What is Truth

Occasionally we encounter resistance from others when we profess to not believe what they believe. Especially regarding religious, spiritual, metaphysical, philosophical or even psychological matters. Those who possess certain religious beliefs not only have the usual sorts of inherent needs to feel "right" in believing what they do, but actually have it built into their belief systems that they're obligated to help others convert to their belief systems In order to save their very soul. The problem is that we don't even know if there is such a thing as a soul. In fact in philosophy the matter is considered one of the unsolvable arguments of the field that all students must at least once defend one side or the other either orally or in a paper. If forced to prove the existence of a soul as material evidence in a court of law in an important case of life or death no one would be able to do it. No judge or court would buy it. It would be a useless effort. No ones ever seen one. And we've never seen or heard of any proof of anything even close to something like it. And yet billions of people on earth for thousands of years claim to believe that human beings "have souls". I reckon this has more to do with humanity's deep seated resistance to mortality than it does to any sort of rational thought or evidence or even logic. After all, contemplating the death of ourselves is tough. It stings. It is so counter intuitive to and hurts our ego's built in survival
Instincts so much that it's damn close to being unimaginable. Us being here ine minite wirh all of our thoufhts and feelings and memories and in the next not existing at all ever again. And yet all known evidence and knowledge collected thus far in our evolutionary journey as a species here in earth clearly points to the idea of a soul being not much more than a very nice and comforting idea but rather implausible.
Of course this is just one example out of hundreds, thousands maybe, of the types of things we read about and hear about once we venture into studying these subjects of religion and spirituality and psychology and the like. Metaphysics is filled with them. Even psychology , as allegedly scientific as it it's taken to be is filled with conjectured theories that are entirely unprovable. Ideas like the ego or the id or the subconscious aren't really anything more than man made ideas created to try to help explain matters more complex than our current knowledge base allows us to really understand very well.
After over 25 years of studying and researching these subjects I don't have much patience for people who profess to know things that are unprovable. If there's one thing we do know it's that we don't know much. I've always found that to be the most intelligent and therefore safest and even comforting foundation from which to approach the contemplation of life's greatest mysteries. I have a deeply profound respect for other peoples' right to believe whatever they want to. And therefore I don't desire in any way to convince them that anything I believe is something they should. I like most the kind of people who also tend towards this attitude when it comes to permitting that we are all entitled to believe what we want to as long as it doesn't infringe on the safety or welfare of others. They seem to be the smartest among us. And as seemingly contradictory as it may be, some of these same people sometimes happen to believe the most outlandish and unprovable ideas of their own in the realm of religion or spirituality. And yet they are smart enough to recognize that they may be wrong or that it doesn't matter whatsoever if someone else believes what they do or not, and brave enough to allow even that there are people out there who think they're plumb crazy for believing what they do. again it comes down to the "can it be proved in a court of law enough so that it can be used as material evidence" idea. A smart person recognizes this tricky dichotomy, this phenomenon of contradiction in the human psyche.
One of the fastest ways to get to real truth, real knowledge, is to start recognizing that there just isn't much of it floating around. We look and feel solid and material for example; in fact the whole damn world does. And yet we are also led to believe that we and everything else around us is composed of atoms that are 99.9% space. Empty space. Not very solid nor material. Now obviously there is something very wrong with this picture. Theoretically it may proof out on, at least on paper, but try walking through a brick wall knowing that both you and that brick wall are almost 100% empty space. It shouldn't be too difficult. And yet let's face it. It's damn impossible. So as far as we've come in our evolutionary quest for knowledge and to understand, there's still plenty that just doesn't add up. And this is just one of them.
The truth is that we just don't really know much of what the truth is. That's about the closest thing to truth any of us can utter. As disarming and disillusioning as this realization can be, especially when first realizing it and further starting to apply it to ones personal beliefs about who they are and their spirituality, it can actually be a very liberating revelation. If one starts there, and stays there, as a foundation, rather than filling their head with a bunch of untruths and/or manmade theories without material proof, there can be found an exhilarating power when we do occasionally discover something that seems to ring true. Gravity for instance certainly exists. Although there is plenty about it that we still don't understand, one thing we can rely on is that the force of gravity exists in varying degrees all over the known universe. Theres comfort in knowing this to be true. It's such a rare thing to find something truly true about life in our universe that when we do we get a real sense of satisfaction. A confidence about life. And about who we are. Most of our day to day life is still mystery. From who we are to where we came from to why we are in the first place.... This is probably why we've created so many myths and legend and theories about so many things. An attempt to fill all these voids. The problem though is that we've created so many damn myths and legends and theories that are unfounded and unprovable, over so many thousands of years, and each of them by so many different groups of us through our history, that our collective consciousness is primarily filled with untruths. Many of them in stark contrast to or contradicting others. This has created innumerable problems for us as a species throughout our history. Not only do all these contradictory belief systems about everything confuse us, they keep us further and further from real truth the more of them we take on. And worse yet they create a power struggle not only within our psyches and our collective consciousness as a species but in our physical world as well. As each group possessing one set of beliefs tries to assert the rightness of said beliefs over another group who possesses an opposing or even just a different set of beliefs. It could be a genetically ingrained aspect of our basic survival instincts, or it might just be an elemental byproduct of our ego's irrational need to be right that creates this passionate lust to believe that what we believe, as compared to what someone else does, is right or truth. Who knows? Thats the funny thing. We don't even know why we have such a string need to believe what we believe is true compared to what someone else does. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. And yet plenty of people are willing to fight over it argue about it or even kill themselves and others over it. All just to defend the idea that what they believe is true. Try telling someone that they've got no soul and see how they react. It's one in ten million who might agree with you that in the bigger picture they know they have no idea whether or not they've got a soul or not. it's uncommon to find a man who is willing to admit that they don't really know if anything they've tinkered with believing over the years is even remotely true or not or if it's just fantasy or wishful thinking.
Yet perhaps the most astounding thing of the whole paradigm Is that truth itself is constantly changing. For millions of years gravity didn't even exist as far as human beings were concerned. We hadn't discovered it yet. Hadn't studied it or given it a name or applied principles to it. And since that time we've changed what's "true" about gravity countless times. In the future we will continue to do so. Just about everything human beings claim to know, anything and everything in the known universe, has gone through radical changes in how we think about it or what we claim to be true or not true about it.
Because of this, I tend to shy away from buying into much in the way of theories and ideologies. I confess I'm more than addicted to learning and studying and research. Probably to a fault. But I've never found I've been very good at believing much of anything. I find it all interesting. Some of it downright fascinating. But I take it all with a grain of salt. Even the basics. The things in specialized fields we take for granted, such as "I" and "I am" and "I am here" being the "only things we can know for certain" I don't necessarily believe I'm certain about. Even these, as elementary foundational as they may seem to us now, tend to make me question just how long it will be before we don't even believe them anymore. After all, they're made up words. Existing for no other reason than the obligation of necessity at best. And we aren't entirely sure who the "I" is, nor IF the "I" is. And we certainly don't know if "I" is "here" or if there even is a "here". There may be several "heres". Or hundreds. Or none. Who knows? And again, that's the truth of it. We don't.