A SHORT ESSAY ON TRUTH AND FACT
Defining "truth" is very difficult. A dictionary can define it, possibly as, "A fact is true and reality is something that exists in fact" but this leaves us in the same position we were in to begin with. We could say, and many do, that truth is something that you agree with. But this could obviously include prejudice.
Truth and reality has never been successfully defined.
We could say then that Truth is part of our understanding of reality. This may not be true, but it is one suggestion of the relationship between truth and reality. Reality is the underlying nature behind the external appearance of things which makes a thing what it is.
That which has been proved is true. That which has been disproved is false. In the third class of things - those that have neither been proved nor disproved, we call "opinions". An opinion then is a stated thought absent of known fact...
A fact is more easily described than "truth", because a fact is something that exists necessarily, because it is determined by natural laws; the inevitable result of the nature of things. A fact is never true or false, it simply always is.
You can make true or false statements about a fact, but truth and falsity have no reference to fact.
For example because we are concerned to know where we came from we postulate reasons and state them in opinion. We use assumption and imagination to create images, and to stimulate possibilities of unproved things, which of course lack known facts.
We therefore make choices based on opinion and establish what we might believe to be true regardless of the absence of fact. We then attempt to convince others that what we believe is fact , by controlling the educational system in such away that our false truth, (because it is simply opinion) , is taught to our citizens at a very young age, before they are old enough to challenge or seek to accept, what is taught to them as truth without fact.
One of the basic problems in our groups is ASSUMPTION, and in most groups I would suggest this would be so.
There, I have made an Assumption that because it is a basic problem in our groups, then it follows that it must be the same elsewhere. My assumption may be wrong, because it has no facts to support it, and could be based on a lie in the first place. Assumptions are mostly bad news, because they often lead to embarrassment, argument and misunderstandings.
To be continued...