Imaginal

Imaginal
2001-11-20 01:47:41 (UTC)

A truth or my truth?

5-19-01

There are two schools of thought on upon them your
intellectual life will rest. One has it that there is a
truth and we can know it ... the other has it that there may
or there may not be a truth but it matters little since all
we can have about it should it exist or not is an opinion.

Both sides of the coin have there advantages. The first may
be said the kind of thinking of a man from the Renaissance
and the latter from the Enlightenment. I think that we
today go through both. Or rather feel both depending on our
temperament and often our situation. We may feel strongly
one way or the other but I think the common feeling is to
flip between these two poles. One day having a firm
conviction about the truth and therefore our identity. Then
at other times feeling estranged and questioning everything
which can be useful towards leading to a discovery.

Both have their dogmas. Both have their bombastic problems
of thought and action. The religious zealot will take both
positions depending on his tactic. So will the secular
leader. When trying to finding a guilty party you will hear
both arguments. One might say the first one is an
absolutists position and the latter a relativist however to
hear people speak the absolutist can when it comes to his
position become quite relative about anything that
challenges his means and ends. While the relativist while
trying to avoid morality may express something sublime. I
suppose when it is worst you have the fist with the iron
first position and empty wit with the second. When all is
in order you have authority with the first position and
insight with the second.

I myself have felt both ways. In my teens and twenties
certainly I was a relativest. In my mind everyone had an
opinion and none was privileged (with perhaps the exception
of mine.) And now as I finish my thirties I find myself
taking the more certain path of accepting that there is a
truth. The only question being in life is to realize it.

The bridge to this seemingly incommensurable pair of
opposites is the idea of the Metaphor. Here one can have
something that points at the truth and is one too when a
metaphor is used with precision yet doesn't lose grasp of
any wonderful complexity.

I suppose I am simply speaking an essentialist. Taking a
portion of comfort in the thought that God is one and is in
everything and all of us ... One without second. Or as a
Seik (sic) might put it God is one and truth is his identity
quite marvelous and beyond explanation.

Quite a distance from my prior thinking on the subject where
I thought existence was everything and essence was a
secondary concern. My whole hope being that one could
indeed create a morality that worked under such pressing and
seemingly real circumstance.

This all presses down on me because today I lied at work.
Tomorrow i




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