Brian Weiner

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

What is the truth?
Can you truly handle it?

Truth is unquestionably an anomaly. At first blush, it would seem to be self-apparent and obvious. The reality is that truth is elusive in many ways, and as best as we try to pretend that we are entirely ready to accept truth at face value, there are many times when we are more content with our head in the ground, like an ostrich, rather than to seek the complete unadulterated truth.

In some circumstances, the truth can be incredibly inconvenient. In such a circumstance, we find ourselves looking for every possible remedy to extinguish the truth, rather than accept what is blatantly apparent.

If we look at the story of humanity, there have been countless explanations, across all cultures, for the origin of man. While fascinating, 99% of all of the presumed explanations have proven false on a scale of magnitude, yet there is a vast majority of humanity that would rather adhere to an ancient cultural series of rituals and beliefs, rather than seeing and accepting continuous examples that prove all of those belief systems to be non-factual.

When a person is rigidly adherent to a thought process, it is next to impossible to get them to modify those beliefs, because to do so, would rock the foundation of their entire life, and therefore leave them vulnerable to the prospect that all that they had accepted as being so, was in fact, not the case at all.

If you look at the of several of the major world religions, there are explanations that put the history of man back about 5700 to 6500 years. One only need study the historic remains in various parts of the world to discover that there were very advanced civilizations long before this period of time, along with millions of years of dinosaurs and countless other creatures, prior to that.

This inconvenient truth becomes incredibly unsettling if the timetable of those ancient artifacts do not correlate with the explanations within the religion in which one was raised. If the two do not correlate, and one is scientifically verifiable, whereas the other is culturally ingrained, it leaves many people highly unsettled, for their ultimate truth, is being shaken by irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

When the truth directly conflicts with that which we most wish to believe, we are in a sort of a twilight zone, in which we are hard-pressed to reconcile ourselves to the disparity, and therefore expand our perspective accordingly.

The history of humanity is riddled with continuous conflict of ideology that perpetuates a discord within humanity that has cost tens of millions of human beings their lives as a direct result. Once a belief system has been instilled, it can be paired with a biased perspective of history, and can potentially leave an entire civilization vulnerable when a conflicting worldview collides with it.

As we emerge into a global landscape that resulted from the advent of mass media, the conflicting ideologies are evermore in peril because the girth of truthful evidence has become readily accessible. I believe that we can only hope that the next stage of understanding truth (over fables) will bring about the evolution of humanity out of the violent opposition, and into a new era of embracing reality, so as to help catapult humanity into a much more humane and common basis, as we continue to evolve on this teeny, tiny rock in the middle of the vast expansive universe.

Happy Lunar New Year!