Is there a difference between truth and lie? Are they lying on the opposing sides of a spectrum? are they diametrically opposed? or are they facets, manifestations, and faces of the same thing, or rather a graduation of a thing.
What is truth? is the question that Pilate wanted answered! the question of all ages which has hounded thinkers and philosophers over the millennial. Plato, Aristotle, Abraham, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, all have asked the same question in varying ways. What is real and what illusion? Is the knowledge of our senses the truth? Can we rely on what we see and feel and say with absolute conviction that it is the truth. Or do our senses deceive us, beguile us? Is the Sun a dot in the sky? or is it bigger than what it seems? Our senses tell us the Earth is flat and fixed, but we know the truth is otherwise. Do our sense organs fool us by making up a reality that is far from the actual reality? There are more questions than answers. What and how do we come to render truth from lies, fact from fiction, real from imagined? Can we then be certain about anything in life? How can be so arrogant and proud in trampling this earth.
If all we can know is uncertain, false, and with our limited sensual faculties can only know what 'seems' authentic to us, then what makes us so sure and adamant about things around us.
There is a fine line between what is and what isn't. After all, all what is came from nothing ( both according to the classical philosophers and the religious doctrines.) The universe as we know it came from nothing apparently, or God made us from nothing. Plato said famously that all our lives we are chained to our meager senses and only see shadows of things and not the real things, real existed in the realm of the "Ideal'. For him there was an ideal Truth, Justice, Love that existed above us and we only knew them in the world as poor copies.
Leaving the high plane of philosophy, what do we think of truth in daily life? Is it telling the facts as they are? Is it a quest for a life lived according to our values and ideals, is it being honest to ourselves and to others? Is it living according to some higher defined purpose? Do we even think of what truth means to us? or is it only the stuff of books?
Lies - how do we see them. What is Lie? Is it not living according to our self, is it being dishonest in our dealings with other men? Is it denying the rights of others, Is it Injustice and cruelty?
Do we bother to think about these issues? I doubt it. We are all so insulated, so safe and harbored in our cocoons of make-shift beliefs (usually someone else's,) so comfortable in our ennui that all this querying seems like hair-splitting!
Think! for heaven's sake.
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