The Self vs The Truth

(Up to: Philosophy )

While there is much discourse on what truth is, and how it should be decided, it is also necessary to consider the relationship between the individual, and the truth, as it ties together a lot of disparate threads, such as the pursuit of happiness, interaction with other individuals, et al.

Firstly, it is up to each person to work out their attitude towards "truth" - i.e. evidence and facts, as opposed to beliefs and pride. I highlight these last two traits of character as the most potential extremes that fight against the pursuit of truth - not necessarily truth itself, but the aim of determining what is true.

Belief restricts our liberal criticism of facts, as we take the evidence for a particular point of view completely for granted. Belief is the exact opposite to doubt, which is critical not for assessment, but to allow ourselves to assess things. There are times when belief makes us strong, and actively hides a potential danger. Indeed, belief is only a concern when the belief impacts upon other people's points of view.

Strong belief can also often be seen together with pride, and the two are similar in certain aspects. However, I think that pride has a much more selfish tendency than belief, and either can exist without the other. Pride is about the reputation of oneself and, ironically, is directly associated with truth, or rather, the ability of someone to determine what is true and what isn't. Unfortunately, the desire to maintain a good reputation blossoms into pride, and then arrogance, which at some point becomes detrimental to the actual determination of the truth.

I like to think of the issue of "relational truth" in terms of master-and-slave. To some extent, we are both in control (master of) truth, reason and evidence, and to another extent we are at its mercy. This is true of both real world aspects (for instance, mathematics is a "created truth" that we control, but we are very much subject to the physics it describes), and our own attitude towards what we perceive. Realising this, we can choose to either allow ourselves to become a "slave" to truth, and try our best to determine what is "true" for everybody, but potentially at the detriment to our own reputation for understanding the truth. Or we can try and force the truth into what we say and think, mastering it in our own mind and bending it to our own will. This is fine, up until the point where what we believe clashes with what someone else believes. For by deliberately ignoring evidence and reason, we are far more prone to arrive at an arbitrary conclusion.

At the risk of classification and broad overgeneralisation, and admittedly more as a thought aid than any practical evaluation, it can be thought of as something akin to science (in the true sense, rather than some industrialised concept) versus corporatism. Science looks to find out more about everything, and to work out why things work, whereas the reputational and punishment/reward system of the monetary-based corporate sphere leads to a drift towards perceived infallibility.

I have yet to put together concise reasons as why one or the other is best, but needless to say I think I believe in the scientific approach.

(See also: On Humbleness The Reconciliation Of Ideologies )