OddThoughts

I don’t know if you realized it or not but in my definition of truth I automatically assume that the person(s) believing a truth have the freedom to do so. There are many people who would argue that this is not the case and would state that everything either is Determined or PRE-Determined. Interesting enough some of these people still believe that there is Freedom they just choose to interpret it in a different way. Let’s consider another example: Your walking down the street and suddenly you feel hungry and decide to go to Tim Horton’s for a bite to eat. You don’t stop to think for one moment that you don’t have any choice because feel that should you decide to change your mind and go somewhere else you are free to do so. The argument held by some people is that this feeling of freedom is purely imagined. Now here comes the fun part, let’s apply TRUTH to FREEDOM. If we imagine freedom, freedom is TRUE because we believe it to be so and that is all that matters according to my definition. Ah hah ! There you have it…some more “common knowledge”

Would you like to know why I am so fond of these words “common knowledge” ? Back when I was in elementary school, the fifth grade to be exact, I was told to do a project on the tongue. Well what I did was look the word tongue up in the dictionary and then I elaborated on this one definition with diagrams of taste buds and elaborate words, it was a very impressive project. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Murphy, came up to me and asked, “Where did you get all the information for you project?”. I bet you can guess what I said, “Common Knowledge”. That’s what it was and I suppose that’s when I learned the power of those two words. I did get strange looks from the teachers when I responded with that answer in case your interested.

“Universal Truth is imaginary”

What exactly did I mean by that anyway? Well if TRUTH is subject to what an individual believes to be true, I should stress at this point that you really must believe it and not just SAY you believe it (there’s a BIG difference), the individual must therefore have a personal truth which is different from other’s personal truths since it is widely recognized that no two people see the same thing the same way. You may think in your mind that everyone believes that “X” is true when in fact only you believe “X” is true while the next person believes “Y” or “XX” or “X” only when “Y” is true.

There are a few other definitions I should clarify in this chapter before going on to Chapter 2. If you look these definitions up in the dictionary (and I urge you to try it) you will find that they wind up leading into complex definitions that tell you nothing at all. Truth is one such definition - probably something like “faithful to fact or reality”. Doesn’t that tell you a lot? Some definitions even say “not false”. Being the type of guy I am I immediately looked up false and found “contrary to truth”. Isn’t the dictionary wonderful!

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