smashing rear view mirror

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“All Faith is false, all Faith is true.

Truth is the shattered mirror strewn in myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.”

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Sir Richard Burton

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“Beware of the man of one book.”

 

St. Thomas Aquinas

——-

 

 

So.

 

 

When you have so much faith in something … inevitably … you will find truth among some scattered shards of a mirror somewhere on the floor. You will pick up one piece … see yourself as whole in that piece … and declare truth has been found.

 

To be clear … most of us do not gather the shards and put together ‘truth’ … we simply look into one shard and believe this little bit is the whole truth.

 

That said … you would tend to believe that of someone could come along and actually gather facts and build a mirror for us to look in we could actually get closer to real truth.

 

That is actually where I believe scientists and academia tend to shine. They are experts at evaluating shards and putting them together into some form of a cohesive mirror.

 

Unfortunately … I also believe that facts wrapped in academic writing can change nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

facts faulkner

Their facts may be real … but rarely can trigger a revolution in thinking nor create a real change.

 

Why?

Shards.

Shards my friends.

 

We people are really good at smashing mirrors.

It could be the smartest, most insightful, well thought out ornately bordered mirror you have ever seen … and we will do our best to break it.

 

It is the almost unfortunate side effect of the World Wide Web. Information can be effortlessly accessed, read and understood. Uhm. Let me rather say … shards can be effortlessly accessed.

 

And the byproduct of all that access is we can very easily conclude that pure facts are elusive.

 

In fact … ‘facts’ are now effectively by a sometimes elaborate and pointed propaganda machine and sometimes simply by the loud and the few.

 

And then we end up simply talking about inflated, exaggerated and twisted ‘facts’ when all we are doing is staring at ourselves in some random shard we picked up from the floor.

 

These are the twisted facts which are repeated thousands of times, over and over again, until ultimately they become some absurd globally accepted truth.

 

And they are just one small fucking shard of the mirror.

 

Look.

 

I admit. Truth is not easy. In fact. It is much much easier to doubt than to believe.truth struggle for process

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“The Truth may be puzzling.

It may take some work to grapple with.

It may be counterintuitive.

It may contradict deeply held prejudices.

It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true.

 

But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”

 

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Carl Sagan

 

I believe it is easier to doubt because … well … we like a mirror which reflects our own opinions and preferences. And we like to have a shard in hand that expresses some factoid truth in which we see a little bit of ourselves. It makes us feel better.

 

That is a … well .. uncomfortable truth.

 

Because if truth is puzzling and counterintuitive … it should, and does, make a piece of us uncomfortable.

And we fight it.

 

And we fight it by simply going out and finding some shard that reflects something that … well … makes us feel more comfortable about ourselves. All the while discarding shards that don’t show us what we want to see.

 

Wow.

 

That is a paradox.

Truth often makes us feel uncomfortable. And, yet, people seek comfort.

 

How the fuck can truth ever win?

 

truth exists lies inventedWe seem far to ready to accept re-invented and re-conditioned ‘facts.’

And we do this even though we also tend to understand that whoever is spreading them has a clear interest in perverting the truth through maybe a corporate vision or some higher order selfish perspective.

 

Let’s face it.

Truth seeking takes courage, faith & character

“A man of courage is also full of faith.”

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Marcus Tullius Cicero

 

Uhm.

Yeah.

I included faith.

 

But “Faith” in this case has nothing to do with religion.

Faith in this case is all about “self.”

 

Faith in oneself.

A belief in oneself.

Self actualization.  Self esteem.

 

Strength of Character.

 

 

Simply strength, or faith, in self.

 

I say this because it takes courage and faith to put the shard down and seek the full mirror.

 

It takes courage to looking in that mirror and … well … not see yourself … but instead simply see truth.

 

It takes some courage to  recognize that more often than not … the shard, most often presented by some self-interested apparatus, range from being inflated semi-truths  to being absolute lies.

 

 

 

“…when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them.

It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”

 

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Richard Dawkins

 

Truth is not easy.

 

And the whole thing about shards is it is … well … easier for us.try again hurt

Most of us don’t really want to be mirror makers.

 

But it would help if most of us would sit back and understand that … and accept that.

Because if I admit that I am not a mirror maker than I should be putting the fucking shard down that I have in my hand and start looking for the best mirror maker in town <or the global village>.

 

Scientists are typically excellent mirror makers.

Academicians are mostly excellent mirror makers.

 

And there are other truly smart people out there in the universe who are also good mirror makers.

 

You just got to find them.

 

It is not easy.

And it is much more difficult because these are the ones, the good people,  who disdain shards. They embrace the whole. And they get somewhat frustrated when people want to hold up a shard and say ‘look here.’

< McTague about truth seekers: https://brucemctague.com/truth-becomes-a-revolutionary-act >

 

 

To me.

Truth people … the really good ones … hold up complex mirrors without simple answers. Because truth is rarely simple and most often never found in a shard.

 

 

We are swimming in an ocean of shards of truth. All of us. Everyone can swim and we all have an ocean in our front porch. That is called the ‘world wide intergalactic web.’

“What a culture we live in.

We are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.”

 

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Richard Paul Evans

And while I hesitate to say we remain ignorant I would say we remain far too content coming out of the ocean proudly holding our one shard. That one shard which, to the one, hold as a whole.

 

Anyway.

In the end.

seek_truth

Seek mirrors, not shards.

Seek mirror makers, not those who hold one piece and say look in this mirror.

 

Understand that truth is not easy. It doesn’t typically come in one easy recognizable piece.

Truth is the shattered mirror strewn in myriad bits.

 

Regardless.

Seek truth.

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Me?

I want to be a Truth Seeker. I hope one day to attain that status: https://brucemctague.com/seekers-of-truth  >

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Written by Bruce