The truth. The false. And what we decide to believe in. We all fall generally within any of these three levels of faith. Life silently dictates that we reach out for the first, which actually requires attaining perfection or holiness, in the spiritual sense. At the same time, it tells us to consciously and totally avoid the second, a task we find almost beyond human effort or even human desire. Yet, it is in attaining that balance that we gain a fulfilled life. The best education one can have involves acquiring the fundamental tools for realizing this two-pronged human task.
We all know that those who live in ignorance or dwell in myths or with misconceptions do not endure in this world. For centuries the ancient Greeks and Romans established civilizations founded on many things we would laugh at today – their many gods and many “unscientific” conclusions about nature and even spirituality. And why not? Where have the glories of those people gone? If they had known the truth as we supposedly know it now to be, would they have survived?
Today, we have the glory. Who wouldn’t feel so much pride now drinking a hot, P100 Cappuccino in an air-conditioned room while typing on a laptop or punching on a P35,000 Nokia phone so far away from the uncertainties of those old, low-tech civilizations? Modern life has provided us with so much economic and emotional power – self-assurance, for good measure -- that we have taken for granted how much the ancient people struggled to dissect the truth from the false even in scientific terms. Reading the Great Books collection always gave me that grave feeling of how much people put up with, at least intellectually, to understand life.
Nevertheless, in the process of establishing foundational values in our institutions and our individual lives, we have ended up forming our own beliefs not so much different from what the ancient people believed and practiced. The many festivals or celebrations we have reinvented have really nothing new to show except for the technology we put into them. In the end, we have simply glamorized them and added our own peculiar way of keeping the hype fresh for the next generation to get interested in them and eventually inherit from us.
We have inherited a world built on the ruins of the impotent untruths and hypnotic fables not knowing that we have built a crystal palace of modern folly over the basic truths as well. We still sing the same songs not only because we relish the good memories (which is not bad) but also because we refuse to change our ways (which may be bad). When we can easily create new songs that herald our own new march into a more glorious tomorrow.
The truth has infinite power to fire up our passions for progress and honor. Ancient technology and architecture have had their time to inspire or create awe. What we feel now while looking at the Egyptian pyramids or the Great Wall of China is not much different from what we feel appreciating the new technological wonders. But the pyramids and the Great Wall serve no practical use other than as tourist attractions. History is after all something we only visit and not dwell in, to learn from and not to teach as the goal. But the skyscrapers, cruisers, the jet planes, the 3G cell phones, laptops and fuel-cell cars are things we use to make life the way we want to live it -- today, this moment. Yet, even these are mere tools for us to achieve something else. And what is that? Nothing but the truth.
So, are we living life in the midst of all the comfort and convenience while sacrificing or disregarding the truth? Have we reached that point when we can have all we want and not have to deal with the truth? The same truth that the ancients sought with the same eagerness that we seek wealth or health or fame? Hence, we have made for ourselves a civilization that allows us to claim our very own and not be beholden to any that came before us, whether in reality or in conception. That is, the inescapable truths that had impelled our forefathers to willingly give up sweat, tears and blood no longer matter in our overweening desire to amass security or material possessions. That in trying to gain those truths, we succeeded somehow but looked at them with a perplexed expression then turned around and got hold of that which is utterly false and made it appear to be the ultimate truth.
To be certain, the ancients also did what we have done. The Egyptians may have been not far from their idea of preparing for the after-life (at least, the rulers did so while keeping their privileged status), however, they did so while maintaining their selfish clutch upon wealth and power. Those titanic tombs were designed precisely to keep future generations from using their supposed eternal possessions.
And so, we merely follow the normal turn of human folly. No modern civilization has existed longer than any that existed before. Our fall may only be just around the corner. A pandemic may send shivers now but it could end up with, well, the end of us all.
Not with all the technology we have, some might say. We certainly hope not. We place our confidence on the historical certainty that humans and human life will survive. That the human spirit will overcome all trials. Right?
Not right. Even the best intentions of the human spirit cannot overcome the utter descent into untruth. The truth did not just happen. It serves an eternal purpose. And if it does, the eternal survival of the human spirit is at stake in any experimentation with what is false. Compromise with half-truths and “innocent’ lies dilutes the power of the pure truth.
All the human institutions and enterprises that have ever come to pass involved humans who were and who are at one time faced with the question of what is truth. A market vendor who sells a kilo of chicken meat does not merely do so in order to gain a profit and to feed a family. A call-center operator does not simply interact with a customer halfway across the globe in order to pay for a car. A government executive does not only lead his people to produce as much good as possible to the national economy. All of them have to deal with the basic questions of truth now and then. How they react to those issues determines how they deal with others. Each one affects the welfare of society or the nation at large. Every generation benefits or decays from what it receives from the previous one. But the world is made better by people who cherish the basic truths in life and establish their work, their family and business relations according to those truths.
Chaos is the absence of the light of truth. That is how the world began before it was born and that is how it is ending and how it will end. We may feel complacent – read that, smugly and drunkenly proud -- at what we have achieved for ourselves with all the tools we have invented. Yet the essential issue remains. Do we have the truth or have we merely held on to something which we have casually accepted or inherited as truth?
The question and the struggle remain. The truth still waits for us to answer its call for us to live at the highest level possible.
We all know that those who live in ignorance or dwell in myths or with misconceptions do not endure in this world. For centuries the ancient Greeks and Romans established civilizations founded on many things we would laugh at today – their many gods and many “unscientific” conclusions about nature and even spirituality. And why not? Where have the glories of those people gone? If they had known the truth as we supposedly know it now to be, would they have survived?
Today, we have the glory. Who wouldn’t feel so much pride now drinking a hot, P100 Cappuccino in an air-conditioned room while typing on a laptop or punching on a P35,000 Nokia phone so far away from the uncertainties of those old, low-tech civilizations? Modern life has provided us with so much economic and emotional power – self-assurance, for good measure -- that we have taken for granted how much the ancient people struggled to dissect the truth from the false even in scientific terms. Reading the Great Books collection always gave me that grave feeling of how much people put up with, at least intellectually, to understand life.
Nevertheless, in the process of establishing foundational values in our institutions and our individual lives, we have ended up forming our own beliefs not so much different from what the ancient people believed and practiced. The many festivals or celebrations we have reinvented have really nothing new to show except for the technology we put into them. In the end, we have simply glamorized them and added our own peculiar way of keeping the hype fresh for the next generation to get interested in them and eventually inherit from us.
We have inherited a world built on the ruins of the impotent untruths and hypnotic fables not knowing that we have built a crystal palace of modern folly over the basic truths as well. We still sing the same songs not only because we relish the good memories (which is not bad) but also because we refuse to change our ways (which may be bad). When we can easily create new songs that herald our own new march into a more glorious tomorrow.
The truth has infinite power to fire up our passions for progress and honor. Ancient technology and architecture have had their time to inspire or create awe. What we feel now while looking at the Egyptian pyramids or the Great Wall of China is not much different from what we feel appreciating the new technological wonders. But the pyramids and the Great Wall serve no practical use other than as tourist attractions. History is after all something we only visit and not dwell in, to learn from and not to teach as the goal. But the skyscrapers, cruisers, the jet planes, the 3G cell phones, laptops and fuel-cell cars are things we use to make life the way we want to live it -- today, this moment. Yet, even these are mere tools for us to achieve something else. And what is that? Nothing but the truth.
So, are we living life in the midst of all the comfort and convenience while sacrificing or disregarding the truth? Have we reached that point when we can have all we want and not have to deal with the truth? The same truth that the ancients sought with the same eagerness that we seek wealth or health or fame? Hence, we have made for ourselves a civilization that allows us to claim our very own and not be beholden to any that came before us, whether in reality or in conception. That is, the inescapable truths that had impelled our forefathers to willingly give up sweat, tears and blood no longer matter in our overweening desire to amass security or material possessions. That in trying to gain those truths, we succeeded somehow but looked at them with a perplexed expression then turned around and got hold of that which is utterly false and made it appear to be the ultimate truth.
To be certain, the ancients also did what we have done. The Egyptians may have been not far from their idea of preparing for the after-life (at least, the rulers did so while keeping their privileged status), however, they did so while maintaining their selfish clutch upon wealth and power. Those titanic tombs were designed precisely to keep future generations from using their supposed eternal possessions.
And so, we merely follow the normal turn of human folly. No modern civilization has existed longer than any that existed before. Our fall may only be just around the corner. A pandemic may send shivers now but it could end up with, well, the end of us all.
Not with all the technology we have, some might say. We certainly hope not. We place our confidence on the historical certainty that humans and human life will survive. That the human spirit will overcome all trials. Right?
Not right. Even the best intentions of the human spirit cannot overcome the utter descent into untruth. The truth did not just happen. It serves an eternal purpose. And if it does, the eternal survival of the human spirit is at stake in any experimentation with what is false. Compromise with half-truths and “innocent’ lies dilutes the power of the pure truth.
All the human institutions and enterprises that have ever come to pass involved humans who were and who are at one time faced with the question of what is truth. A market vendor who sells a kilo of chicken meat does not merely do so in order to gain a profit and to feed a family. A call-center operator does not simply interact with a customer halfway across the globe in order to pay for a car. A government executive does not only lead his people to produce as much good as possible to the national economy. All of them have to deal with the basic questions of truth now and then. How they react to those issues determines how they deal with others. Each one affects the welfare of society or the nation at large. Every generation benefits or decays from what it receives from the previous one. But the world is made better by people who cherish the basic truths in life and establish their work, their family and business relations according to those truths.
Chaos is the absence of the light of truth. That is how the world began before it was born and that is how it is ending and how it will end. We may feel complacent – read that, smugly and drunkenly proud -- at what we have achieved for ourselves with all the tools we have invented. Yet the essential issue remains. Do we have the truth or have we merely held on to something which we have casually accepted or inherited as truth?
The question and the struggle remain. The truth still waits for us to answer its call for us to live at the highest level possible.
(Photo above: The road bends behind a hill to an unknown destination but we drive ever so confidently because the way has been prepared for us. It was taken in Sierra Madre, Tanay, Rizal.)
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