Belief



The nature of truth and perspective


The tellers of tales in Africa believed that every story has some grain of truth in it.

This simple statement has many branches . The most basic is the concept of individual perception. Anyone who tells a story will have their own version of how events transpired. In the event of contention, two people will warp the story for their own means, trying to make themselves look better.

Another view is that every story contains a piece of eternal truth. Every concept can be linked to a spiritual understanding or an understanding about human nature. There are stories with purpose, and stories made with no intention other than to tell a story.

In Indian and Asiatic countries, similar ideas are expressed through spiritual concepts. Indra’s Net is supposed to be made of the threads of life that interconnect all living things. Emotions and actions affect the net, influencing everything in some manner.
The Shinto religion (similar to Native American beliefs) thought that every individual object contained a spirit of life of some sort.
Western religions approach spirituality in a more specific manner, less general and guiding and more tyrannical in their attitude.

If all stories and beliefs contain a grain of truth – let’s say individual spiritual truth, then I would say that spiritually, life is about learning and understanding, and that anything more specific than that is flawed.

The mind is the only tool with which the human race was gifted, its only weapon in the fight for survival. The observations we make of the world give us knowledge, and allows us to seek understanding. That combination allows us to make wise compromises and still seek to continue living.

Robert M. Pirsig and Poincare both sought to find a bridge from western to eastern knowledge.
Western dialectic logic, the division of one into many to understand the purpose of each piece, and Eastern, the study of the whole to understand the purpose of individual parts (mainly the self).

The fundamentals of each are what I believe in. Scientific method and Mu are indistinguishable. Nothing is certain until it is known, and we sometimes have to deny ourselves to get enough space to see the whole clearly.

Anything can be reduced into a truism—but the journey to understand what knowledge can lie in a few uncompromising words is life.

Taoism states that there are many roads in life, but in the end, they are all one.

It is the choices you make that make life. Knowing everything that is to come is not necessary, and can even be harmful, because chaos is the spice of life.

Another aspect of life is that of survival. The mythologies of the Norse, Nietzsche, cannibals, etc, all show some part of this idea. Fear, as one of the most potent emotions, plays an integral part in survival.
At its most basic, survival is the search for comfort and avoidance of death. Western religions played on this, promising comfort, satiation, and life eternal.
In a conflict for survival, you have to learn to outmaneuver or overpower the threats around you or die. Nietzsche stated that if you stare into the abyss, the abyss will stare into you, or if you spend your life hunting monsters, you will become a monster yourself.
The definition of ‘monster’ is that which attacks without provocation. A creature which cares only for its own survival will eventually become cornered and out of its own hyperawareness and instinct, spur that which could save it from death with its own ferocity.
That is the crux between survival and living. Living requires compromise, survival asks for none.
The compromises you make in life structure the way you live, and set your value of your own life.