Meditation on Truth
I’m a couple days late in posting this one; normally I would have aimed to get it published on Sunday. But I spent much of that evening hammering out what part of the transcription of the Derek Brinkmann/Tim Cotten interview I could, and then spent Monday evening out of the house with the Beaver Scout troop that I lead. (It was a nice evening; we went sledding.)
And because I’m discussing Truth, another of the Three Principles underpinning the Eight Virtues, I should probably also admit that this is the meditation I didn’t really feel all that anxious to write. Because whereas people don’t generally disagree overmuch about what Courage is, people can often disagree quite powerfully about what Truth is. And whereas people can generally understand that there are different aspects to Love (the Greeks do a good job of drawing out this distinction in their language, having different terms for familial love, love between friends, romantic/erotic love, and charitable or self-sacrificing love), people can often disagree quite potently over the nature of Truth (whether there exists one or a set of truths that are absolute, whether all truth is relative, and whether anything is even true).
Truth — fittingly — can be messy to discuss. And in truth, I’ve wanted to avoid that kind of messiness if at all possible.
But I set myself on the path of musing on the Three Principles, so let us examine this principle. As is the case with Courage, Truth itself is not well-defined in Ultima lore, so once more our best starting point is probably to examine the Virtues it informs…Honesty being the obvious first choice. And in looking at Honesty, we see that it is defined thusly across various entries in the series:
Honesty is scrupulous respect for truth — the willingness never to deceive oneself or another.
Honesty is the pursuit of truthfulness, with respect to oneself and with respect to other beings.
To the self, be true. Honesty begins with the will to regard the Truth in one’s heart. A true heart spreads its warmth to the home and across the entire world. In seeing the world in true form, one can draw upon the magic that connects all living things: the power of the ether. To the self, be true. In repetition and experience, you shall find honesty whose comeliness inflicts shame upon evil.
Here, we can see that Truth is explained as “the willingness to never deceive oneself or another”, which is…somewhat helpful, but also creates a problem; the gypsy questions that pit the Virtues of Honor or Justice against Honesty tend to present a choice that pits telling a truth that may bring someone to harm against committing a deception by means of omission.
Possibly as a side note, let’s take a look at some of the things the Shrine of Honesty has to say about said Virtue in different games of the series:
Take not the gold of others found in towns and castles for yours it is not!
Cheat not the merchants and peddlers for tis an evil thing to do!
Tis now thy sacred Quest to go unto the Codex and learn the failing of Dishonesty!
A dishonest life brings unto thee temporary gain, but forsakes the permanent.
Whatsoever things are true… Whatsoever things are honest… If there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.
That last quote, from Ultima 6, is an only-slightly-modified rendition of Philippians 4:8, which also happened to be the source for the motto of the university I attended:
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Another interesting quote is one of the ones from Ultma 5, the one above concerning temporary gain versus “the permanent”. Exactly what “the permanent” is isn’t specified, so the statement is open to a fairly wide range of interpretations…though the most obvious would probably be the permanent stain of being branded a pathological liar.
All of these quotes stress that Truth is a duty, more or less, an obligation for the Virtuous. And that is well and good, but in most respects it doesn’t get us any closer to ferreting out what Truth is. One thing that’s notable is that there is more to Truth, the Principle, than just the matter of being factual and not giving false information or peddling incorrect factoids. We can see this in the exhortation against cheating merchants and against stealing the treasure of others; this isn’t just about lying now. It’s about something — if I can use the term — a bit more transcendental than simply being factual. “Facticity is not a [transcendental] attribute.”
Let’s come back to Ultima 6’s re-working of Philippians 4:8 for a moment. In it, Truth — and Honesty, but we are here talking about Truth — is something which should be sought after, and in particular thought about, pondered, and considered. Truth, in this consideration, can perhaps be thought of as a relationship between a fact and its recognition. We can state facts easily enough: my computer is a Dell, this website uses WordPress as its publishing platform, Ultima 6 was the best game in the series, cheating a merchant is evil, the gold belonging to that townsperson does not belong to you. What makes these things true — where Truth becomes manifest — is not in the articulation of the facts themselves, but in the contemplation thereof, in being provoked into making a connection between a fact and its perception and contemplation.
More broadly, we can think of Truth as the dialogue between a question (in this case, the contemplation and even the perception of whatsoever things are true) and an answer (the fact that is the object of what is true). Truth is not simply a property of facts; in its fullest state, Truth is the relationship between the facts themselves and the contemplation thereof by one for whom the facts are true. Truth arises out of a thing or property that, by contemplation, is understood in a fuller extent, rather than simply being treated as a fact that is merely present, merely “there”.
(Image credit: LP Archive)
I’m glad you cleared up any confusion around which Ultima was the best. I’m inclined to agree with that particular truth, though V is right on its heels, and IV on V’s. As technically excellent as VII was, it just seems like some special magic was somehow lost from it once the eye-popping honeymoon was over.
I like how you extend the notion of truth from the obvious to the contemplation of perceived truths with respect to their wider application and consequence (the specificity of the second part I’m presuming). I agree that Truth is by far the most contentious of the three principles. You mentioned the belief of some (paraphrasing) that there is no truth, a concept that superficially sounds flippant but is actually a healthy foundation upon which to consider the infinite variety of perceived truths held by cultures, governments and individuals across the world. It is the failure to temper one’s own conceptions of Truth with that foundation when making decisions that affect the lives of others that is the source of all human woe. To put it simply, the “I’m right; you’re wrong” mentality has been with us for millennia and more often than not resulted in suffering on massive scales.
I think Truth comes in different flavors. There are scientific laws, then there are the more philosophical and abstract aspects largely rooted in our concepts of right and wrong. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, but is murder wrong? Is it always wrong? Does the word of God, such as an individual or group perceives it, constitute the Truth? What happens when there is an inherent conflict between the perceived truths of two people, two cultures, or two governments? Can two seemingly incompatible truths be resolved, or should they?
Without a booming voice from the clouds (ancient texts excluded), we are left only with our perceptions of Truth based on what we can observe with our senses, feel with our instinctive and culturally-imbued empathy and learn from our flawed and biased recorded history. With an ever-expanding population of over seven billion individual minds and the constant pressure of the requirements of survival the birth of innumerable irreconcilable truths exist. Political groups, religions, federal, state and local laws, economic patterns, philosophers and international bodies all attempt to suggest or impose vague “meta truths” while respecting individual truths so long as they fit within the larger context. Believe whatever you want, but break the law and you will be punished. Get a job or you will have no money. It’s okay to murder someone as long as it’s in self defense. Abortion is okay depending on your geographic location.
This isn’t very helpful, but Truth, in the end, is a giant cluster fuck. The only real truth is what the universe keeps doing long after humans have become extinct. Everything else is just a mental exercise with no endgame, though it is certainly fun and I hope someday we as a species can arrive at some version of Truth that lets us live in harmony and peace.
The only thought I have here is…let’s consider two hypotheticals: a nation-state wherein rape is permissible under the law (or, at least, is not illegal), and another nation-state in which rape is socially permissible to some degree (this is not so far-fetched as one might think, depending on where one looks in the world). Would the local acceptability/non-illegality of rape render the act of rape to be not a grievous offence against the integrity and dignity of the victim? Or does it remain true that rape is a grievous offence against the integrity and dignity of a person even in the absence of social or legal strictures against it?
That brings up a good point, something that I was a bit shocked to learn in a past life when I took a psychology course. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders a patient may only be diagnosed with a disorder if the behavior it causes is considered abnormal or harmful in the patient’s culture/society. To give you an example relevant to your question, a man in ancient Greece would not be considered a pedophile for taking a ten year-old lover, as this was socially acceptable at the time (according to the DSM).
What I’m about to say is utterly un-PC, but I imagine the very fact that it was considered normal resulted is less harm (physical and psychological) to the child. There would have been no coercion, kidnapping, physical force, shame, guilt, legal ramifications (including violence to avoid them) or social stigma attached.
If a man in a culture that considers sex with pre-pubescent children immoral and/or illegal does the same as our fellow from ancient Greece, the experience for all involved will generally be pretty horrific and the man would be diagnosed as a pedophile. He would possibly kill the child to evade identification/capture/punishment, lose his job, family, friends, reputation and freedom, and the child would suffer a lifetime of guilt, shame and anger that would forever affect their relationships with others.
In this example there is a tangible difference for all involved between two very different versions of Truth within the context of their respective cultures. You and I may scream until we’re blue in the face that the Greeks were wrong, sick, primitive, didn’t know any better, etc. from our self-righteous perspective as modern westerners, but the fact is that they were every bit as “normal” as we are now. 1000 years from now people will likely look back on you and I as barbarians.
The notion of culturally-relative Truth and associated degree of harm may apply to varying degrees to any idea of Truth, though for some it may be negligible for at least the “receiving” party. Let’s group some other abhorrent acts together with your example of rape, namely torture and genocide. It could be argued that any of these acts could serve a useful purpose to the perpetrators and be socially and legally acceptable. Torture is great for instilling fear in yet-uncaptured enemies and sometimes useful for information extraction. Genocide is an effective method of removing an undesirable culture from society. Rape has been used as a weapon of war since war existed, resulting in ethnic and cultural shifts or instilling fear in and damaging the morale of a population. In all three cases the cultural and legal acceptability of these acts only affect the perpetrators, not the victims, primarily because non-consensual violence is an inherent component of each act. The same could be said for acts that unjustly deprive someone of what we would consider universal human rights, although the concept of Justice is another can of worms.
In summary, rape is always wrong for the victims regardless of its social or legal permissibility. An example of the importance of consent (as opposed to the sole consideration of violence as a component) would be extreme BDSM.
Here I’ve established non-consensual violence and the unjust denial of universal human rights as the bar by which Truth may be measured, which is similar to what treaties on human rights and associated international bodies (the U.N. for example) have tried to do. That’s just my version of a “meta truth”; one Truth to rule them all. In the end though, similar to a convenient equation that only approximates the behavior of nature, it’s just something I made up in an attempt to bring order to the chaos of an infinite number of conflicting personal Truths.
I imagine you would suggest the Truth is the word of God, and most people would probably agree with that. The problem of course is that no one can agree on what those damn words really mean, much less how they should be applied, and God’s not stepping in to clear up the matter. You and ISIS, for example, probably aren’t on the same page (or even the same book, or library, or…). We need a Truthometer. Someone should invent that.
I…would hesitate to say that the Truth (capital-T) is the word of God, though I’d be comfortable with saying that the Truth is the Word of God. Two distinctions to draw out there: the first between the word (Scripture) and the Word (Christ), and the second between truth (or truths) and Truth.
Going back to the post itself, let’s briefly consider the implications of a prime intellect — that is, an intellect which has all questions to all answers. It itself is thus the relationship between question and answer, and so it itself is Truth in its highest form. This I call God. So when we speak of Scripture as truth, we should exercise a certain care in terminology; Scripture is obviously not God, but it is intended (c.f. 2 Timothy 3:16-17) to contain a sufficient body of truths so as to point the bearer of an intellect — necessarily imperfect, being a human intellect — toward God, with the end goal of procuring salvation for said bearer.
I wish I had time for a longer answer to the rest of your post, but I don’t. I will remark that utility is insufficient as a moral barometer (and effectiveness too, for that matter), and I will note that I could have as easily chosen paedophilia, torture, or any other number of grave offences against the dignity and integrity of persons as an example. I suppose we can give some consideration to the magnitude of harm caused in evaluating the nature of an offence of this sort, but I’ll also note that “less harm” is not at all the same as “without harm”. Because even social acceptability cannot completely assuage, say, confusion about body and sexuality that might still result in a pre-pubescent child exposed to sexual activity with an older man (or woman). Indeed, we see this in cultures where child marriage is common; the life of a child bride — even in nation-states and cultures where such a practice is deemed acceptable and even commendable — is not an easy one. To say nothing of the fact that it’s trivially easy to find stories of child brides dying from physical injuries resulting from sexual activity (an outcome we would also presumably expect to see in the Greek example you give).
I don’t have a problem with people seeking Truth (I capitalize because I’m trying to keep it Ultima here) through scripture, prayer (in my mind reflection/meditation) or religious doctrine, and I appreciate your belief that scripture is a guide toward the absolute truth that is, I suppose created, by the mind of God, but the danger is when those seeking Truth in religion or by use of intangible metrics become absolutely convinced they have found it. I’m pragmatic; I need to be able to measure things objectively, and “harm” (whether immediate, long-term, direct or indirect) is the best way I can think of doing so.
An example of the difference is homosexual sex. One can say they know with absolute certainty that it is wrong because the Bible says so. Alternatively one can say it’s wrong because the chances of transmitting a communicable disease is higher due to the volume of fluid exchange (assuming both parties reciprocate) and increased tearing of tissue. Or one could say that as long as they’re consenting adults they don’t give a damn what they do in the privacy of their own homes so long as it doesn’t affect anyone else.
The problem I have with any opinion expressed or enforced with absolute conviction that is not based on some practical consideration (harm, for example) is that it is arbitrary. A religious text could say brown people are bad and it is your duty to kill them on sight. Some religious texts actually do say things like that. Morality without reason, compassion, empathy or some degree of tolerance can be extremely dangerous. Absolute conviction, even based on reason, can be equally dangerous.
The bodycount of various regimes of the 20th century certainly attests to this, I agree.
As do various ugly points further back in history. Though it is really only in the last century that humanity has been able to dole out slaughter on an industrial scale. Even the oft-vilified Crusades came nowhere near the level of slaughter that e.g. the Soviet Union was able to achieve, or China under Mao.
Meh, this is part of why I’m Catholic…you know, apart from the fact that evil exists and a couple of other key reason. The Church is in this constant state of discussion about truths, about why things are true and what those truths point toward. We’re talking centuries-spanning back-and-forths here; a slow and gradual analysis (and eventual resolution, sometimes) of issues that challenge and confront humanity at a moral level. Doctrine is not formed arbitrarily; it evolves organically.
This is not, in turn, to say that the Church has not erred at times. But that’s just the point: those were errors, sometimes grievous. They were cases where something was thought to be true, but which was in actuality a violation against Truth. A breakdown of the question-answer relationship, if you will…with predictably bad outcomes.
Interesting description of Catholicism. Makes it sound more like a living philosophy, which I like. If someone forked it to exclude the mystic and ritualistic elements even devout atheists would sign on. The idea of a deliberately-considered, near thousand year-old general set of guidelines is appealing.