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Veritas

I don't want to waste your time so I'll get right into it...the future of the world depends on you.

I know, you're right, it's not going to be easy, but we have our secret weapon we can use to defeat the enemy. It's delicate, so we need to be careful, and although its everywhere we look, it won't be easy to find. Humanity has been searching for this Holy Grail for eons. We've scoured the globe, tunneled through the deepest recesses of our souls looking for it.  

I'm talking about truth. Not lies. Not deception or manipulation. We're talking about practice. I mean truth. I was talking about truth. Let me start over. Ah hem.

What is truth?


Well Wikipedia tells us the word "Truth" comes from the Old English word tríewe or tréowe, which itself is a cognate of the Old Saxon trûui and the Old High German triuwu all from a Proto-Germanic word for TREE which translated then to "having good faith" on the notion of "steadfast as an oak" (e.g., Sanskrit "taru" tree). The Old Norse used the word trú meaning "faith, word of honor; religious faith, belief”. Thus, 'truth' involves both the quality of "faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity”,  and that of "agreement with fact or reality", in Anglo-Saxon expressed by sōþ. All Germanic languages besides English have introduced a terminological distinction between truth "fidelity" and truth "factuality". To express "factuality", North Germanic opted for nouns derived from sanna "to assert, affirm", while continental West Germanic opted for continuations of wâra "faith, trust, pact." Romance languages use terms following the Latin veritas, while the Greek Aletheia, Russian Pravda, and South Slavic istina have separate etymological origins. This part's a little boring so I figured I'd spice it up a bit with a good old fashion star wars crawl. Do you know how they filmed that?


In Roman mythology, Virtus was the deity of bravery and strength represented on coins with a javelin clothed in a cape like she was starring in next years comic book blockbuster. 

Within the realm of funerary reliefs, which sounds like a dreadful place to be, an alternate universe where everyone is a carbonized version of themselves, Virtus is shown with a male companion, often her presence is to complement and provide assistance to the protagonist during a scene of intense masculinity or bravery. Like they always say, behind every great funeral relief hero is the great diety of bravery.

The traditional model for truth, goes back to the classical Greek philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They held that the truth is determined solely by how it relates to a reality; that is, by whether it accurately describes said reality. 

Aristotle claims in his Metaphysics: "To say that that which is, is not, and that which is not, is, is a falsehood; therefore, to say that which is, is, and that which is not, is not, is true." Uhh. Sure. True? I guess.


Truth is most often used to mean, "in accordance with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or standard." Modern context refer to an idea of truth to self, or authenticity.

The opposite of truth is of course, falsehood, which, correspondingly, can also take on a logical, factual, or ethical meaning of its own, but we don't have time to waste. Fact.

These didactic concepts of truth have been debated among scholars, philosophers, and theologians since the dawn of time. It has been an ongoing conflict with art, religion, and science since its inception. 

Invention does not happen in a vacuum, unless we're talking about the Dyson amiright, the suction, I mean come on, but some philosophers view the concept of truth as basic or unable to be explained in any other more easily understood terms. In other words...

It is known. 

According to Martin Heidegger, the original meaning of truth in Ancient Greece was concealment. The revealing or bringing forward what was previously hidden into the open. As indicated by the original Greek term for truth, “Aletheia." 
On this view, the conception of truth as correctness is a later derivation from the concept's original essence, a development Heidegger traces to the Latin term "Veritas."


Pragmatists like C.S. Peirce take Truth to have some manner of relation to human practices for discovery. Peirce himself held that Truth is what human inquiry would find out on a matter, if our practice of inquiry were taken as far as it could go. "The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth..."

In what is called the correspondence theory of truth, it is the correspondence of language or thought to an independent reality, stating that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes that world. 

True beliefs and statements correspond to the actual state of affairs. Attempting to posit a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or facts on the other. Language and words are a means by which humans convey information to one another and the method used to determine what is true is called a criterion of truth. These truth-bearers bring to light what is capable of being true or false. 

Huh, yawn, interesting, yawn... Zzzz. 

Sorry, I'm back, ok so now we have defined truth, how do we identify it? 

We must ask ourselves, what role do our possibly faith-based or empirically biased knowledge play in the definition? 

Then we must ask the most difficult question. Is truth subjective or objective? Relative or absolute? 


Friedrich Nietzsche thought an ancient metaphysical belief in the divinity of Truth lies at the heart of the entire Western intellectual tradition. 

"But, you will have gathered what I am getting at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith on which our faith in science rests--that even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year-old faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato's faith, that God is Truth; that Truth is ‘Divine'..."

Great. We defined truth. We know how to identify it. What's next you ask? Well, are you sitting down? This might sting a bit. I'm just going to hit you with some. You can handle it.

We all die. That's a fact jack. 


Bummer I know, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. 

But then what? What happens next? What fate do we meet when we shuffle off this mortal coil? The obvious truth is that we will never know...until we do.

Maybe we realize in our last breathe that this is it as the last of our neurons fire off, we evacuate our bowels and bodies, and finally kick the old bucket. Or maybe, just maybe, we find out the minute the light washes over us, that this is not it, only then does the light bulb click on and the divine speaks to us bluntly, laying all the cards on the table, spilling the beans like a drunken uncle at a barbecue. 


"This is the meaning of life," it says, "This is what is true and this is what is false." What then? What if we finally knew THE truth? 
What if the truth really is out there, and what if the truth was actually told? About everything. How? Who? When? Where? WHY? The meaning of life...yadda yadda, blah blah blah. 

Ask yourself, what if you knew the truth about death and therefore the truth about life? 

It's true that we all die, but it is also true that none of us know how we die. Who could know? Where does truth and furthermore life come from? What MAKES something true? Can we handle THAT truth?



So if truth is the correspondence of language or thought to an independent reality, do we all make up our own version of what is true and therefore perception is reality? 

It’s hard for most of us to even consider that there are other human beings who don't believe a truth that we ourselves hold to be self-evident. 

Are there any universal truths? What about the facts of life or the birds and the bees?


From PBS: 

"In a classic 1979 experiment, pro- and anti-death penalty advocates were exposed to descriptions of two fake scientific studies: one supporting and one undermining the notion that capital punishment deters violent crime and, in particular, murder. They were also shown detailed methodological critiques of the fake studies — and in a scientific sense, neither study was stronger than the other. Yet in each case, advocates more heavily criticized the study whose conclusions disagreed with their own, while describing the study that was more ideologically congenial as more “convincing.”

I want you to think about something you know to be true, like the sky is blue, or milk comes from cows. What if you’re color blind? Doesn't milk come from women and cats too Focker? 

Now, think about something you believe is true. Search your feelings, you know it could be false. You may not be completely wrong, per se, but you don't know if what you think is the truth is actually the truth. If you're being honest, it could easily be the other way. 

It's a prejudice, a judgment, or an assumption. It's a moment of overthinking or a simple misunderstanding. Maybe you're like me and its one of the many many times in your life that you have been wrong. 


What we have here is a failure to communicate. I read somewhere that we are living in a post-truth world having successfully nitpicked the truth to death. It's been assassinated right in front of our eyes like that young President, God rest his soul. The truth has been pronounced dead, and in its place, a charlatan. An impostor attempting to tarnish her good name.

Are we living the way we truly want to or are we living behind a wall? Sure it's a big beautiful wall, the most beautiful luxurious wall on the planet, everyone says so... scared to death of whats on the other side?

"Shut the door, " we cry, "leave us alone to Netflix and chill." But, the truth's not going to leave you alone. The truth wants us to get mad. The truth wants us to say, "we're human beings goddamnit our lives have value!"


The truth needs you to want it so bad you'll go hungry searching for it. Like a fiend high on nirvana, tripping balls on transcendence, you need the truth in your veins. 

We need to see the truth in action like we need to breathe, need to feed our kids, need to see justice served to those who abuse their power that we as a society have so generously given them.

It's time to collect the bill. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." He gave up his life, like so many of his brothers and sisters, of all creeds and colors have, in the seemingly never-ending struggle within us. 

We have fought wars over millennia in search of the truth. 
Evil uses our desire and lust for righteousness against us. 

The almighty irony is that the truth does not belong to them or even to us. It cannot be bought, sold, murdered, or imprisoned. The truth like a light once ignited, will find a way into every crack and crevice across the known universe of our minds.

The truth, no matter how hard its enemies try to destroy, bury, twist, spin, or discredit it, will always be there waiting. Lying under the floorboards like a tell-tale heart pounding our subconscious. Taking its licks before it senses a weakness and BAM, it strikes a blow right to the heart of villainy. It may take time, but it will always prevail. 


Kids today use the term "woke". We need to be more woke. We need to stay awake. Pull an all-nighter if we have to. Because the truth WILL set us free. 

It will give us a better life. The people around us will know and it will reverberate and spread like an undulating wave through a stadium of believers. A butterfly effect of evolution. 

The truth that we all hold to be self-evident is that all men are created equal. No matter what God we worship or how we live our lives, we all come from the same place...


The most beautiful truth is that we are all born into this world. Maybe different hospitals, backs of cars, fast food restrooms, labs, wherever but all the lives being brought into this world will become people, who are our second chance, our salvation, and we must fight to teach them the truth. Freedom, liberty, and justice for all. 

If you don't believe the truth then you're either racist, which is a rather silly thing to be, or you are profiting off the inequality. Either way, this world does not belong to you, it belongs to us, and we will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. The truth will live on. The truth will survive. Today is truth's independence day...


The truth, the actual concept of something being in fact, verified, historically accurate, indelible, impossible to refute, improbable to the letter, 100% pure USDA choice truth gives us power that scares the ones IN power. 

A cold hard dose of reality running up your spine like an epidural gestating through your body giving birth to a feeling we can’t describe, but we all feel for brief fleeting moments. It's called enlightenment. It's called wisdom, courage, and freedom. 


Honest, from the heart, of the mind, body, and soul, homegrown, world-shattering, ego crumbling, chain breaking truth has the power to change the world. 

Knowledge is power and like Uncle Ben said, "with great power comes great responsibility." 

Like a madman digging with his hands, tunneling into the center of the Earth, we too descend into our own souls and at some point come to the realization as he did, that the best parts of life aren’t in what lies beneath us, in the past, but what you have right here and now on the surface of reality. 

Paradise.

On the edge of time, we stand at a crossroads looking toward the future with hope and high vision. The only thing standing in our way is using the only other true divine power we possess as humans to combat the nature of time and death as we know it... 


It comes down to choice, Neo. Morpheus just offered you two pills and you took the one that sees’s how far the rabbit hole goes. 

Vice vie you must always remember a last ultimate truth, a fact that cannot be denied, refuted, or disagreed with... hoping and looking toward the future is not action. 

You make life happen or life happens to you.


Until then, trust the process, and above all else, always remember...






Search your feelings