The Untruth of Truth
Think twice when someone tells you a "truth". I'm reminded this when someone in my life tells a "truth", an inconvenient one that's also emotionally and reputationally injurious to someone else. Which made me give more thought to truth layers which might be a thing in philosophy but I'm still a young grasshopper in that area and not read much concerning these topics yet. On one objective layer, it may be truthful that someone is low-scoring at a certain sport or activity. On a higher social layer, it's something that may not need said as it is a truth that I might ally with that person and when a vulnerability is paraded of someone I care about, gossip, I will use my "truths" to prod at their vulnerabilities. It's a truth that I want to survive, be in peace and that I care of that person who may seek those very same goals and when someone prods at a loved one's weak points, then I prod their opponent's weak points to stave off the "truth" attack with inconvenient and perhaps even emotionally injurious truths of my own. So there we have layers of truth. Objective truths with more abstract social truths layered on top, which is kind of analogous to the OSI layer I discussed in a previous topic on layers of social power.
But you see, this is something we do intuitively and even though we may not think about it on a verbal level to the extent I discussed, we feel defensive when told an inconvenient truth, a gossip about someone, and feel the need to defend them and show them truths inconvenient to themselves; we prod for their weaknesses as they prodded of ours, tit for tat, which can be a very optimal strategy in social behavior, depending on the society but sometimes tit for tat with some amount of forgiveness can be more evolutionarily optimal. This is all intuitive to most people, they don't have to think much about it, and I think people tend to be smarter than we sometimes give them credit for but they may lack the communicative skills to relay their awareness. As a selective mute for most of my childhood, I'm all too aware of how negatively people can be treated by others if they're unaware of your awareness. I think this helps me have a lot more sympathy for animals or people otherwise unable to communicate. It's a hell of its own to live in your own lonely world and not be able to connect to others. But I don't divert to this subject to discuss the emotional disconnect but mainly just how amazed I am when I think about all the intuitive calculations the animal brain does when going about its daily business. Running, jumping, predicting the intent of another animal or human by reading their expressions and mannerisms and so on; they all require a really amazing amount of calculations even though the animal's brain may lack the communicative power the human brain has to relay that awareness to other members of the tribe or other animals. At one time I was vaguely interested in the topic of AI, just obsessed enough to where everything was a nail ready to be contacted and meshed out by the blunt force of my dull intellectual hammer. I'd see a fly or ant and be amazed at just how many things that it's doing, all the math and computational power required to go about its menial daily business, and it does it all so intuitively. That fly is a poet and don't know it, a math wiz without a clue and a navigator of an elaborate ship on autopilot.
The intelligence of even lower intelligence life never ceases to amaze me. So just how much does Spot know that I know about him? And what other noncommunicable or tacit data am I missing from others when I think they're being illogical but to them the logic seems obvious? This leads me to often second guess myself when challenged and assume the challenger just isn't very verbally competent at getting their point across. And is their logical social truth that resides below my perhaps objective logical truth? Is my truth challenged because it's just objectively wrong or because it's a threat on their reputation or livelihood and they're responding with a social truth, a need to validate themselves or invalidate myself? Is all truth not sought for the end game of survival? And so you could argue that all truth is a truth of the social game. I sometimes forget that not everyone cares to seek some sort of objective truth so much as just wanting to survive in life, even if they have to layer that truth with objective untruths. And honestly, I can't fault them for it. I think we all live lives that reside upon some inconvenient truths and that we all want a sacred place where we feel we're free from the hardships of those inconveniences. Maybe your favorite person does have some faults, maybe your favorite hobby isn't as healthy as another hobby or your religion or lack thereof may have kinks in its armor but I think people have a natural need for a sacred place for mentally restorative purposes, whether it's a hobby, a religion, a physical place, a mindset, etc, and I think if we want a civil society, that sacredness should be respected to some extent as long as mutual respect is given. The respect for the sacredness of someone's "place" of peace, whether true or not true in an objective sense, is something we all seem to practice to some degree but I think sometimes in written word, we get myopic and lost in semantics when we discuss such things to try to arrive to perhaps a more objective truth. Incidentally, I think written communication has worked wonders in helping humanity relate to one another but sometimes I wonder if it causes as much conflict as it prevents because there's so much about a person that's not practical to put in words, tacit knowledge, or miscommunicated that it may have the opposite effect. But I'm reminded again of the Taoist principle of wu wei, which isn't something I read about and then applied to the world. It was a natural progression of mindset that I acquired much too late in life and that I later discovered had a formalized application that is centuries old. And if I have to confess, I know very little about it other than a paragraph just like most philosophical principles I've come across so I add the disclaimer that I'm more of an impatient man's philosopher and ironically brevity of thought, which would make my blog more fitting for someone as myself, isn't a trait I've mastered yet, or probably never will. But I think a lot of what we do, maybe moreso than we think, doesn't always need a whole lot of thought and that our intuitions, what flows from us from a deeper layer, is sometimes the more optimal path. Water flows, be water, my friend, as I hear Bruce Lee emphatically saying in my head. And excuse me if I keep going on tangents. My mind seems to be pulling files from /dev/random tonight and my heart's not really into the discussion as it usually is. I worry about my father and what could be a case of early onset mental illness. When my mind is scattered and cloudy, my memories fleeting and head in pain, I worry that I'll succumb to that same fate also as it has the same symptoms. But let's digress from staring into the morbid abyss before the abyss stares back, to paraphrase Nietzsche.
The intelligence of even lower intelligence life never ceases to amaze me. So just how much does Spot know that I know about him? And what other noncommunicable or tacit data am I missing from others when I think they're being illogical but to them the logic seems obvious? This leads me to often second guess myself when challenged and assume the challenger just isn't very verbally competent at getting their point across. And is their logical social truth that resides below my perhaps objective logical truth? Is my truth challenged because it's just objectively wrong or because it's a threat on their reputation or livelihood and they're responding with a social truth, a need to validate themselves or invalidate myself? Is all truth not sought for the end game of survival? And so you could argue that all truth is a truth of the social game. I sometimes forget that not everyone cares to seek some sort of objective truth so much as just wanting to survive in life, even if they have to layer that truth with objective untruths. And honestly, I can't fault them for it. I think we all live lives that reside upon some inconvenient truths and that we all want a sacred place where we feel we're free from the hardships of those inconveniences. Maybe your favorite person does have some faults, maybe your favorite hobby isn't as healthy as another hobby or your religion or lack thereof may have kinks in its armor but I think people have a natural need for a sacred place for mentally restorative purposes, whether it's a hobby, a religion, a physical place, a mindset, etc, and I think if we want a civil society, that sacredness should be respected to some extent as long as mutual respect is given. The respect for the sacredness of someone's "place" of peace, whether true or not true in an objective sense, is something we all seem to practice to some degree but I think sometimes in written word, we get myopic and lost in semantics when we discuss such things to try to arrive to perhaps a more objective truth. Incidentally, I think written communication has worked wonders in helping humanity relate to one another but sometimes I wonder if it causes as much conflict as it prevents because there's so much about a person that's not practical to put in words, tacit knowledge, or miscommunicated that it may have the opposite effect. But I'm reminded again of the Taoist principle of wu wei, which isn't something I read about and then applied to the world. It was a natural progression of mindset that I acquired much too late in life and that I later discovered had a formalized application that is centuries old. And if I have to confess, I know very little about it other than a paragraph just like most philosophical principles I've come across so I add the disclaimer that I'm more of an impatient man's philosopher and ironically brevity of thought, which would make my blog more fitting for someone as myself, isn't a trait I've mastered yet, or probably never will. But I think a lot of what we do, maybe moreso than we think, doesn't always need a whole lot of thought and that our intuitions, what flows from us from a deeper layer, is sometimes the more optimal path. Water flows, be water, my friend, as I hear Bruce Lee emphatically saying in my head. And excuse me if I keep going on tangents. My mind seems to be pulling files from /dev/random tonight and my heart's not really into the discussion as it usually is. I worry about my father and what could be a case of early onset mental illness. When my mind is scattered and cloudy, my memories fleeting and head in pain, I worry that I'll succumb to that same fate also as it has the same symptoms. But let's digress from staring into the morbid abyss before the abyss stares back, to paraphrase Nietzsche.
Anyway, it is true that I wanted to make this short and sweet but I'd argue it's more objectively true that I get diverted quite easily. Life is like an ogre, it has layers.
Mood: Pic related.
Mood: Pic related.
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