I have been thinking deeply about my reasons for writing this blog. My first blog attempted to define a rationale (“To Blog or Not to Blog”). Now that I am much further along in the process, I find myself once again questioning my initial motivation. Certainly, I was not attracted to the siren call of fame or fortune—that much must be obvious to my readers. Did I have a particular ideology or dogma to articulate? But that phase of my life began to disintegrate at the age of 21. Gradually, I came to realize every ideology is just a singular network of conceptions that form an integrated world picture. To the extent that this world picture overlaps with others, it has some validity. Otherwise, it serves as a healthy delusion, comforting to the degree that it allows one to make sense of his/her life. Dogma, I soon learned, was often hard earned wisdom from past generations that had become calcified into an exclusive set of actions and beliefs. To the extent that one’s personal belief system is lived with openness to its founding inspiration, it has the power to transcend the opaque routine of everyday life. But it can too easily become a prescription for living and thinking that relieves one of any personal responsibility and precludes reasoning or self-examination by its very mandate. The bottom line is that I am neither an advocate for any specific ideology nor an evangelist for any specific religion or practice. So what manner of hubris has brought me to blogging? Perhaps I fancy that I have access to some element of truth whose validity depends upon it being shared.

So what is truth? One person’s truth is another’s fallacy, or so it seems. Can we even recognize truth within the blizzard of its many potential sources? We live in an age when communication has been multiplied by the digital media—the internet, cable news, and various handheld devices to include the ubiquitous cellphones. But are we communicating any better today than before digital transmission ruled the airwaves? Within the realm of science, truth is validated when an hypothesis is tested in a lab and confirmed by repeated tests. Between individuals, I believe, most communications are validated solely on the basis of trust. (Our gullibility in this regard is stupendous, especially when you consider our susceptibility to advertising campaigns and to the promises and propagandized world views of politicians.) We may not have physical labs where every communication can be pre-tested for validity; but we do have the equivalent apparatus lodged in our brains where memories of past experience and the power of reason itself reside. When something you have read or heard “resonates” with you, it seems to flow with the patterns of your life experiences and self-reflection. In an instant, you sense that something true has been communicated and you feel connected with the communicator in a mutual relation. You share a truth which seems further validated by that relationship: a real feedback loop.

If you have followed me thus far, then you might conclude that all truth is relative, with the possible exception of scientific truth. But, actually, I believe all truth is relative, even when validated by objective scientific tests, by the shared experience of others, or by so-called “common sense” (what used to be called “self-evident truth”). There was a time when philosophers saw the world in terms of matter, form and the interplay of causal principles; and scientist explained everything in terms of material substance, energy, and the movement of objects from point “a” to point “b.” But the philosophers never agreed on any one system of philosophy. And science has long struggled with the “grand vision of everything” that might explain the fundamental source of all energy and the underlining mystery of matter itself—the fact that its atomic composition appears to be nothing other than empty space and energy states. My point is simple: all truth changes, including scientific truth, as we amass more experience, real world testing and a common understanding. The only truth that is absolute is the vast area of our mutual ignorance which includes the unknowable—the proper subject of art and religion. “Truth” is that ever-accumulating ball of knowledge and wisdom we persistently push towards a mountain peak forever shrouded by clouds. What has been generally accepted in the West as the accumulation of our knowledge and wisdom is called the perennial philosophy and contemporary science (including, of course, quantum physics, which rather reads as metaphysics). What amalgamates and establishes the various relative truths of ages past is our mutually concurred/verified understanding as expressed in mathematics and, most especially, in language. The latter expression is my entry into writing a blog.

If a tree falls in the forest . . . is there objective truth when no one can testify to its existence? Is consciousness the sine qua non of existence? For us, the answer to that question would seem to be “yes.” For without our awareness, we ourselves would be simply “not there.” Without consciousness, in fact, we would not be in the world-as-we-know-it at all. But there was a time when our species did not exist on this planet. Yet there is plenty of evidence that the earth and life evolved together as necessary precursors to our emergence. So trees fell in many forests around the globe long before humans were on the scene. The force of nature that spins the galaxies and spawns its many life forms on mother earth is that same creative energy that both predates our existence and invites us as active players in its tour de force. We make reality for ourselves by simply being aware of it and more; for we enter into its creative vitality by the decisions we make and the concepts we form and share with one another. The world we inhabit is both the oyster shell we create and, at the same time, that mysterious and unknown force that governs every energy state and enables every creation. So we can agree on some measure of truth that we attain together, but that measure is inconsequential to the absolute that engendered us and encompasses our past, present, and future. Scientists share their results with other scientists in order to make possible the next generation of discoveries. As individuals, we share our personal truth with each other in order to validate/enhance our three-dimensioned/conceptualized perspective on a world in order to gain some wisdom for ourselves and our posterity. Likewise, my “truth” is my entry into writing a blog.

With confidence I can say that my written words are a testimony to my ignorance. When I share with you my self-assumed knowledge and limited wisdom, I am merely casting into the wealth of knowledge and wisdom that already exists in you, my readers. If what I have written resonates with you, then we have attained some measure of truth together. Recently, I have netted many new subscribers. So your apparent interest seems to justify my rationale for writing this blog. I can only thank you for your interest and support.