Here's my view of the truth. There is none. It's all false.
Mind you this is all just my opinion. Not like it matters, because my opinion is an illusion, too. I provided a short glossary so you could understand how I define these terms:
Existence: The state or concept of being.
Reality: An assessment of Existence.
Truth: An absolute, or accurate, assessment of Reality.
Symbol: An entity serving as an accurate representation of another.
Model: A system of Symbols serving as an accurate representation of another.
Perception: A model of Reality formed by senses.
Consciousness: An attribute of an entity capable of perceiving Reality.
Think for a second about the following crudely drawn ASCII image.
o
o o
o o
What is the image of?
Is it a pentagram? A pentacle? A star? A man doing awkward jumping jacks?
It's five Os! Five round shapes is some inconsequential, arbitrary, angularish shape. The trick is to realize that is all of the above answers are right and none of them are at the same time. Every objective thing we observe takes a subjective form when we perceive it.
Let's step aside and talk about perception for a second. How much of our world do we actually perceive? For the record, we never really "see" anything, only the light that manages to bounce off of it into our retina. Well, we already know that we can't see ultraviolet or infrared light with the naked eye, and there are several pitches and volumes of sound we miss out on everyday. Also, there are certain textures so fine our skin will probably never really be able to tell them apart. Okay then, we are only noticing a thin spectrum of information when we look at the world around us. And once again, we only see the world around us, and most of the time only the around us that's in front of us. Compared to the size of most houses, much less the planet itself, that's not a whole lot. We really must be missing a good deal of it.
Okay, back to objective-to-subjective translations. We take in the sensory information of something, some small percent of all the information the universe actually provides for this object, and then it gets pulsed in and out and turned into some image in our mind. We see this shape, or what we could collect of this shape, and now we have it! A shape in our heads. A pattern. Some type of image. White bread, boring, meaningless image. This is where the frightening beast of "assumption" rears it's head.
If the sensory images we manage to crudely scrape into our brains are the bricks of the reality we construct for ourselves, then these assumptions are the mortar. We have a lot of gaps to fill in being that we are missing so much of reality, and this is how to fill them in. Ideas, preferences, biases, and recalls that piece these shapes, these five Os in a pattern, into something. On top of that, various systems in our mind and deceptive influences around us fill our head with what are essentially misdirections and lies. Let's state for the record that I see a little man. Why? I don't know. A need to prop social symbols around me so I can feel part of a community? That's probably why I blog so damn much. We all get more or less the same bricks, but we build different building, street ways, and cities in our head. We apply meanings that we prefer or choose, consciously or subconsciously, to the patterns we catch everyday. We say things exist for a reason. Subjectively that's easy.as in Pizza exists to please us,so does my sweet gal in my neighbourhood....
Now if you don't care much for objectivism or relativism, you probably disagree that it's that simple. I'd argue it's your ability to construct illusions that allows you and gives you the right to disagree.
So where's the order if all things are subjective to our own senses? Well, that's the thing. They aren't. We all have our own subjective perceptions, but of all the same objective parts of reality that we are again just barely scraping information from with our senses. I am personally of the belief that there is some type of absolute, or nearly absolute symbolic system to the universe. I would like to think that the entirety of the universe is built of allegory and metaphor. Patterns repeating themselves through the laws of physics and nature. Maybe some universal string theory. Maybe an ancient divine prophesy. Maybe both. Everything represents something deeper and underlying all the way down to this set of core principles. Elegantly simple and almost wholly predicable, barring some chaotic interference here and there.
At the core of our world is truth. At the core of truth is simplicity.
Take these example concepts to understand what I am trying to say:
Time and space are only exaggerations of similarity and difference. In the same way you can be close to or far from another person in feet, you can be close to or far from another person in feature.
How about this idea. For all of our progress through the ages, we are no different to the ancients before us save our mechanical horses and electric books. Our technology, and even nature's evolution, is just a 2.0 of the previous version. Whether you holding a French saber or a light saber, it's still just a sword, fulfilling all the basic functions of a sword.
Personally, I've been using my symbolic model of the universe theory to make all of my decisions for the past 10 or so years and I am a very happy and fairly successful person. I created a system for breaking things down to a more basic "symbol", usually something arbitrary, and then place them through an intuitive formula.
Intuition is our compensation for shedding nature's gift of instinct. I immediately take every thing I perceive and assign it a symbol.
For example, if you are near oily rags and smoking a cigarette, you know that
Spark + Fuel = Fire
So if you don't want Fire, step your incendiary self way from the rags.
I have found it a pretty good way to make quick and simple decisions.
Of course, since everything is an illusion, I could easily be deluding myself. Not to mention the fact that I could be crazy and misinterpreting everything I see completely.
At any rate let me conclude with this concept - pretty much everything is perspective, questionable, and probably a conclusion made with less information than you really would prefer to have. Nothing is ever too ridiculous or convincing to confirm yourself. So since it's a little dangerous to assume we really understand or truly know anything about anything at all, generalizations are probably not as bad as me may treat them, so long as you keep a keen eye on things and constantly try to illuminate and demystify your reality. And if you really have way too little information to make a decision, try to create a method of making .....whats that word is ......yeah "logical hunches."
