred, dismay, or emotional upset) truth, and then provide truth which we have been able to discern to these persons relative to their specific ability to deal with truth in a positive manner. Some persons, for example, lack sufficient ability to understand truth when it is provided them, either failing to comprehend the veracity of what is being provided them, or incapable of discerning the underlying significance and importance of the truth.
A person proves herself deserving of the truth by:
- working assiduously to seek information and facts asserted to be true
- working assiduously to comprehend which information and facts asserted to be true are actually true
- using her comprehension of others to determine how much of the truth she has been able to gain should be divulged to others, relative to their deserving of information and facts she has determined to be true
"This Capitol was attacked. It was attacked while we were counting electoral votes, and the American people deserve the truth. They deserve to know exactly what happened. They deserve to know minute by minute what decisions were being made both here and in the White House, and they deserve to get to the bottom of it."
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In a true democracy, there is "public truth"--what happens in the nation and the world, including the political, economic, and social worlds. The People, simply because they are citizens of this republic, deserve to be told the truth of what happens and what has happened. | |
Persons who do not deserve the truth:
- Persons who misuse truth, kindly provided them, as an excuse to change their feelings and behavior for the worse
- Persons who do not work to attain sufficient intelligence to discover information and determine which information is true
- Persons who make promises to others and then treacherously go back on those promises
- Persons who misuse truth, discovered by others, by twisting the truth into lies
- Persons who misuse truth, kindly provided to them by others, by using the truth against the persons providing it
- Persons who misuse truth,
kindly provided to them by others, by deliberately refusing to use the truth to develop understanding and intelligence
- Persons who reject the truth:
- Persons who reject the truth about the efficacy and necessity of Covid-19 vaccinations, replacing or countering the truth with lies, conspiracy theories, or indifference to danger to themselves or others
- Persons who reject the truth about the Trump/Republican Party continuing attack on and destruction of American democracy
- Persons who prefer lies and distortions to the truth
