Truth, Fact, Perception

It was recently when I had the pleasure of meeting some new individuals at a random event at a local park.  The nature of the event brought at all the neighborhood children and their parents in attendance.  In a few short minutes the city in which I lived kicked off the evenings swaray and soon all the children were having fun with my tax dollars well spent on bounce castles and cheap carnival games hosted by teens serving their community service for petty crimes.  Due to the intensity of the sun parents fled to the outer ring of the events to hide in the limited shade of the young trees.  In the poor shelter a yearling tree could provide against the sun of a late June is where I was met with strange presentation of ideas and thoughts not fully accounted for and present.

We had caught up with another group of people that my lovely wife had arranged earlier to meet up with so that our kids and theirs could have ample play mates and potential new friends to enjoy the bounce castle and other games with.

Not being one for groups of strangers and not being overly excited by the fact of making new friends myself.  I did the natural thing and begin to talk to other members of the group.  Starting with small talk about the weather and so on.  I did really wish that the evening would end up with no more than a “Next time”, or “Our kids loved it”.  What did happen is that some of the group know me as a little bit of buzz kill when it comes to new or strange ideas.  So invariably one member of the group would ask me, “Well, what do you think of this....?”  With my long suffering wife rolling her eyes at me and knowing full well that I cannot leave sleeping dogs alone; I jumped.

For most of my life I have found the plane and easy explanations of how the world works around us as humanity a little hard to swallow.  Being from a religious background, Christian in my case, the Bible served as the launching pad and landing platform of any discussion of the natural world and all the mysteries that lie around and within it.  For a person with a hungry mind these convenient tomes left me wanting and to be fair to the Bible, those trying to teach or use the Bible in this way did not do it any favors, age has taught me that they were doing the best they can with what they knew how to teach and do.  I do not fault them as teachers or as good and honorable people.  I do fault the logic, I do fault the absence of fact.

“But what of faith, surely one must have faith and faith is the concept of belief and faith cannot be proven or tested in the sense of measurement and repeat-ability.” (To be honest, I paraphrase this idea to make a single sentence instead of the five minutes I heard originally.)

I have heard this so many times in my life and I used to rely upon it when I could not find a suitable stance to further explain the complexities of my heart, mind and soul responding to information from any source.  I simply chalk up the lack of knowledge on my part as to an act of faith that the missing bits either were not needed or not necessary in order to have a full comprehension of the ideas or concepts being propounded.  In other words, I used it as a shield, a way to deflect the burden of knowledge to God.  Or a better way of stating it. A really great way to have an excuse to ignore any information that doesn't agree with the ethos that I have chosen.

In the world of man ( I use this word on purpose ) all things are up for change and deliberation if all Ideas and facts are present and accounted for.  Acts or duties based upon faith are not predicated upon the mysteries elude understanding, placing God or deity just outside our collective realm of knowledge turns God into a shrinking deity.  That is not acts of faith, that is a great act of ignorance and incompetence on the part of any follower of any deity or ethos.

Faith in facts unknown or unknowable does not mean truth...  “It must have an effect...”  “Better to believe than to be sorry when the day of judgement comes....”  Oh the list is almost endless (Depends if I want to jump languages and religions to get more).  Faith can be misleading for many and varied reasons and allowing faith to mislead is not an act of piety or devotion.

When presented with the Idea that Alchemy and its practices of making tinctures and spherics by process of chemical manipulation with assistance and prescribe attention to moon phases and time.  These liquids can somehow heal, cure, change any number of maladies or issues.  It surprised me that the practice of Alchemy was still an active endeavor for some people, but when asked “How moons gravity could not have an effect on the spherics, it must.”  I must have smiled when the fellow stated this to me, for he frowned and he was bracing himself for a barrage of hate or Christian malaise that he was apparently used to.  Instead I asked.  “If the moon does have an effect, then the whole point of doing the weird set up and waiting was mute for all the chemicals meant to be affected have already been affected by being on earth in the first place and simply putting them together in a jar could do little to change that relationship with itself.”  Undeterred and sensing that him hurt from my comment, I added. “More likely turning to process in which ceremony and religion takes a central role in the making adds a built in quality control.  The practitioner has faith to act upon to make sure that perfection is only the first step to being good.”

The conversation continued me unconvinced with any of the new age stuff that he prescribes and him nowhere near believing that fact should rule debate and not feelings and experiences.  As valid as feelings and experiences are in making decisions about ones life, I find them to be flawed.  I find that my feelings and experiences are slanted they way that I perceive the world around me as do everyone else.  So the basic conclusion is that Truth is Perception.

There is only Fact, how that fact is perceived is what we as humanity interpret as truth.  Truth is misleading in its own right.  Truth and Lie could in effect both be accurate about the same perceived item or event.  Truth is a comforting word, it brings a world of clean and total control to any idea or event that has happened or proposed.  I find that it successfully lairs on a veneer over people and allows for perception to take hold and make liars out of the rest depending on what Truth holds more popularity over the others at the time.

I propose that there is only Fact, all else is perception.  Fact can be tested and retested and conclusion would come out to be the same (in the condition of which fact is to lead the theory and not theory to lead fact).  Perception can change to fit fact or make fact seemingly disappear completely for the sake of continuity.

When stopped by the group and asked how to prove such an idea, I did as follows.  I pointed to yearling tree next to us. “Fact, this tree stands here.  There is a tree.  Any of you deny this or wish to prove for themselves.”  All agreed that the tree stood before us.  “Perception is how I would describe the this tree to you.  Or how you see the tree different from me not just the detail of what the eye can see but how this tree alters the field of view beyond it and around it also changes for each of us.  We can debate this for eternity about how this tree changes depending on what angle and what time of day it is observed, but one constant remains and will remain is the fact that the tree stands here.”

Quickly I was ask how then the fact that the moon being in orbit to the earth could not have an effect on the Spherics.  I did smile this time and told the man that he ask me to prove him wrong.  That such a line of questioning or bold statement making does not prove fact, it only proves the perception or observation and in this case believe.  He was taken aback by my words and ask me to clarify.  I did apologize for being coarse and rough around the edges of my statement, but I do not engage in back and forth when one side uses this tactic.

My response came in two phases.

First, I asked him to prove to me a negative.  Any negative.  His eyes went wide with searching.  He shrugged his shoulders knowing that I had already thought this through.  I said to him, “With any negative you would have approached me with, I could deflect with simplistic answers that only prove perception and ring with truth.  That proving that we fall away from earth could be an easy thing to do, all I had to do is say the earth is Hollow and we are attracted to it by another force other than gravity.”  His eyes widen (no I haven’t read that book but dear lord come to me with ideas present and accounted for not the rantings of conspiracy theories) because I had just asked him to prove that the earth was not hollow and that gravity was a great illusion.

Second, to follow up upon this idea I used a line I have heard many times from atheist trying to mock religious types but I feel that they again do a disservice to their fellows for such behavior and vice versa.  “There is a teapot that orbits the sun, it is so small that telescopes cannot detect it.  So the absence of any real proof means that there is a teapot that orbits the sun that is so small that telescopes cannot detect it.  Because the facts supposedly being presented for consideration are not testable or observable in any real way.  Someone could come up with another reason for the teapot or more likely there was never any teapot.”  We continued for another hour or so along this line.  I never once told him that he was a fool to believe or have faith in what he desired the universe to be.  I actually told him that faith and believe drive humanity to have a better relationship with others and the natural world around us.  That this is the key, is that though truth can be a lie while being correct at the same time.  The relationships that we make as individuals is what we chose them to be.  That understanding that this key of relationship has no basis in fact or truth means that appreciating it is all in the eye of the beholder and respecting that key aspect with others means for deep clear understanding and how their slant of the facts affect their truth.

Facts can be tested, truths can only be told.  

He for his part tried to convince me to go to a Alchemical society to hear lectures on the practice.  I politely declined.

Personally I could see no real benefit for my attendance beside my presence taking away from others.  I find that fact is far more fascinating than practices of perception and that relationships between the individual and their environment do matter.

Brimstone and Politics

The demons that you should fear are not holding up signs for freedom or government, nor do they stand with violence and hate upon their lips. War and death are not their calling cards of harrowing their wake; promises of wealth and prosperity grace them. Willingness of the fool and mislead fill the voids behind them, hope as their swords and vile as their speech. They promote their own agenda at the cost of reality, they suspend rules and regulations upon demands and needs of their idealism and its soldiers.

The guise of one or the other is not apart of their guides just more of placement of ideas that march to the same destination. With great intentions leading their words they will shout for the legions that will march behind them, for they are many. With all their eyes open legion will cheer for the falling of innocence, with all their hearts legion will call for pax at the tip of a barrel. With all their souls legion will march willfully with all the cheers of nationalism behind them surrender the very essence of freedom for the better Good and Moral standing of all Americans.

Walls will be built with the costume of right and good flags, trenches cast upon the landscape dividing the free peoples with false hopes helping them to hone their bladed tongues. Enforcing a peace with the will of war and death, law will fade to a distant dream when idealism guides the hands of the masses, life will fetch a cheap price when morality becomes a guide to the existence of communal contractual government. All that is good in this world comes with a price far deeper then what the demons say costs, or what the masses could comprehend when the fire in the soul of a fanatic is lite, reason is lost to the defining power of morality. Freedom comes at the cost of the individual to stand and demand that their voice be heard and beyond that it means to bare upon their soul the meaning of reason of freedom and not to be guided by selfish titles of glory and morality.

The demons we should fear are not mutually exclusive or inclusive; in flags or names given. They mark themselves with the mundane and hide behind the words of morality and disease between the syllables of rights and righteousness.

The demons we should fear applaud the walls that are built, cheer when masters are given titles when loyalty is rewarded more then reason of Law. For Morality must be defined to make a rebel a saint and God a villain, Morality must be defined to give reason for good souls to surrender to the alluring voices of Legion. Morality must be in definite terms for a trigger to be pulled. Morality drives the fanatics flames to the level of not a soldier or zealot but a driven monster where the price of innocence is a small casualty of the pressing of the gilded gates of Utopia to be opened.

Giving history a rightful thought....

Inside great times history is commanded by greatness of a people and by great people, from within the walls of our view port do we misunderstand our place in the timeline.  Do we confuse the optimum decisions for ones that make for a better read of history?  The statement is as such, "Let history be the judge" now to most of us this sounds like a great line from a hero being forcing their will upon the timeline and commanding the very essence of recorded life to change and be magical.  For what is should be seen as, is in fact it is an excuse to explain bad or poor behavior on the part of the actors.  The people who write the history as well as those that are lucky or unlucky enough to get entered in as players in the timeline.  Each person either the writer or the actor will portray their makings as either hero or villain and to show the face of sainthood towards the posterity that will have to sort through the mangled wreckage of truth.

Now this may sound as if history is now nothing more than a wicked and debased retelling to revise what was once real to make it more palatable to modern ears.  To which that historians both ancient and contemporary are not to be trusted.  This willful ignorant path towards our history has be explained to me as a mix bag of really poor reasons to not trust what the past has to tell us.  That somehow our story that we write today could not and is not even remotely similar to what has happened.  Or that we could stop and learn about what was and how that could help further explain and define what we are as a people today.  For the most part history suffers from a lack of PR, the very name strikes fear and loathing into the hearts of most who hear it.  Changing its name is surely out of the question but changing how it is used is not.  Calling something history should be a beginning of study of what, who, where, when and why.  Not simply turning the page and allowing dust and age to allow the lessons learned to fade to a background with no real meaning behind them.  Though it is true, "what is done is done and cannot be undone" it is more a less an opportunity to overcome what has been done and how to change what could be done again.  Taking the evil and wrongs from a story to paint a better light upon perceived heroes and the odd turning villain to martyr usually helps in the healing of pride for nations, but it does no good to hide or to alter what happened.  Changing the details to make the story more appealing fundamentally changes what lessons could be learned or gleaned from the happenings of the past.  Changing facts to make the growth or the posterity of a people seem golden and divine all to hide weakness or past sins only feeds vanity and greed of a people and distorts their collective view of the world around them and proves to them that their thoughts and actions are somehow pure and uncorrupted.  This strange relationship with history and how we view and learn from it are in fact a fundamental function of our society.

We base our laws and decisions on our ancient and current past, we build connections with others through a common history, through connections that where made centuries ago and we allow them to be rebuilt and grow stronger with time.  Hiding fact from the pages of history does us more disservice then allowing a nations or peoples pride be hurt or defamed.  Knowing what was is far better then being fooled into believing devils to be saints and saints to be devils.  Never mind the subjective nature of interpretation, that is no ill, the fault comes in trying to predict the interpretation and attempting to alter what could be learned or understood from the story.  Subjective understanding of fact is not the same as alter fact, true one group can find devils while another would call the same saint.  The altering of fact is the true sin of a high disreputable order it takes away the will of one to actually learn the truth behind who, what, where, when and why.  The subjective mind will see their own reasons for the who, what, where, when, and why while the objective mind will try to learn the actors reason for the who, what, where, when and why.  Morals and happy endings seem to disappear when objective eyes are place upon the timeline, but what was lost in happy endings and wonderful sounding morals we gain in actual knowledge of human behavior and how to overcome the common obstacles that crowd the human space and cause fault within our systems.

History is the story of us and where we came from ignoring it and not giving it a real place in our lives distorts what we do and taints our actions with a sad tinge of ignorance.  There are so many wonderful symbols that adorn us as well as our buildings and we take them for granted never truly knowing how our thick roots started first as a sapling.

Gold and Glory

With new debates igniting new passions, songs and discourse pledging dreams and promises of a future with glory lined with a border of gold. With this season where in this democracy we drawn lines between ourselves to show friend in thought from within the chaos. Binding together hands in partnership with either the selective past to guide them or marching to a steady beat of the drummer boy with a manifesto held above them. Each yelling towards the other, each claiming righteousness with God or inside decaying inked lines. Each quick to blame, each quick to boast its authority as absolute. Inside the noise of men speaking with generalities seeming to promise the world, promise glory and gold with out knowing or without desire to achieve either. Or worse...

With words of dripping with the honey and nectar of the gods. Worms of men often speak the loudest when given the opportunity. We have developed a nasty little habit that we collective have come to enjoy secretly...

We mark the boxes next to names based upon unfounded reasons of promises of glory and gold. When the so named fail to produce promised bounties, we pout, moan, complain that someone has to fix the system. We have fallen in love, we have dark fantasies of wanting and hoping for the stated glory and gold to fall from sky as if divine love should pour from the heavens...

Over two hundred years and some of those years came with glory and others with gold. Apathy has taken the place of rolled up sleeves and sloth has replaced sanctity. Loyalty to images of poorly drawn mammals lead the discussions and lead the hearts of so many to claim righteousness. Now we expect the glory and gold to fill the empty vaults of our souls.

Secretly I wait for the ghosts of the Blues and Greens from centuries buried to come to us and show us how to riot...Nike!

To those that speak for the sounds of God I ask that you truly see freedom as the basis of any true understanding of any knowledge. Freedom is not defined by you, freedom is beyond papers, beyond courts, police and wars. Freedom of thought must be, for truth if forced into the hands and bodies of others is no more then tyranny. Rule under the auspices of theocracy, we will learn that there will be no end to the tyranny that would rain from the hands of the “righteous”.

To those that speak idealism of individualized freedom being above all the most important. With actions and fervor that rival that of religious zealots your actions would lead to tyranny no different than that of a theocratic totalitarian regime. Your prophets speak to claim total freedom of one the freedom of another is and must be willingly sacrificed. You speak of freedom but only as defined by your own hands and how it would be applied is questionable. World free from not a world with freedom.

Freedom to be is no more than that. Defining ones self against the backdrop of society is every ones personal journey. Searching for that metaphorical spot in which all us must fit is a nice ethos to help us cope with the disturbing unfairness of mother nature and human kind.

Be not weak...things may be good. They must be better... (Saxon)

We have an opportunity coming soon to us. Soon we will have the noise calmed and the torrents of oceans of opinions will be stilled for one day. On that day think of glory and gold, think of what and how it was promised to you. By which price it will demand. Gold and glory do not come from idle hands only asked to move once every four years to define the destiny of a country. Blues and Greens once rioted and held an empire hostage. They demanded gold and glory, they failed when glory and gold was a price to steep to pay their greed guided them to fools and follies. They asked for accountability from a Emperor almost a thousands years after the Brutus. It was too late. When do we begin to ask for our leaders to represent us. A thousand years when our Republic has turned from its founding as a place of freedom to theocratic, totalitarian, failure. Will we end up as the Blues and Greens? Slaughtered by the thousands, humbled with a new respect for the chains that encircled them completely. They bowed at the Emperors feet. But for four days an Empire stood free from Emperor.

Think to which you ask your fellows to stand and be counted for you in the halls of our government. Do they to their own whims serve? Do they to their own ideals be slaves?

My voice will not be silent, nor will I be silenced by sword or cell, threats or chains the choice to be, is all that freedom can afford.

Hiding your meaning

It has come to my attention that people in this country have found a new passion of hiding the truth behind words of comfort. I understand the desire to do such a thing, to hide the ugly and strange behind nice well meaning sentiment or to hide behind the shield of religious rights to protect the willfully ignorant from reality.

Not being a person of political desire or aspirations I tend to look at the arguments of any political centered person with observation and understanding as my goal. I try to not be persuaded by argument but instead watch them circle the conversation and push fact or fiction into their realm of thought. While doing this attempt to push lies and deceit towards their opposition.

When I was young and learning about life and work, I had an interview with a company I endeavored for over a year to get a job with. The firm was impressed with my resume they enjoy talking with me but as the hard question came down I had some interesting ways to cover up some of my previous failings. I had a terrible experience with a previous employer, to hide my shame of my mistakes I pushed and emphasized the employers failings in an attempt to bolster the illusion of me. To his credit the older man listened to me and when I finished my tail of woe, he calmly move the interview on. At the end he said he would love to have me join their company save for one reason.

“When a person speaks ill, they speak as if to hide.”

I knew then I would not be joining this company nor would I ever be able to. His words have guided me to understand reality as it is not what some person said it was or should be. The man knew my shame even though I attempted to hide it, he knew I was injured from the past and needed to learn from it. He let me down softly and let me leave with my head held high. The next interview I had I spoke the truth about that previous employer and I received the job. His lesson couldn't have been more clear, honesty was not the reason I gained the job it was the fact that I spoke honest to reality not what I wanted reality to be.

How does this lovely little story apply to politics? How does this mean anything? It does not change the laws on abortion, it will not change the economics of this country? So why does this mean anything if it does not do anything?

It does and this is how:

When approach by one presenting information, ask what this person will gain from presenting said information to you? When answered you will learn what type of taint the person will have in presenting said information.

This allows you to see what is trying to be sold to you.

I do not care if you claim elephant or donkey nor do I really need to know, but to hid meaning with confusing talking points that mean nothing and give nice clean answers without taking a real stand is a sign of weakness and the pointlessness of your ability to freely think. You deserve to be slaved to idealism and suffer from the addiction of partisan behavior.

Stone Carver continued

  With the task near completion his hands moved with a methodically grace. Only small pieces remained still and only with tools sharpen and honed to deadly edge could work continue. Through true in form the tastes of reality lingered hidden behind the smallest layers of rock.

Once a rough hewn block in itself perfection alone untouched. With biting steel and the passing of blue skies to steepened dark of nights. Did a figure emerge not freed from the shackles of natures grace. No longer the imposing sign of majesty with edges true and skin harden and rough from the quarry. Now it stands smoothed as a rivers stone, curves that do mock reality. Not from a distance could life be confused for its grace of stillness and action.

The chisels and tools lay quietly in soft pockets of wood on a myriad of work benches, ladders and stools. Crisp light of morning sun creeps across the work room pointed to a wedge like a dreadnaught pushing back the water from its bow. The dreadnaught moves steadily unflinching in its goal to pass the suns grace of light upon the figure of stillness standing in the molested remains of its shell.

As the blazing chariot of Apollo pulls endlessly at the sinuous tethers of the Helios, its light seem muted anywhere it fell outside of the craftsmen workroom. The figure in its stillness wore the cloak of light around its body, causing the stone to breath with movement of the timeless day's passing. Shadows artfully planned, curves divinely dashed upon stone. With only the tide of light as its retreat, the dreadnaught moved back across the floor to reside in that place outside workroom's windows. The life faded from the face of the figure, the cloak of Helios pulled back into the distance by the draw of astral steeds plowing the furrows of the ethereal pulling the sun into another day.

The figure stands in stillness with a scent of perfection around it staring into the window from which the bow of the dreadnaught came pushing back the shadows leading the charge for Helios to lay its cloak upon the statue once more.

The Convenience of Thought..

Ever since humanity had collectively been able to think beyond the realms in which they stood. Their minds pushed the envelope of the societal and physical walls of the world around us. At some points in the past the envelope broke and peeled past the point of repair allowing the societies that would surpass the ones that dare think beyond their station a little advantage for the next attempt to cross the vast abyss of ignorance in the journey for knowledge.

In our society today when spend twelve plus years in some type of schooling in an attempt to the learn what was already open and understood to be. This serves not only as a basic function of pushing the average intellect up, it puts the individual on a higher platform of functionality then what was previously possible.

Where there was ignorance, there was darkness. The basic functions of the natural world around us seem basic and well understood and they are.

It is here that we stand to loose again. Where we have struggle to show light and bring forth great understandings, we also shudder in fear and drown in supposition about what it could be and what else could be meant.

Once the envelop has been pushed, once knowledge escapes from the boundaries of what is known, it is impossible to return to the lesser state of ignorance. Only with the death and destruction of civilizations has the veil of blissful ignorance has recovered our eyes.

I fear that we know attempt to do pull back what has been uncovered. We cover our ears when knowledge is presented to us, finding the colors of a moving picture far more worthy of our attention. We silence our thoughts with the thoughtless prattle of pretty faces. We sigh on command and laugh when prompted. When the bell stops ringing do we sit silently with the absence of thought to accompany us in the plastic injected world we fought and bled for?

Does the scholar know that when the walls of the fortress begin to shake under the fire of the enemy, that the scholar is the goal of the enemies hands and not the soldier or king.

When what was not know becomes a part of our knowledge and is pushed from its darkness and given a place in the library of human achievement, rarely is it what we want to know or want to believe what is. More often then not, when new discoveries push back that darkened veil it comes at the cost of what we desire the nature and how the universe should be as a matter of convenience. In some cases the eyes are purposefully stitched back shut when such advancements are made, for it does not fit into what is desired to be real and meaningful. In other cases knowledge is purposefully destroyed for a matter of purity, mainly human purity.

With thick fingers and lazy arms we are quick to hold up signs claim perfections that stand weak in the wind. With loud voices we shout praises into the air for those that lay in earth for us to stare into flags floating with the wind, with what mind and soul do we stand and become great? We show more interest with the shapes of two animals and how their leaders sing their own praise from the windows of every growing ivory towers. The horizon of knowledge and greatness keeps moving further from us and we sit claiming greatness on laurels that rot.

The convenience of thought...