(image via NASA)
Gooooood Morning SuperForest,
A few days ago, I posted about wanting to update the Humanifesto to include two new ideas: That “Truth” is relative, and can be what you want it to be, and that Mother Nature is in charge.
As I was hoping a very interesting discussion began in the comments section of that post, with some SuperForesters coming from the perspective of Absolute Truth, and others coming from the perspective of Relative Truth.
Massive gratitude to everyone who commented, for that is why I write these posts, to get us all thinking and talking.
What I find fascinating is the way that Absolute Truth has changed so many times throughout history. In fact, Absolute Truth’s changing has become its defining characteristic.
Think about it. In a short few hundred years, we’ve gone from believing that sickness was caused by evil spirits or vapors, to unlocking the secrets of DNA and our genetic coding. We’ve gone from believing that the world was round, then to flat, then round again. We’ve gone from knowing with perfect certainty that the Earth is the center of the Universe, to knowing that the sun is merely the center of our galaxy, and that the Universe is far larger than we human have the capacity to comprehend (for infinity is a tough thing to “truly” visualize.)
We’ve gone from knowing that certain races of humans were superior to others, to knowing that bias and racism was (and is) an unquestioned feature in our many cultures.
We’ve gone from knowing that women were the property of their husbands to women being just as free and independent as men.
Remember that it is always the winning team that writes down “the truth.”
“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” There’s a truth that most of us are familiar with. But look at this truth from the perspective of the indigenous indian population of the United States at the time. Their truth regarding this event would have looked far different. A man and his crew arrived in a boat, and soon many millions of indians were dead of previously un-encountered diseases, or forced into slavery. But the truth of these millions of people doesn’t seem to matter as far as the status quo of history is concerned. They all died. Columbus wrote the history. Truth was established to reflect favorably upon the victor. Same as it ever was.
So, the Truth, be it scientific or personal in nature, seems to be an ever evolving thing.
Even lovely, rock-solid things like the speed of light, Newtonian physics, and gravity’s constant, turn out to be remarkably flexible. The minute particles that make up our atomic structures seem to disregard totally the “laws” of physics, and do strange things like exist in two places at once, mirror one another across great distances, and blip in and out of reality. Newtonian physics only seems to apply in our galaxy, which is why the trajectories of our early satellites (Pioneer and Voyager) have strayed quite far from their projected paths. And gravity is its own ball of craziness, with no one able to agree on exactly what it is and exactly what it does.
But there is one Truth that I hold in my heart as an absolute truth. Unchanging until it changes. Absolute and final until further notice…
And that truth is that Mother Nature is in charge, and we must learn her rules.
Personally, I believe in unity. I believe that we are all reflections of each other and in turn we are reflections of the Universe, Life, and Everything.
That isn’t The Truth, that is my truth.
I’d very much like another truth to keep my Mother Nature truth company.
Does anyone have anything that they believe is absolutely, Universally, un-relatively true?
I love you. Thank you.
-Jackson
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