Truth
(1) Abstract sunlight that disinfects bad ideas and builds the broadest possible consensus.
The one thing that always matters more than consequences.
The enemy and cure for ideology and illegitimate power.
A precious commodity that is worth protecting at all costs.
Prioritizing truth attempts to ensure that we are all subject to the same rules of engagement. Functionally identical to transparency, which is why the corrupt and ambitious avoid it at all costs.
The active pursuit of truth is one of the most benevolent states of existence, because it seeks to standardize reality in a manner that can be universally engaged with and observed. If an idea or phenomenon can be stabilized, categorized, clarified, resilient enough to withstand most attacks, and capable of being integrated in a meaningful way in our lives, then it threatens illegitimate power. It is in this way that knowledge about truth is legitimate power, and knowledge about anything else is at best a forgery. Truth disperses the dark.
Strategies are frequently employed to dissuade reverence for truth, because if it becomes common, spurious structures may begin to wane. This can be done by standardizing the precepts of illegitimate power in a culture. Destabilize ideas and phenomena, break categories or render them useless, obscure everything, promote the gaps and holes in flimsy concepts to distract citizens from their primary goals, and demoralize the population by replacing meaningful substance with hollow engagement. Alternatively, you can simply infer that truth does not exist. While this is an elegant approach, it is only afforded undue attention in vacuous circles. Elsewhere it is likely to invite EYE ROLLING.
Because the function of truth is to act as a common orienting force that assists us in understanding what is real, you cannot have your own truth by definition. Claiming that we can have our own truths is pseudo-intellectual garbage that seeks to formalize pride as a virtue, and claimants are attempting to destroy fairness and equality, whether they are aware of it or not.
(2) A set of discoverable facts that liberate the human spirit. Constructed facts are never true; they imprison the mind while confusing our orientation. Truth is uttered most frequently by those who respect and love us enough to share it with us. People who substitute the truth for an inferior product are indifferent to your suffering.
If a truth exists, it would be a description of an objective pattern woven into reality that exists regardless of whether or not we are there to interpret it. People can have lots of things: beliefs, views, intuitions, experiences, delusions, sensations and many more.
We cannot have our own truth; ownership is impossible.
Revised: 15 Jan 2023
