A Yellow-Brick Road to the Truth
Don't wander off into the poppies...
A friend in another forum raised this question:
If, on any subject, one believes one already has the truth, does being open to new ideas somehow do an injustice to or compromise that truth? Thinking I already know the truth, am I nevertheless obligated to consider new ideas that might challenge my previous understanding?
In other words, what is the relationship between truth and the consideration of new and challenging ideas?
In response, my first thought is, those who claims to know the absolute truth about anything and, without supporting argument, facts or explanation, expect you just to take their word for it are highly dangerous individuals - especially true in the dystopian world we live in today - a world shot through with intellectual, moral and spiritual corruption.
As I have argued repeatedly in the past, because of always limited and incomplete information on any subject, no one can lay claim to a perfect knowledge of of anything. The absolute truth is thus by definition never within our mortal reach. If there is a place and time of perfect understanding, it is not here below in the mortal realm.
Accordingly, the best one can do is understand and embrace the disciplines of mind and character that, time immemorial, have been shown to tend toward increasing understanding of truth - the way things really are and really work.
First and foremost would certainly be the relentless pursuit of knowledge. No truth-seeker is exempt from this requirement. If we trust others to do our learning - and thus our thinking - we are on dangerous ground. The more we can learn - especially about things critical to our well-being - the safer we are.
Beyond that, critical elements of - perhaps preeminent among - these salutary, truth-oriented disciples and virtues are:
First, a respect for objective truth - the truth is out there and can be known. The pursuit of objective truth is not in vain. The whole history of science (until recently) bears testimony to this.
Second, a decent humility that honestly acknowledges the limits of one's own grasp of things - no one knows everything about anything.
And third, the inexorably ensuing understanding that, in the absence of perfect information, one must always be open to the honest consideration of new information - especially information that challenges us in our pre-conceived notions and settled opinions.
Indeed, new and challenging information has a refining effect on truth. As the Chinese proverb has it, “True gold isn’t afraid of the fiery furnace.” Those who fear and resist having their preconceived notions tested against new information are not friends of truth.
It follows that people who do discipline themselves and honestly assess the world around them based on the principles I have set out above deserve to be characterized as people of truth.
Conversely, those who display no respect for objective truth, who have priorities other than and not well-served by truth and resist and ridicule honest inquiry into the underlying facts, who represent themselves as having absolute knowledge and thus have no need to consider new and disagreeable ideas - people who viciously attack ad hominem those who bring ideas and new information that challenge them in their absolutism - “Election deniers! Insurrectionists! Threats to democracy! Domestic terrorists! White supremacists! The greatest threat America faces!” - might well be called (borrowing a term from psychiatrist/author M. Scott Peck) “People of the Lie”. In a letter to President Donald Trump, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano referred to these people as “the children of darkness”.
Two of my previous Substack posts make pertinent reference to these satanic minions:
“The Left’s Deceitful War of Words”
We are engaged in a conflict between good and evil. These people are simply evil. Truth has no value in their eyes and, more often than not, is a threat to them. One need put no finer point on it. Decent people need a systematic means of recognizing these demons for what they truly are.
As I have long maintained:
The credibility of WHAT you argue or see argued is directly a function of HOW the argument is brought.
Find the truth in the methodology of argument. The truth cuts its own way and can be argued for in an honest and open manner that does not insult the intelligence of those it seeks to persuade. Deceit cannot be so argued.
As one surveys an almost infinitely complex world characterized by information overload and a cacophony of strident opinions on virtually every subject - a great many of those opinions deliberately deceitful - a world where the truth, borrowing a descriptive phrase from one of Iain Flemming’s James Bond novels, “is as hard to find as a Mormon in a whorehouse” - there is an obvious and crying need for a systematic means of charting a dependable course through the pervasive, miasmic confusion - a methodology that, in a pervasively deceitful age - and notwithstanding the ever-present limits on dependable information - will lay out before us a yellow-brick road that, if we stick to it, will keep us out of the stupor-inducing poppies and dependably lead us ever closer to the Emerald City of Truth.
Keeping in mind my little aphorism on how the methodology of an argument on any subject in itself tends to reveal the truth, I propose that if one assesses information and those attempting to sell it based on the four principles I have set out above - the relentless pursuit of knowledge, respect for objective truth, personal humility and openness to new ideas and information - and, critically, applies those same principles in the management of one's own mind and character - one is likely to get as close to the truth of things as is possible on this side of eternity.
Time to choose:
Right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, reality vs. fantasy, law vs. lawlessness, justice vs. injustice, order vs. chaos, liberty vs. tyranny, good vs. evil, light vs. darkness, God vs. the Godless…
If you can be fooled, you will be…
These are the times that try men’s souls…
Torquemada