Opus 2025-549: BIG TRUTH, little truth

I’m sitting here thinking about how serious, honest people of good faith can differ on their understandings of things.  My reference of course is theological, but I see this in politics in economics and just about every area.  How do we know what is true as opposed to what we want to be true?  I know I’m quite capable of seeing how other people do not grasp the big picture.  What comes back to haunt me is the question of whether I actually see the big picture.

Is truth simple or complex?  That’s another one of those questions which you answer, “Yes”.  It’s almost pointless to try and break down the question itself without specific examples.  So let me give you an example.

If I would walk out beside the road and pick up an object from the ground and show it to you and ask you, “Is this a rock” you would be able to answer me in most cases yes or no.  If what I picked up was a leaf you would say obviously that’s a leaf not a rock.  It was a piece of well worn concrete you might not be sure.  But ultimately, it would be easy to determine if this was a rock or not.

Is that truth?  Is that simple?  Is there more to it?

And then I might ask you OK, what kind of rock is this?  If you’re not into geology, you might have no idea.  I know that there’s limestone and granite.  I know that there are geodes that have beautiful colors inside when you break them open.  I know there is volcanic rock.  I know just enough to be dangerous.  I know just enough to know that there are deeper truths to the question of what is a rock?

One of these will be TRUTH, and the other will be truth.  Life is like that.  There always seem to be deeper levels.  When we have disagreements, we have to decide how deep a level we’re going to go to.  In the discussion of rocks, we have to come to a basic understanding of what the generic term rock means.  After that, we can start breaking it down and look for deeper meanings.  We can get down to the chemical composition, what elements are in that rock.  We can ask ourselves does it contain gold?  But we have to agree on what the basics are before we can go deeper.

It always amazes me how I can talk to people who will look at Donald Trump, agree with everything he’s done, think that he has been a positive force on America, recognize that the world has responded positively towards what he’s done, and refused to vote for him no matter what because “Orange Man bad”.  And yes, these people exist.  You have massive numbers of young people who are excited about socialism and communism.  The evidence of what these systems produce is clearly demonstrated by history.  They don’t care.  They are literally saying, don’t confuse me with the facts.

I guess we just have to keep stating the truth loudly and strongly.  We need to keep checking our facts to make sure that they aren’t talking us into delusions.  We have to build relationships with people by being patient and kind and courteous.  We have to hope that somehow the latent intelligence that’s buried deep under the layers of indoctrination can breakthrough.

Keep talking. Keep listening. Keep praying.

homo unius libri