DISTINGUISHING TRUTH AND MY TRUTH

If you are honest, and not operating from a particular agenda, than as you think about an issue, your thoughts represent your best knowledge and understanding at that moment. If you have an open mind and are continuously learning, and not rigidly dogmatic, your thinking will change. You will learn better about some things, change your mind about other things, and expand your perceptions about others. Whatever, your thinking will not stay the same. It will inevitably change.

Your thinking will not stay the same because you are not all-knowing or all-wise. No one is. As you keep learning so your understandings will expand and get richer. And because you are a fallible human being, you will discover errors and falsehoods in what you know which you will discard for a clearer perception of the truth. And this will continue until the day you die. You will never close the book on learning or correcting your thinking.

Further, you will do all of this in your pursuit of Truth (Truth with a capital T). Yet you will never reach it. That’s true for all of us. Truth is our ultimate goal and one that we will never finally reach. It is the north star that orients our search. By contrast, your truth is your subjective understanding of truth right now. It may be completely false, but still, it is your truth--- your subjective, perceptual, and emotional truth. And you have the right to it, to state it, and to live by it. It’s your life. Ideally, you know it is your truth and not the Truth. Knowing that, you will continue to search for truth, listen to other views, test your truth against reality, etc.

The greatest truth seeking technology ever invented is undoubtedly the scientific method. Not “science” as the content of what we have discovered so far, but the scientific method itself. This is the process of coming up with an idea as a hypothesis, formulating it into a highly specific set of distinctions with a question that you can explore. Then you can experiment. You can go out and see what’s actually occurring in the world, or set up a trial in a lab to determine what happens when you hold everything constant but one variable.

The scientific methodology grew out of regular everyday thinking when we get an idea and then go see if it stands up to reality. “I think that X leads to Y in this particular context. Now let me see if that’s actually true.” Then, with multiple examples wherein X leads to Y, we can tentatively conclude, “Yes this seems to be a regular pattern.” Then if after 20 cases we find cases where it does not work out that way, we re-examine our original idea. “What else is involved that I have not thought about or taken into consideration?” Then with the revised idea, we test it up against reality.

Now in human history, at times people have set up a Disinformation Governance Boards to tell people the Truth. But this only occurred under totalitarian governments run by dictators. Leaders

in free countries where there is some form of democracy do not do that. Instead they encourage freedom of thought and freedom of speech. These are connected. Where you don’t have freedom of speech, freedom of thought is endangered. In Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother controlled speech and even prescribed allowed “the words.” We see this today in many forms, prescribing the pronouns to be used, prescribing the words you can’t say, etc. In like manner, last week former President Obama called for more censorship. This is definitely the wrong direction!

Just a couple days ago, May 6, Tweeter labeled Breaking911's headline which came directly from Associated Press, about “J&J Vaccine” tweet as “Misleading.” A few hours later, they took that down. This is the problem with any Truth Ministry. They shut down ideas they disagree with or are offended by. Biden’s Dis-Information Board put up Nina Jankowicz to be the Czar. But in the past few years she has been a significant distributor of dis-information herself. She called Hunter Biden’s laptop discovery “Russian dis-information” and never retracted her statement.

In a free society free speech and free thought along with the scientific method is the primary cure for dis-information, falsehood, lies, manipulative ideology, etc. Only in the marketplace of free speech can we question people about their meanings, inquire about evidence, re-examine the evidence, ask hard question, test for biases and fallacies, and keep refining information.

When there is only free speech for one group and other groups are censored, we do not have free speech at all. It is control. When Tweeter uses formulas for shutting down one group to protect the ideology of another, what kind of “free speech” is that? It was critical thinking skills that have brought us out of the dark ages and created a context for healthy debate. Then the victory goes to who can make the best argument and win the minds and hearts of people without relying on manipulation or deception.