The Truth, Part 3
The odd thing about the truth is that any claimant can wear its name and once clothed it becomes indistinguishable from the real thing. And we are so in love with the idea of truth that we will die to protect it or kill. So, we’ve done a lot of horrible things to one another and had things done to us all in the name of the truth. It continues because sadly, the idea of truth is a useful tool if you’re selling something or want something from someone like money or a vote.
And once someone accepts something as true, changing that opinion is difficult because lots of people like to know what something is not what it appears to be and when they think they know what it is and it’s useful and makes them feel good that’s a discovery worth clutching. It becomes part of them. That’s probably an ancestral thing, where knowing the truth about various plants and animals was literally life or death and you needed to be careful about strangers and new information.
The latter is probably why the advent of science was such a big deal. We developed tools to help us prove things and ensure our safety. It didn’t much save us from the armies of various true believers on other matters, but it was a start. It does make me think, however, that if we could stop our tendency toward mayhem, we might actually have the means at our disposal to make the world a better, safer, place. All in the name of the truth that is still sitting out there, waiting to be found, one controlled study at a time.