People can be so wrong in so many areas of life. It seems that the tendency to be wrong is driven by a forceful desire to be right. People who perceive themselves to be more right, often turn out to be the most wrong. Humans have an odd relationship with righteousness and truth. You may consider that loving one’s mother and showing her care as she ages to be a truthfully right thing to do. Would that be the case for a person whose biological mother abandoned them as a child only to reintroduce herself later in life?
At that point people would argue for the truth that one has to forgive, and that forgiveness is most powerful. What’s the truth surrounding forgiveness though? Is forgiveness scientifically proven to be the best choice of action in the specific cases of mothers abandoning their children? Is the person who forgives right? Or is it the person who can’t forgive the act of a mother abandoning her child based on righteous moral principle?
The extreme ends of truth entail the understanding of the universe. In essence, to know “truth” as it relates to every imaginable domain, means to be the controller of all existence. It means to control the outcome of the universe, because if you have access to all truth, you’d know the factors which control the outcome of the universe.
You’ll know how to adjust those factors, because you know the truth. You’ll know where the universe began, and where it’s headed. Stephen Hawking stated that what happened before the Big Bang (the most accepted origin of our universe) simply cannot be defined. Is the the ultimate state of truth therefore indefinable?
The truth is, at this point in time, the essence of truth is not yet known. People are racing toward it viciously. The desire to be right within each one of us culminates in a population which is building an anthill toward truth. The most talented ants lead the charge. As their peak passes and their performance suffers, younger, more talented ants take the lead. If the universe is truly infinite, then we’re racing toward infinity. It seems we’re destined to at least want to understand everything there is to understand. The question of whether we’ll ever get there is unanswered.
The Fragility of Truth Should Scare You
The infinite nature of truth should entice you to be careful in considering yourself to be right. You’ve not explored infinity. Especially in the domain of how human beings should act, the pros and cons to each decision we can make are countless. We can only hope to get closer to truth than others do. Loving your neighbor seems to be closer to truth than being at a constant state of war. Enabling life to flourish seems to be closer to truth than attempting to end it. Treating people with kindness and respect, seems to be closer to truth than consistently trying to demean them and win against them in every facet.
As things get more complicated though, truth becomes difficult to get aligned toward. The scientific method is as close to a perfect method toward attaining truth that we have. True perfection would entail understanding everything there is to understand in the universe around us. It would entail having an answer to whether our search for truth is infinite, or whether a universal final “truth” exists for us to find.
The scientific method can supplement your actions as they relate to other people. It won’t however, provide you with the definitive answer of whether you should show love to the mother who abandoned you as a child. It won’t answer how much money you should give the beggar on the street corner. It won’t answer what it looks like to live the most fulfilling life. Should you become a monk in the Himalayas, or should you become the president of the most powerful nation on Earth? Who is right in the way they live?
This article is written to simply remind you that you may not be right. Those you disagree with may not be wrong. If the truthful state prior to the Big Bang is accepted as indefinable, does it make more sense to align with the philosophy of not attempting to define anything?
Does it make sense to simply experience and see it all, only attempting to protect it from the most extreme acts of destruction? Does it make sense to not blind oneself to anything that life has to offer with any sort of definition of truth? As human beings, this may be hard for us to do. A race toward defining a perceived ultimate truth however, may very well be ultimately untrue.