To Tell the Truth or Not

One should always tell the truth; but one doesn't always have to be telling it.

even though I know the truth about many things now, ignorance was bliss.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
My Mom said that phrase to me from the time I was about 3 years old until...well..she would probably still say it today if given the chance LOL
Moms always know what's best...
Truth is something that is really a natural reflex. The problem is that once you grow into a social setting that is unacceptable of the truth, you desensitize the child/person who is dying to be honest by allowing them to be taught that the value of saving face is much greater than saying what's right.
Then there are ulcers, nerve medications, sleeping pills...etc just so we can cover up the original lies with new ones. What did I tell him? What am I going to tell her?
Seems like a big waste of energy. (one that I myself have been guilty of and may well be again--though I hope not)
The truth shall set you free....
No matter how many "hurt" feelings it stirs up, the truth will always keep you in an honest light.
Once again Bill...you dig down deep and find something in me that I need to explore. Ever thought about going into the religion field? :)

The truth is paramount. But, remember that what is true for you may not be true for me. Only those matters with scientific proof can be considered factual. When we get into the realm of beliefs the truth is a bit murkier.

Thomas, "The folks who know the truth aren't talking."

Fran, ignorance is bliss only until you are shown to be just plain ignorant (as in not knowledgeable). It happens. You know people like that.

Joe, scientific proofs are of limited value because they are sometimes proven later to be wrong. At least the theory (complete with fancy mathematics) was wrong. For example, why has string theory, which has been taught as gospel in science courses for two decades, never shown any sign of life in the real world?
By the way, that "flexible truth" stuff doesn't sit well with me. Most things is or they ain't.

Angie, we should all learn how to handle the truth when we are told it. How can we manage a complex world if we don't understand it because we all lie to each other? Then we wonder why we can't understand it.
Well said, my friend.

Bill, there are truths that I call universal truths; ex: the sun is hot and water is wet. Plenty of people don't find being honest difficult; honesty like a lie can cause pain and hurt an insecure person.

I find that sometime the pain that telling the truth causes isn't easy for many to deal with, so there are people that would rather lie then hurt another person's feelings, but like I have said before it's not always what you say, it's more how you say it. I've learned when to be quiet, and I could talk to a brick wall.

Good article, Bill....Another apt quote that I've been reminded of too often is : "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Candy, sometimes what people call truths are really opinions. For example, answers to the questions "How do you like my new dress?" or "Like my new hairstyle?" are opinions without any availability of truth to be applied to them.
I believe that schools can have curriculum modified so that they don't graudate insecure people. Part of the prime purpose of schools is to prevent that, though we often don't realize that as a purpose.

David, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing if the person who has it uses it to make choices about important matters without taking the trouble to find out what other knowledge is available.
Knowing too little when more is avialble can be wrong and dangerous. Saying "I know enough, I don't need to know more" is a recipe for error.

OK, I'll reveal my ignorance here. If you're saying truths don't hold in science and I certainly agree that opinions are subjective, what do you consider to be objective truths>

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth
-Samuel Clemens ( I think ) Ah, beautiful irony

Is this what you're saying?

Amanda (I'll assume the question was directed to me), I am not saying that science cannot provide verifiable truths. However, the "truths" of science are sometimes flexible, depending on the data available at the time.
Pluto was the 9th planet in our solar system for over 70 years. Now it is no longer a planet because there is finally a definition for "planet" and Pluto doesn't qualify. Yet schools taught that Pluto was a planet for all those years, based on what science had reported in 1935.
When it comes to science we need to keep in mind that in order to be believed, scientist must present strong arguments to support their cases. When the arguments are strong and opposition is weak, the hypothesis is accepted as fact (or truth). There are no objective truths in science. Science is prepared to change its defition of truth regarding any given point as an alternative argument is presented and strongly supported.
Even though life on earth has been shown to have progressed for a beginning about 3.5 billion years ago, evolution is still a theory. It is taught by some as fact because of the progression from simple to more complex, and the fact that evidence pretty well proves that earth and the universe were not created in six days in 4004 BCE. To say that evolution is a fact (more correctly, a designerless and godless version of evolution that depend solely on accidents) would be like me saying that you must be wearing black shoes in your Gather avatar based on the fact that your hat and top are black.
University science departments teach string theory as if it is fact. Yet there is no evidence for it and it has not been shown that anything about string theory can be tested even though string theory has beena round for 20 years. To accept string theory as fact is a matter of faith, just as creationists have faith in matters that others believe they can prove wrong.
What colour is the sun? It's really composed of all colours combined. Besides, you can't really "see" the sun. You can only see light from the sun that strikes your eyes, 93 million miles away from its source. To believe that you know what colour the sun is means that you must have faith in the impressions your brain devises based on optical messages from your eyes.
I have fewer colour cones for red and green in my eyes than most people with "normal" vision (I am colourblind, or colour deficient). So my brain will interpret optical messages from my eyes about the sun's colour differently than your brain will. Is one of us right about the colour of the sun and the other wrong? It turns out, then, that even something so "obvious" as the colour of the sun is subjective.
(Joe should love this because it supports what he said above.)
In conclusion, all truth is really opinion dressed in a suit and tie.
So what can you believe? That's where faith comes in. We all have faith in many things, even though proofs are not available to us. We don't agree on what matters of faith are worth our emotional investment and which are not.

What's impossible, Amanda? Flying through the air? Running faster than a horse? Seeing across billions of light years of space? Genetic manipulation? These were all once considered impossible.
What about proving the existence of God? Would a jury decision be proof enough? I have every confidence that I could present sufficient evidence that is known to science to convince any jury that God exists.
If I can feel God inside me, that is fact to me but it may seem like hallucination to you. This is not religion, now, because that is something apart from this discussion.
If you feel sad, someone else might say that you don't have to feel sad, that you just want to feel sad today, that you could change the way you feel with a decision. Is your sadness real? It's certainly what your brain believes.

You crack me up though you are sagacious my man. So the ultimate truths are in that all truth lie in subjectivity. Hmmmmmmm. You can't rely on theories because they're constantly being proven wrong and as to my quote, parallel universes may exist now that they've eliminated every other hypothesis. But everything is just a theory, therefore I can't take your words to heart. They're just thought provoking. Faith is the core of truth. That's the gist of what you're saying, correct? If so, I must concur.

OK, we posted simultaneously, I hate that! Reality is seperate from truth in that reality is more concrete and is based on a collrective agreement whereas truth is more debatable such as the existence of God and pain is relative. Reality is not

Can you say honestyly that I wasn't raped? Oooo, there's a touchy subject I just wrote about. Can you say I didn't get shock treatment? Another ouch. This is reality

There is no such thing as verifiable truth. Everything is relative.
Don't believe anybody, even me.
What matters only is that you convince yourself of something you can live with. Even at that, you should be prepared to change that as new evidence appears.
Reality is not concrete either. Not you, not I, not anyone has any objective or verifiable evidence that yesterday even existed, other than in our minds (where dreams and other fantasies also exist). One philosophy claims that life is like a flip book where each day is a separate lifetime and a different reality. N one has any evidence to prove anything different.

So therefore you're relying on my quote as a form of truth. We weed through impossibilities in order to find what's real for us. However, I know what's happened throughout my lifetime. I have no doubts as to the reality. Are you questing the 'reality' of the holocaust for instance. Ouch, shouldn't go there but the evidence is overwhelming and with so many sources, how can we not be convinced of its existence?

Your rape and your shock treatment are part of your reality. I have no reason to challenge your reality because I have no experience with it.
Juries have convicted adults based on evidence of rape and child molestation presented by children. Later some of this was discovered to have been planted into the unconscious of the children by psychologists and police, though not knowingly.
If you can refuse to believe in the reality of a bad dream, you can refuse to accept the reality of your rape or shock treatment. Whether they happened yesterday or not, what matters is whether you accept them as part of your reality today.
You, my friend, are very much a part of my reality today. Telling me about your rape or your shock treatment is inviting me to share your painful memories. I would do that if it would help you.
I would prefer to make your today better. Today we can share the same reality and know that we can both accept it.

Why single out the Holocaust and not the genocides of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, or the slaughters by Ghengis Khan or of Stalin?
The only purpose of remembering the Holocaust, as clearly stated by Simon Wiesenthal and the Jewish supporters who want it remembered, is to ensure that it doesn't happen again. We have some control over the future, none over the past. Maybe the past was real, maybe not. However, the stories of the past help us to shape our future.
Jews don't want to remember the horrors of the Holocaust. It was one of many that have happened to them through history. They want the world to make sure it doesn't happen again, which seems a reasonable way to influence the future.

I must go now because my day is whistling past. I will check back here later.
If you want to continue the dialogue, write to me at billallin@sympatico.ca
Emails don't take so long to download on my dialup connection as refreshes on Gather.

Thank you for your obscure condolences. :)

Aha! You're recognizing the reality of past atrocities thereby proving my point! I only singled out the holocaust because that's what came to mind.

Bill security should start at home, the school is secondary to parental responsibility. But too many parents pass their insecurities on to their children.

Candy, I agree, though not totally. The whole and original purpose of schools was (and should be, I believe) to fill in the responsibilities that parents are unable to provide.
Parents should be able to teach their children everything they need to know to be competent and confident adults. But they can't because they don't have time and they don't know everything that needs to be taught. Who should fill the gap?
I wrote a book to cover this whole issue, including an implementation plan.
Parents are insecure precisely because they try to do an immense job without knowing how to do it. We should teach them.

Amanda, you wandered too far away from me. I remember the first time I had sex too. What does that prove? Is one more real than the other? That same woman, many years later, stabbed me in the heart and ruined my relationship with my children. Then she died, regretting what she had done only in her final few days.
Which is more painful for me, the Holocaust or betrayal and loss of my children? Today I am committed to doing what I must to prevent both situations (personal and Holocaust) from happening again.

Whoa, I do not count being raped at 13 to be my first time having sex but that's off the subject......I'm sorry about your disappointment. Yes, we must learn from historical mistakes.. With so many witnesses, it's hard not to believe (oops there's that word again ) that they're not 'real'. We've heard both sides of the story, and are provided with the same information. How can that be subjective?

There are not two sides to the Holocaust story. The evidence is in the ground and on film. The question is whether the fact that some people believe the Holocaust was a hoax, ignoring the evidence, makes it a different reality.
If what we believe is what determines what is real for us, then different realities make for different sets of "facts" about the same subjects.
A beach ball might be a bright light blue on the sun side for one person, but a shady dark blue for the person who sees only the other side. Unless both walk around the ball, whose evidence (both factual) should be believed?

Bill, there are plenty of parents that are home schooling their children and they are doing a tremendous job. Quite a few of my co-workers are home schooling their children and I am only concerned about one child's parents, because there "bulbs" aren't bright, as a matter of fact I sometimes question if there are any bulbs in their sockets at all.

Whether a child is taught the school curriculum at school or at home is of minor interest to me. I am concerned about the social and emotional development of children. Emotional development may be handled easier at home, but social development could be handled better at school. It isn't, which is a huge problem.
In general, parents and teachers know extremely little about emotional and social developmental needs of children. They just think they know.

Aaaarrrrrgggghhh! Me too, Debra.
Just when I feel I have the meaning of life figured out, some nut commits suicide and kills dozens of others with him. I heard last week about a woman who used her baby as a weapon with which to hit her husband. We allow our industries to pollute our air to the point where it kills or harms us, just so that we can buy the products they make.
If life makes sense, why don't people?
Life after death is provable on one level, that being the law of conservation of energy. The questionable part is what happens to the part of us that forms our personalities (or soul, if you will). In no other part of nature is something created, only to disappear without any evidence of transformation.

I am sitting in awe of this wonderful conversation....thanks Bill and Amanda...you guys are great. Bring to me several views of the same situation like I have moved around a room and taken in art by listening to others discuss it. There is my view..your view..and her view. And yet..is any ONE view right. No..just relative. Isn't that what makes our world so wonderful?

The truth can often be unpleasant. But one can tell the truth at appropriate time and circumstances and in a tactful manner. It may not always be wise to tell the truth in a blunt manner.

Thank you, Angie. Alas we must move on before my dialup connection has me sitting for several minutes at a time waiting for the article to refresh repeatedly.
But there is more where this came from, no doubt from all parties involved. Amanda has depth that has yet to be probed.

Dolphi, truth is not unpleasant. How we perceive it may be emotional, in which case we choose to see the truth as something that impacts us internally rather than only externally. Keeping that in mind, when we convey "truths" that others may not find attractive ("Your new outfit sucks!") we can pass it in more palatable ways. A "truth" about an outfit, for example, is not fact but an opinion. Opinions differ as much as outfits do.
"Your mother is dead" is not an opinion (or shouldn't be) and cannot be conveyed in a way that won't hurt the receiver in an emotional way. No matter how it's said, the impact will be bad. That's when we can prepare for how we will help the receiver of the news after it's passed.
"Sorry, Bob, we're going to have to repossess your house and evict you" is another bit of news that is a guaranteed hurt. People have committed suicide as a result of that news. The followup is extremely important where emotions are involved.
Generally speaking, no one wants to be responsible for the depression or suicide of another person. So we need to learn how to convey news that will be perceived as bad. And we need to learn how we can help someone who has received bad news. We should teach these lessons to every person. It's a social obligation to protect those who are part of our social network.

I think that truth is an inevitable consequence of life.
You live, therefore you experience. Out of that there has to be truth..albeit relative.

Where truths that we share with others are concerned, they have to be perceived as we convey them. I cannot know how you will see the truth I share with you. I can only know how I saw it as it was shared with me. The foundation will always be the same but the structure will be different for everyone.

Wow, Angie! How confusing is that? Let me try to sort that out. As truth is relative, truth is only real to the person who perceives it as truth. After that it's a crap shoot.
However--now that I have played with your words--you raise an important point with regard to writing. Since an author knows what he or she intends in their writing, but is not certain how a reader will perceive it, it becomes critical that the author write the way the reader will comprehend it best, so the reader will infer what the author implies (much of writing depends on the reader's imagination).
The only way for that to happen is if the writer writes for a particular person they know fairly well, know well enough that they know their message will not be misunderstood or misconstrued.
If the author's objective is to write for himself or herself, he or she may be the only person who perceives the message in the intended way. We must write for a known other person so that we can be certain that someone other than ourselves will get the message straight.
That may be the easiest but least understood secret of writing.
Too bad this came so late in the thread.

Debra, thank you for your language lesson. I am familiar with the origins of soul and spirit. They are indeed ancient. However, they come from a time when little was known about the physical body, let alone anything beyond that.
Remember, the part of space immediately above the layer of air was called ether for a very long time. Then one of the first operating room anesthetics was called ether (maybe because it gave you a heavenly feeling (except if you had tomato soup afterwards, in which case you threw up violently). Those people knew nothing about much of anything, except for the positions of the stars.
I don't accept any connection between breath and spirit. It's a dead end argument that concludes quickly. As will my participation in this thread because it takes far too long for my dialup connection to relaod this page.
"Pedantic parade of words?" Strike up the band. You know those musical instruments that are mostly played with wind.