Sunday, July 4, 2021

Pondering truth… What is truly true?


In 2013 I posted a blog on “Truth”. Browsing through old posts, I just came across it once again and started reading it… ( Read it here. )

How our perspective on “truth” has changed in those eight years!


To start with, we now have the “fake news”. This has absolutely nothing to do with factual truth, but rather with whether we agree with the factual truth or not. If we agree it is true, yet if we don’t agree it is “fake news”.


And this seems to have been taken one step further… If we wish something to be true — yet it may not be factually true — we can still say it is true. And anyone countering this “un-truth” with facts, is accused of spreading “fake news”.


So which side do we believe to be true? 

And do we believe this strongly enough for us to make it our personal truth? In other words, who do we believe?


As far as factual truth goes, it is still fairly easy to do some research online. Or so one might think. Because what we are presented with online, is often driven by the loudest voices — not that different from the loud voices in protests in the sixties and seventies. Except now we don’t have to leave our computer to make ourselves heard. And therefore, we can stay pretty much anonymous, and therefore safe, no matter what (un)truths we spread into the world…

So, especially when doing our online research, it is important to verify the information we find on any one topic through multiple different sources.


Some may say that if it sounds hard to believe, chances are it isn’t (the whole) truth. And in many cases this is, well, true.

However, if anyone would have spread the word forty or fifty years ago that we would now make our phone calls on tiny supercomputers called “smart phones”, chances are they would have been met with the opinion that this couldn’t be true. And yet, here we are…


It is a reason to keep dreaming of what can become true — and for that matter, to dream big dreams!


So looking at truth at this point in time, factual truth is still factually true. However, lots of discernment and verification are needed in order to check the facts we are presented with.


The one perspective on truth that doesn’t seem to be different is that as we grow older — or more specifically, as the years go by — truth changes. It moves with our understanding, our discernment, our age — and it moves according to how we interact with one another…


There doesn’t seem to be an exact truth. As it turns out, pondering the question, it is hard enough to find that which is truly true…







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