Truth = Lies
Truth and lies are not opposites, but rather the same thing. So what really is truth? It is “A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins,” according to Friedrich Nietzsche “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”. His interpretation gives the perfect explanation of what truth really is, an illusion.
We need to break free from these illusions. Truth in our world is decided by people with power. What makes something true is the paper trail it leaves behind. The Truths we think we know are only true because of the longevity they have had. Just as we once believed the world was flat may there be other things we see as actuality that are not? We are a species that seeks truth and creates truth. We need to start seeing things independently and not draw conclusions. Doing so is arbitrary which is based on a random choice, rather than any reason or system. This is supported by Neitzsche, “Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept “leaf” is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions…” We seek order and organization and put everything in categories. We forget to distinguish things and in doing so we alter the truth. Truth is a human creation. So if humans created truth is it real? We are individuals who seek order and with no concept of truth we have no order. Just like many others I have been engraved with the idea of what truth represented. But now I see there is no truth. There are just concepts and attempts to name what is truth. We are a very intelligent species that feels the right to know everything. We never take in consideration that we will not always have the answers for everything. It is very easy to accept possible truths then the reality of not knowing. We have grown a fear of the unknown. The reality is that we do not know many things. We may try to understand things and maybe the metaphors Neitzsche describes are the closest we will get to the actual truth.
Do we seek truth or the illusion? The truth we tend to believe many times I feel we seek is for comfort. Millions of people played the lotto in the hope to be the one in 292 million to win. The actuality of thestatistics did not prevent people from playing. The belief of the truth that someone could win and it might just be them was more than enough for people to believe this nearly impossible reality. I work at a bank and the majority of fraud is conducted by a family member. When we tell people that a family member was the person who stole money from them they often choose to not believe the truth because it brings them pain. As Nietzsche emphasizes truth is conducted by humans, we are the ones who categorize things and decide what truth is. Many people are content with believing in illusions and that is why I believe that the illusion of truth plays such an important role in our society. It is easier to live in a world where we know nothing and believe we know all. We seek truth and maybe that has been our mistake seeking something that might not even exist.
