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Old 02-20-2018, 04:03 PM   #13731
charley
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Default truth vs. belief

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Originally Posted by Kobi View Post

Interesting post.

What the dictionary is saying is something new called "post-truth", I refer to as the reality of reality. Jane Wagner summed it up perfectly in Signs of Intelligent Life...."reality is nothing more than a collective hunch".

It is not really new. It has been going on since the beginning of time as humans have tried to make sense of what they see, hear, and experience. Perceptions change over time for many different reasons.

One can rarely be certain about "facts" because "facts" are designed to create a certain reality for a certain purpose or to create conflicting realities for the same reasons.

It is not unusual for one to also seek out "facts" which support what one believes or thinks is true while just presuming what does not coincide with what one believes is automatically false or outdated. "Truth" might (and that's a big might) lie somewhere in between.

It is also not unusual for perceptions to change, over time, due to differing circumstances, experiences and marketing telling us what we should believe and why.

Add to that, that one can often find many different sets of conflicting "facts" which all contribute to the sense of what is reality. They all have validity in their own way. Human judgement on these "facts" influences what we are drawn to, what we discard, and what we save for a rainy day.

Being human, we are easily swayed and governed by our emotions. All marketing (even political marketing) is geared to manipulating our perceptions of reality. It is easier to manipulate perceptions if one focuses on evoking an emotional response and to keep fine tuning it until you achieve the desired result.

Personally, I find it easier to remain mindful of how easy it is to manipulate people, their opinion, and their emotions. I try to take everything with a grain of salt cuz the one thing I am becoming acquainted with is nothing is as it appears and everything I think I might know has an opposite and equally valid side to it.

Life was a heck of a lot easier when I believed things were either right or wrong, black or white. In reality, they are a collective hunch of shades of gray.

Thank you. This gives me something to ponder on my walk today.
Now, it is crucial here to distinguish between a "fact" and a "belief".
The fact that the sun rises is a an observable fact, as all facts are. Anyone can verify the truth of a fact. Seeing the truth of something is always freeing, as well as seeing the falseness of something.
A belief is something which is held to be true only by the person who believes it.
And that is the difference between a "fact" and a "belief". People who start off with strong beliefs usually end up in confusion and uncertainty; and, being disillusioned with their beliefs, end up thinking that everything lies on some grey scale - that there is no such thing as "right" or "wrong".
Insofar as I am concerned, it is also a belief that everything is "a collective hunch of shades of gray". Making such an affirmation is in fact just a reaction against all the beliefs that one has been inundated with. And that was not the point I was making in my original post.
I would also add that the entire West has been conditioned to accept without questioning many things as fact. In fact, skepticism has been put on the back burners in the Western culture. But like anything, skepticism without any degree of self-restraint only leads to cynicism.
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