Redirection

I'd like to begin a new post, and redirect the previous conversation away from all the insanity. I think that my original post greatly defected from what I was originally trying to say by quoting the song, and I'm surprised that so many people jumped on the insanity thing and passed right over the ideas at the beginning. I think that exploring what is at the center of our lives is much more important than exploring the definition of insanity, because what we place at the center could very well be the thing that drives us insane (or, more accurately, that takes us from what is important and, as my mother said, "makes us miserable."). Our center could also complete us and make us better human beings.

Then there’s the idea of absolute truth and faith in truth. This has always been something I’ve struggled with. For instance, we accept that what has been told to us about history is true, because books say that it is, people say that it is, but we could not know that unless we went out and researched ourselves through first-hand sources (which, on my part, would also include carbon dating), artifacts and, perhaps, accounts of those who were there. However, I have better things to do with my time, so I must take for granted that what I am being told is true.

Likewise, when I was a Christian, I accepted that what was in the Bible was truth because I was told it was truth. It took no faith on my part, however, to believe that the Bible itself was true, it took faith for me to believe that what my parents (half of them, anyhow) and Sunday school teachers were telling me was true. Once I realized that those people were fallible (oh so fallible), I lost my faith in people and had to put my faith elsewhere, which is, partly, where the breakdown came from. The other part came from dissenting opinions and beliefs from this subjective truth that I was offered. First, through my father, then from a respected college professor. I began to question all supposed truths that I had been taught. Some approximate truths, like history, I was forced to quit and accept, because I had neither the resources nor the time to explore those particular truths. I did, however, have ample time to explore my personal beliefs, which have ended up in a completely different place from where they began.

To clear something up, though, I do not have the same beliefs of my father, nor of that college professor. I have found my own path, my own truths, and I consider them, to quote Jefferson, to be self-evident, but I have no illusions that they could possibly be the truth of others. I am sure that there are some absolute truths (though what they are I couldn’t tell you), but truth, like everything else in the universe, is in constant flux as we grow as a species and as a universe. This means that things are changing. What was true yesterday might not be true today, and we are also constantly finding flaws in what we thought was true (which includes history, science, math, and a whole slew of other things). What I like about knowledge in comparison to faith is that it allows for a margin of error, of transformation. It allows the mind to be open to everything, closed to nothing. It establishes not truth, but possibility. That, rather than faith, is what gives me hope. It makes up my center.