Well thought out reply Johannes... may I further press your reasoning abilities on the problems of honesty and truth. Do they exist at all, or are they simply goals whose objective shifts over time?
So far its been pointed out that honesty is often elusive in the absolute sense. Sometimes one can pin down a simple act to a yes/no response like ".. did you open the door?"
More often however, complex behavior is impossible to reduce. For example how do you let a child appreciate the President's role of leadership and his wrong behavior. How much focus does one give to the many good deeds, how much to the many bad, how does this all come together in a child's mind for appreciating future Presidents and the role of government.
Human truth is elusive. There's the truth we bend ourselves to through dicipline, fixing on the precepts of a religion, rules, laws in the most rigorous sense of interpretation.
There's also the truth that we have many intense desires and feelings that go unexplored. Simply being truthful to oneself would guide one to immoral acts in a world of unlimited possibilites. Most of us therefore create and live with an adaptable inner and outer morality guided by our sense of self and our limited knowledge of the many laws and arguments that constitute society's self.
The structure of truth for society and the structure of truth in being an individual being are very different. Finding a life of constructive overlap with moderation suits most people. But for others, their personal truths are a constant challenge. Which type of person is more valuable to society in the long run, the law abiding or the rebels, the accountants or the entrepenuers, the guardians or the explorers?
The truths of the universe are constantly being pulled out from under us. We force our own change and adapt or die. Where Netownian physics once provided a floor to stand on, we now find ourselves in a causitive world of probabilities. Morality too, has become a world of probabilities.
Even light and time are being challenged as absolutes, morality struggles to hold its place. Instead of grasping for right or wrong we instead calculate the probabilities of right and wrong. |
