What is True?

"Bring me into the company of those who seek the truth,

and deliver me from those who have found it."

- André Gide

Each of us builds our own, unique universe. We imagine and administer those universes according to what we believe. We're free to dream whatever we want, and to delude ourselves as much as we like; but there can be only one objective Reality, so the foundations of the personal realities behind each of our individual dreams and delusions obviously have to agree. If we insist either on dreaming too wildly or on deluding ourselves beyond "harmless" fantasy, then pain and even death occur - primarily to ourselves.

We build our personal, subjective realities in our minds, based on our personal observations and experiences.

Part of that building process involves the recollection of memories - yet memory can be defective. For example, we all remember occasions, sometimes leading into heated arguments, in which another person remembers something that wasn’t what "really" happened.

But faulty memory is just one of the ways in which we may delude ourselves. Inaccurate self-conception is another. That includes not just our self-image, but also our understanding of what constitutes and drives our self.

The way we see ourselves and the things we know about ourselves are often different from the things that other people see and know about us. It is only when we communicate freely and truthfully with others that we can reconcile our own views of ourselves with the world's view of us.

So when other people criticize us, we should finish listening to what they are saying and think before responding - rather than getting angry because our true external appearances are not as perfect as we had imagined. The inability to accept criticism graciously (be it justified or not) is one of the greatest impediments to finding objective truth.

Then there is something called cognitive dissonance. The term refers to a situation where a fact or experience does not fit with a person's perception of reality, so that person rejects the fact or the experience, rather than changing the perception. This can happen when someone has a great deal of time and energy invested in having lived and learned according to that perception, and so changing it would be extremely painful. The best example is the still-too-widespread belief, at least among politicians, that the present social order and global economy must be supported as they are; even in the face of the resulting societal dysfunctions, extinctions of species (soon to include our own), and environmental destruction. Even unto death.

Our ongoing experiences and understanding of reality are built and grow on certain truths, which either we have “discovered” or are “axiomatic” (inherently known and felt to be true.) These truths are the members of the ethical and logical frameworks which we each build for ourselves, and within which we act out our lives. It is important to re-examine our personal frameworks of reality as we develop them, and to 're-member' them as necessary.

The few “axiomatic” truths are obvious. One plus one equals two. Down is the opposite of up. And so on.

The “discovered” or “learned” truths, our most plentiful kind, are trickier, because we're "only" human, and subject to making mistakes. If we develop further personal truths based on any such mistaken conceptions of fact, we may live a fantasy for a very long time before it collides with reality and the illusion bursts or explodes.

“Discovered” truths are always relative in context to other known truths, which means that the degree to which we actually comprehend them depends on our levels of general knowledge.

Anything we accept as a truth needs to be re-examined on a regular basis, as general knowledge increases. That's one principle of good science. Even axiomatic truths need to be redefined occasionally to reflect the current fullness of human knowledge and experience.

Simply put: your personal system of logic and ethics, like any operating system, needs regular maintenance and upgrades to remain up-to-date. But be wary of malware. There's a lot of it around.

Whether you call it the devil or simply your ego, it is always your own self that gets in the way of a proper assessment of reality. The practice of recognizing and acknowledging this is most difficult - and yet it is most rewarding, as well.