Truth, truisms etc...
JAN BOLLAERT- A little taste of heaven
Truth, truisms, virtual truths, facsimiles and friends
“ The petty done
The undone vast”
Robert Browning - from “The last ride together”
The subject is truth, that greatest moral yardstick that underpins belief. Nobody has a point of disagreement- in principle - truth is good, necessary and basic to our grip on reality. The trouble comes with looking at the proposition straight in the eye- naked and unvarnished. This kind of truth is very hard to take. This is the type of truth that we sometimes call “brutally honest.” The type, that we all end up agreeing, albeit with some embarrassment, is helped considerably with the sprinkling in of a few “white lies.” The practical point is that pure truth is a lot like pure research - good in a laboratory and for the Mahatmas amongst us. For the rest, practicality demands a splash or two of compromise, some low-lighting and soft music, self-adulatory affirmations and the inclusion of others from amongst truth’s euphemistic cousins.
For those of us with more “jaan” yet left in us, the mixture is stiffer- mostly neat truth with just a dash of wry excuse-making in tolerance of our few modestly admitted imperfections. For the others, vast legions of us on the slippery slopes of decline, we need much greater artifice, a flurry of illusion making and spin to make ourselves, our truths – presentable and bearable. So if the truth be told - what we are really dealing with is a slide-rule rather than that moral yardstick we intended to uphold when we started out.
Getting away from the private to the public domain for a moment - we notice, bemused, that the truth of the mighty is subject to large helpings of self-serving embroidery. Moreover, we see that the powerful can rewrite the truth to suit themselves at any time while they reign supreme. It invariably becomes quite a different story when the self-same powerful are overthrown but that too is yet another beautiful aspect of truth! The observer need not be caught on the horns of any moral dilemma. On the contrary, he can become acquainted with another version - a fresh point-of-view, a new set of emphases and sometimes a completely different conclusion. After all, many things are not realised at first and we discover that there are two, four, even eight sides to a story in the telling!
And every truth we can think of - in the personal and the public domain alike- comes to life because of our value systems. These value systems are the deep inspirations of our sense of self, the bedrock of our humanity and that which distinguishes us from animals who are ruled by mere instinct. Here too, we have to admit the winds of change if we nurture any hopes of keeping up. The truth is in dire need of perennial updating with its ageless “eternal” aspects deep embedded for the benefit of the orthodox. But is this reassurance necessary when the eternal truths survive all history in any case? To the victor go all the spoils and the truth, willy-nilly, alongside. How else can it be?
The eternal truth we observe is that the mighty and the good are interchangeable terms that just highlight different virtues of the same entity. It is also clear from history that weariness and a sense of futility are always the province of the cynical, the degenerate, the weak and the subversive. But, since the truth is destined, by its very nature, to reign supreme in the beginning, the middle and the end – there is really no need to worry about untruth, because all untruth is doomed to failure sooner or later. We need to attack untruth on sight however, with a view to do no less than kill. Any relaxation of attitude in this regard could undermine our very existence. People have been slack before and empires have come and gone as a consequence. Either this be true or the truth decided to change without a by-your-leave and there were a lot of hapless practitioners caught on the wrong foot every now and then in history.
Lastly, it must be true that the final arbiter of truth is God the infinite. God is good. God is true and the only earthly inconvenience is in the number of religions and names of God that we have to reckon with. Which is probably why most people around the world, particularly in the developed nations, have given up the ghost and simply abandoned religion. India is, of course, an exception in this regard and is probably the most religious country on earth. As Indians, we seem to have no problems with contradictions - calling them half-truths and defining the term as being descriptive of being wholly true for half of the time! Also because of the sheer religious fervour of our teeming millions, irrespective of the Gods they worship, it is more than likely that the Gods in turn are persuaded to take over the worrying for us truly devout Indians - blessing us most munificently for the power of our bhakti and our grip on the truth.
(864 words)
By Ghatotkach
16 May 2005
The undone vast”
Robert Browning - from “The last ride together”
The subject is truth, that greatest moral yardstick that underpins belief. Nobody has a point of disagreement- in principle - truth is good, necessary and basic to our grip on reality. The trouble comes with looking at the proposition straight in the eye- naked and unvarnished. This kind of truth is very hard to take. This is the type of truth that we sometimes call “brutally honest.” The type, that we all end up agreeing, albeit with some embarrassment, is helped considerably with the sprinkling in of a few “white lies.” The practical point is that pure truth is a lot like pure research - good in a laboratory and for the Mahatmas amongst us. For the rest, practicality demands a splash or two of compromise, some low-lighting and soft music, self-adulatory affirmations and the inclusion of others from amongst truth’s euphemistic cousins.
For those of us with more “jaan” yet left in us, the mixture is stiffer- mostly neat truth with just a dash of wry excuse-making in tolerance of our few modestly admitted imperfections. For the others, vast legions of us on the slippery slopes of decline, we need much greater artifice, a flurry of illusion making and spin to make ourselves, our truths – presentable and bearable. So if the truth be told - what we are really dealing with is a slide-rule rather than that moral yardstick we intended to uphold when we started out.
Getting away from the private to the public domain for a moment - we notice, bemused, that the truth of the mighty is subject to large helpings of self-serving embroidery. Moreover, we see that the powerful can rewrite the truth to suit themselves at any time while they reign supreme. It invariably becomes quite a different story when the self-same powerful are overthrown but that too is yet another beautiful aspect of truth! The observer need not be caught on the horns of any moral dilemma. On the contrary, he can become acquainted with another version - a fresh point-of-view, a new set of emphases and sometimes a completely different conclusion. After all, many things are not realised at first and we discover that there are two, four, even eight sides to a story in the telling!
And every truth we can think of - in the personal and the public domain alike- comes to life because of our value systems. These value systems are the deep inspirations of our sense of self, the bedrock of our humanity and that which distinguishes us from animals who are ruled by mere instinct. Here too, we have to admit the winds of change if we nurture any hopes of keeping up. The truth is in dire need of perennial updating with its ageless “eternal” aspects deep embedded for the benefit of the orthodox. But is this reassurance necessary when the eternal truths survive all history in any case? To the victor go all the spoils and the truth, willy-nilly, alongside. How else can it be?
The eternal truth we observe is that the mighty and the good are interchangeable terms that just highlight different virtues of the same entity. It is also clear from history that weariness and a sense of futility are always the province of the cynical, the degenerate, the weak and the subversive. But, since the truth is destined, by its very nature, to reign supreme in the beginning, the middle and the end – there is really no need to worry about untruth, because all untruth is doomed to failure sooner or later. We need to attack untruth on sight however, with a view to do no less than kill. Any relaxation of attitude in this regard could undermine our very existence. People have been slack before and empires have come and gone as a consequence. Either this be true or the truth decided to change without a by-your-leave and there were a lot of hapless practitioners caught on the wrong foot every now and then in history.
Lastly, it must be true that the final arbiter of truth is God the infinite. God is good. God is true and the only earthly inconvenience is in the number of religions and names of God that we have to reckon with. Which is probably why most people around the world, particularly in the developed nations, have given up the ghost and simply abandoned religion. India is, of course, an exception in this regard and is probably the most religious country on earth. As Indians, we seem to have no problems with contradictions - calling them half-truths and defining the term as being descriptive of being wholly true for half of the time! Also because of the sheer religious fervour of our teeming millions, irrespective of the Gods they worship, it is more than likely that the Gods in turn are persuaded to take over the worrying for us truly devout Indians - blessing us most munificently for the power of our bhakti and our grip on the truth.
(864 words)
By Ghatotkach
16 May 2005
posted by GHATOTKACHSERIES @ 3:48 AM
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