Sunday, January 18, 2009

My view on "the truth"

I wanted to write down a few thoughts on truth. It seems to be a common misperception that there is only one right way how to look at the world and all you have to do is find that one right perspective, that one "truth".

After seeking truth myself for many years I came up with the following analogy to explain my view on truth to other people : Imagine "truth" being a 3-dimensional object. Imagine the limitation of the human mind being represented by only being able to preceive a 2-dimensional world view. So your viewpoint on truth is represented by a 2-dimensional plane which cuts through the 3-dimensional object representing "truth".

Many people think that their viewpoint on truth is the only "right" way to look at what is true which in this analogy implies that there is only one right angle or orientation of how you have to locate your 2D plane of perception when cutting through the 3D truth. In this close-minded way of thinking the "overall truth" is being limited to this 2D slice and all the rest of the "truth" is denied to even exist.

If you really want to "seek truth" you will have to consider different "viewpoints" on truth which implies to overcome the idea that there is only one *right* way to look at the world. Once you start to learn about how people from a different culture view the world you become aware that you can place your 2D plane of perception at a different angle and perceive a "new truth".
Is that "new truth" valid or is your "old truth" valid ? Unfortunately they are both valid and there are not only 2 ways on how you can cut through a 3D object with a 2D plane but there are unlimited ways. Neither one will be "the truth" they will always only represent one way of perceiving the world.

Since this analogy is slightly too simple I'd like to add at least one more aspect to it. In our reality there is a lot of deception which I'll refer to as particles of deception. These particles of deception have the characteristic to be almost invisible when being perceived from the limited 2D-slice viewpoint. But whenever you allow yourself to attain more than one viewpoint and you imagine two 2D planes at different angles they always cut eachother and this intersection is a straight line. Whenever this straight line of both planes is hitting a particle of deception this particle lights up and thus can be identified very easily even though it was hardly visible before in either of both planes.

So if you really want to seek truth, you need to attain different view points and correlate as many of them as possible because this way you can identify the hidden deception within our world. The more different viewpoints you attain the better you will perceive the overall body of truth. As long as your preception of truth is limited to one 2D-viewpoint you will never be able to see the whole picture but the more viewpoints you attain the more knowledgable you will be concerning the real "3D truth".