27 March 2020 Friday

https://ferrydust.com/journal/2594/truth

I don’t need answers the same way I used to. I still have all the questions. And I’m okay with that. I still love to have answers and I still would rather know than not know. I still feel I’m an invasive species, however it’s very selective now; I’m disinclined to pry.

I still believe in truth and love the idea of it, though I know that truth and reality are not the same, and truths are subject to all the lenses — perspective and time and the beholder and the writer and the accompanying foundational truths and compounded truths.

The things that most upset us are those things that touch upon what are dear to us, and/or what we fear. Righteous indignation — something I have exercised in spades — likewise reflects self-consciousness and personal shame, guilt, or fear. Our fears govern so, so much about us — certainly more than we are usually aware, often of which we may never be willing to be aware. They are personal things; if they were not personal, we would not be so annoyed, insulted, upset, afraid.

I would still really like the answers. However, much more than answers, I want solutions; approaches, possible practical options given likely possible present or impending truths. If it’s relatively safe to do so, I’d rather take the steps, prepare for the thing, and then figure out later whether it was really needed and how and why it works — rather than the other way around. I recognized this about myself sometime in the earlier part of the past ~15 years. I want to know the whys and hows, though I’d rather know the What should /can we do about it first and most.

Maybe that’s the difference in religion. I don’t know what “it” is just yet. I know that “it” marks all the difference in how people exercise “curiosity”, approach “science”, perceive “truth”. I know it’s not a dichotomy, except maybe it almost is — like the difference between pessimism and optimism, or believing in a benign universe or an apathetic one (trichotemy then, for those believing in a cruel universe (or one dominated by Satan?)). An optimist can be cautious; a pessimist can be hopeful (only a little bit though; if they’re really hopeful then they’re only pretending at pessimism).

And for a moment I thought I was almost all the way off-topic, however pessimism seems perfectly on topic and I’m still on the dichotomies (I don’t generally believe in dichotomies) and the general underlying sense of answers and questions and truths out there; and yet everyone is committed to their own ideas of truth and garbage and the only ones in agreement over which is what, are those with the same or near-same religion — not the church-kind, necessarily — the fundamental-belief-and-view-and-approach-to-the-universe-kind.

And unless we have omniscience and perfect communication — total empathy, telepathy, complete self-expression and all the context of everyone and everything and always — then… seems like we are meant to continue with confusion, because that is what becomes of all our differences and individual personal inexpressible lenses. All the poetry and the music and paintings and monologues and blog posts and romantic gestures and online tirades and awful jokes are our beautiful and feeble attempts at communication and understanding and being understood. And we fail more than we succeed. That’s not a useful approach though. So my programming says “nice to know and not helpful” so I forget and I continue to try to understand and be understood. And I still want those things, though perhaps not as much as I used to, or maybe hopefully I don’t need them as much as I used to; I would like to know what is useful and what I can/should do, and what I may — to the higher potentials — do.

This is one of those things where I know what I’m thinking and feeling and am — heh — failing to express it effectively, and/or being comfortable to leave notes for myself that I’ll be able to interpret, and others can only guess and translate through their own lenses. Truthfully, sometimes I also have to guess and translate myself to myself. More or less than is usual? I do not know. And I’m okay with that.

P.S. I still have all the questions, and I also have many answers both asked and unasked, and I love and appreciate all of it as it assures me that more answers are forthcoming and most will be unanticipated and they will find me any way.