Truth and Absolute Truth — Finding and Recognizing Proof

Thanks, DDE. It's almost as if I had nothing to do with writing this and everything to do with it at the same time. Ego self (self-concern) was locked out, and True Self (love) was plugged in.

Glad you liked it.

Thank you, ubrish.

Wow! Mike, I'm blown away by your analysis. I've learned some new things here. Thank you for your persistence. I feel like a kid at Christmas. Thanks!

I understand your use of ego as character, but my use is subtly and critically different. I use ego the way the Buddhists use it -- as separateness and self-concern. Those who think of "me-me-me," and "what's in it for me?" This is the opposite of the Enlightened love of which Christ spoke.

I love the internal "logic" of the misperception of reality -- alien pigeons targeting gold-laden toes. Hilarious and sad.

Logic is a great tool, but does have its drawbacks. Thanks for helping me to see a few more distinctions here. One I've long considered is the logic of holding the source of resentment close. Such a lack of forgiveness seems logical, but in the bigger scheme of things results in self-destruction -- slow and painful.

Critical thinking is so important and not taught well enough in American schools (and likely most schools in the world). But coupled with critical thinking needs to be critical perception, not only of the environment, but also of the nature of ones own thoughts and assumptions. Our experiences can act as filters on our perception and thus can affect what we think.

Take 9/11, for instance. The tragedy in NYC held us all spellbound and a bit numbed by its enormity. Our tender minds were vulnerable to all manner of input during those first few weeks. The mainstream media had the entire event and conclusions about it all prepackaged. This became our new reality. The pundits "knew" who did it within minutes. This became our "truth."

Fast forward a decade. I learn from a friend here on HubPages that things are not always as they seem. I knew that. But, he said, 9/11 was one of those illusions. Most of us did not take the time to investigate more deeply, because we thought we had all we needed. Anything else is a "conspiracy theory," as if such things are detrimental to your mental health. But alarms of critical thinking go off when you realize that "conspiracies" are a common, everyday experience, and that theories about them are not always crazy especially when they're based on fact. Scientist use theories all the time. The subconscious taboo evaporates like so much smoke.

But even critical thinking is not the end all, be all of Truth. Sometimes our best critical thinkers do not have all the information they need. Their well-considered answers may still be wrong. But critical thinking increases our chances of being right.

You might enjoy another article on critical thinking:

https://hubpages.com/education/Do-You-Use-Critical...

And one on 9/11:

https://soapboxie.com/world-politics/Uncomfortable...

And, thanks again, for a delightful conversation. I have strong opinions based on a lifetime of experience, but I also retain enough humility and hunger to learn new things. Thanks for filling my cup with newness. I look forward to more learning and sharing.

Thanks, Mark. An entertaining and enlightening comment.

I disagree with your take on madness, but that's an entirely different topic. Recognizing differences, similarities and identities may be a good measure of intelligence, at least from a qualitative standpoint. Those who deal only with identities tend to be more insane. A perfect example of this might be the bureaucrat who cannot think outside the box and forces people into pigeonholes destructively.

Ego can corrupt intelligence. Certainly madness can come from too much self-concern in command of one's observational skills and thinking processes.

Attachment to "relative truths" can also be destructive (insane). One person might learn something and it's true enough that it works for them, but it may not apply to every situation. Insisting that it is "absolute" when it's only "relative" truth can have disastrous results.

I agree that absolute truth is highly inaccessible to our physical brains and never will be accessible to that. But as spiritual beings, there remains the possibility that one day such an absolute will be accessible, theoretically.

On the subject of skepticism, I've come to view this current paradigm of science as broken. It can be effective on purely physical phenomena, but it becomes dangerously destructive when applied to spiritual effects (creational, paranormal, etc). I discuss the relations between science and religion/spirituality in the following article:

http://thebibleshiddenwisdom.com/science_and_relig...

There I use "religion" loosely to include only the purely spiritual, and not the dogmatic and ritualistic.

But skepticism can prove destructive when ego gets too involved. I discuss this more deeply at,

http://criticalthinkingearth.com/skepticism.php

Buildreps, thanks for the comments and insights. I agree. In our current, human form, we will never know such an absolute. We will need to shed the separation that divides us through Ego (self-concern). And there may be many other layers of occlusion which blind us in the spiritual realm -- above the 11 dimensions of physical reality.

Such truth would encompass not only the physical details of those other dimensions, but also the source intentions behind the persistoring of physical reality.