What is truth? I find many answers to the question in religion, philosophy and history. Ask people and they will have their own definition and their own set of truths. Most people strongly believe what they believe is truth and arguing with them over what they believe more often than not hardens their position and maybe alienates them from any further discussion. In the worst case, the relationship may suffer. The wise know that challenging another’s belief invites trouble. Don’t!
Are their universal truths? What first comes to mind are truths that existed millions of years back? Examples abound: At one time the earth was covered by water. A truth that is difficult to grasp when we see mountains that reach beyond 29000 ft., or the giant dinosaurs that once roamed on land and sea. That an asteroid hit the earth and wiped out the giants that ruled the earth. That scientific evidence is now able to follow our heritage back to a place In Africa where human life began?
These are truths, but so is the hard evidence that we are, at the very beginning, from one set of parents; that we are related. It is also true that as our predecessors increased they, of necessity, moved in every possible direction seeking food, water and some degree of safety. That man had to band together developing tribes because numbers also meant increased safety. This led to divergence from hunters to farmers, from loose bands to communities.
Moving to almost every corner of the earth also changed appearances, the color of skin, the shape of our eyes, even our size and weight. The different environments made for different looking people, but not the blood that flows within each human and the brain and emotions that rules human behavior.
What came out of mankind’s evolution are tribes, communities, villages and eventually countries, but throughout, forms of leadership and governance. These are all truths even if not fully understood or accepted by all of mankind.
People believe certain issues as irrefutable truths. Whether true and actual, or what they wish things to be and are not. This exists in one’s religion, economics, politics’ and forms of governance. Some want total individual freedom and others a “big brother” to care for them from birth to death. Believing is not incidental, but at its core, one’s truth. In some cases so strong that they would die for their belief
Therein are the ingredients for problems between people. The refusal to accept difference (as I have previously written) is that beliefs can be so powerful as to cause all others whose beliefs are different to be “mine enemy” and that justify horror between brothers and sisters. One of the worst examples In recent times is the “Holocaust.”
Please be you with me. Sy
Haiku: Be different, please————-Be you and support me too———We are related.
Are we different?————-Yes and no and a good thing—————–difference a gift.