I’ve spent the last few weeks talking about the truth, and how our souls are designed to live in harmony with it. This exercise has been helpful for me to mull over my inner thoughts and feelings, bringing them into fuller, rational definition. I have explored, I have discovered, and I have gathered into one place. The only things I haven’t done is sort and refine. It might be worth it to take my raw discoveries and organize and develop them. I will begin that process by giving a summary and categorization of my study thus far. Any further work beyond that would probably be better taken offline.

For today I am going to step through all of my past posts, summarizing the key takeaways for each one. Then, starting tomorrow, I will give my overall conclusion on the matter.

Recap)

I began this study by establishing my thesis: that only a life founded upon the truth was truly joyful and free. I began by considering which of all the people I know live in the truth most consistently. The group I settled on was addicts in recovery, and I noted the surprisingly joyful and meaningful lives that they lead.

Next I considered the importance of truth in other aspects of the world. First I looked at the physical truths necessary in aviation, and then the dangers of untruth in propositional logic. There may not be an obvious connection between these realms and that of our own personal behavior, at least not from our limited, mortal perspective, but the fact that truth is clearly essential in these other domains gives a strong suggestion that it would also be so in matters of self-governance.

I then moved on to arguing against putting untrue perspectives on other people. I said that it harmed them by separating them from reality and inadvertently reinforcing harmful messages. I explained that this complicated and frustrated individuals’ efforts to secure the basic good things that we all desire in life. I also pointed out that we put this harm on others due to incredible personal arrogance, and that the logic of deluding one another becomes untenable when scaled globally. I concluded that if it is demonstrably wrong to deceive others and cause them to live separately from the truth, then surely it is wrong for us to choose to live separate from the truth ourselves also.

Of course, it isn’t the case that we always know exactly how we’re deluding ourselves, though. I explained that we often need the help of another to see ourselves clearly, and that we block ourselves from the truth because we aren’t prepared to deal with it. Thus, even if we decide to live in the truth, it will take some special revelation to know what the requisite changes we then need to make are.

I also pointed out that even if we do recognize what our failings are, we might try to dismiss and minimize them, admitting what is true with our words, but hoping to get ahead through a little deception on the side. We have to learn to bring all of us into alignment with the truth, or our practice is only theoretical and basically useless.

I then related my own experiences with living in varying degrees of truthfulness. I described states of being oblivious to my falsehoods, and also of striving against them, and finally of periods of joyful congruity between with the truth. From my own experiences I sincerely believe that all of us can come to live in harmony with the truth, even while acknowledging that first we all struggle with being hypocrites and liars, myself included.

Finally, at one point I explained our need for an external truth. I made the case that we need the truth to be defined objectively and separately from any one person. It is essential that it is dictated by God, Himself, and given to us through divine words. This is the one truth that all of us must seek alignment to, and anything else that claims to be the truth is a counterfeit, and will not produce the full joy and freedom that we might otherwise have.

That is everything that I have explored thus far, tomorrow I will give the first half my final conclusion on the matter.