relevant truth. Bah.

I'm not trying to say all truths are absolute, or that all are relevant or that blah, blah, blah. We need a new vision. Our reality needs new terms to define it. We can't keep recycling old thought.

alast.....someone

Scary,eh!

But the truth needs to be reiterated until it becomes fact, you've seen what the media can do. Maybe because I just watched 'Bowling for Columbine'? Can you see the forest for the trees, Guy? I don't believe we always recycle old thoughts; I think we try to step beyond each thought. If it were an easy process it wouldn't be worth it, would it.

One thing I have learnt is that at the most unexpected times in your life revelation can just pop up in front of your face, but you have to be open to it or you'll miss it. The more insular we become the less receptive we are to universal truth.

But it is easy. And no, it's not worth it. Recycling old thought does not make it more true, recycling old thought does not make it more useful. Things don't become true by reiteration, only more widely accepted. We're trying to live our lifes by ideas that are thousands of years old, that didn't work then and aren't working now. Looking to the past for anything other than the most basic meaning is to become paralyzed by it. The more context you fill the gaps in with, the less you are able to learn.

What? So the amount of information you can process reaches a saturation point? And what randomness are people meant to grasp from the future to stuff into their little empty heads?

The point I was trying to make re: reiteration becoming fact, was aimed at modern media and politicians pulling shit out of their asses to feed the masses. Repeatedly hounded, people will believe it, with no foundation.

Some thousand year old ideas are crap and some aren't. I have definitely learned from my past and gleaned a small sample of ancient wisdom. There is so much left. In not seeking knowledge and understanding we limit our capability of changing for the better.

In a way, yes, the human mind has a saturation point. We all reach a point eventually where we can't take anything new and can only process changed patterns of the old and familiar, and unless we take drastic measures, that point of saturation becomes our final and inescapable home.

And if reiteration through the media makes people believe it, still, does that make it true?

It's not that everything you learn from the past is crap, it's that we become trapped by it. If all we are fed is context, rationality, association, science, literature, laws, the "dem bones" song of western knowledge, we become unable to accept things that do not tie into our ideas of context and connection. We become trapped by the past and only drastic changes in our environment or ourselves can we escape this prison.

It sounds funny I suppose but I feel knowledge, like love, is boundless. I can see your point, it can be really difficult stepping out of a comfort zone; the little boxes we construct for ourselves. But what gets us to that point of becoming so insular? Fear?

"And if reiteration through the media makes people believe it, still, does that make it true?" No, but it makes their reaction 'true' and therefore the beast creates itself.

Sure, we can get trapped in conceived connections, philosophical structures, political and sociological bents and dem dry bones, however, I don't think drastic measures need necessarily be the answer to staying open to, as yet inconceivable possibilities.

"Fear is caused by ignorance" and "change is affordable" tisk tisk, more of your own education getting in the way of real learning.

Hey this is Reality not Free Will, and I'm not edjikated, so what's 'real learning'?

There are far more roads to fear then merely ignorance. In fact, there are endless roads to everywhere as far as I'm concerned. Maybe we limit ourselves in our choice of destination. Is my destination reality?

Nothing you just said has any value or meaning. Get to the point.

reality is truth, and truth is something that can be proven. if it can be understood and explained that makes it true. life is true, and instincts are true. emotions are truth. truth is the will ot live, and the fear of death. but not always if you can prove soemthing is it real. its just the actions i beleive.

Personal truth leads to personal reality. We create our reality and justify it with created truths. Either way, it doesn't make it any less real or powerful. Of course, the more people who believe the same reality, the more powerful it becomes.

Solipsistic relativism, oh joy. So if the only way we percieve truth is through a single self, how do we know we're not being lied to?

Okay, having to give myself a quick education on philosophical terminology I accept a broad definition of the 'relativism' part of your glee. And although I believe spiritual growth to be solipsistic I certainly do not believe self is the only object of real knowledge.

How do you know if you are being lied to? How do you know you are not lying to yourself? Maybe that's where the elusive faith and hope enter the scenario.

To make an acknowledgement of process does not have to lock you into one belief system, Guy. I suppose you can never be considered 'wrong' if you come to no conclusions?

Seeing a mountain for the first time and having no idea what it is, you understand a greater beauty of it than geologist who has studied this mountain in context to other mountains, tectonic plate movement and rock formations.

That is soooo debatable. Don't you think the geologist sees just as much, if not more beauty knowing the intimacies of every nook and cranny? Does a dancer not appreciate watching the dance because of the agony they know lies behind the steps? Does a musician find no joy in the aria because they are obsessed with the composition? Isn't there wonder in every observation?

Art and science are not the same. Besides, it was a metaphor for the fact that knowing the words for something changes the meaning of it. Seeing a phenomenon and knowing how and why it works is one things, but having words for it changes it entirely.

ok, ok, ok.....you two have been arguing forever now.....whats the problem?

How about reading the posts and finding out what the problem is?