Letter to the editor: Where is truth found, and how do we know it?
Information is critical to the brain. As an unbelievable storage mechanism, the brain is storing data from the time it forms in the womb. As we mature, that storage becomes the basis of our life at home, at work, at play, at worship or in whatever we do, or think, or imagine.
We live in a world today so very different from previous times. Even a generation ago, when television and computers were in infancy, information was very hard to get. For persons who went to college, and who had serious intentions, the library became a second home. Even access to journals required subscriptions, or going to a library to find them. The idea of being able to go to a computer and then go online for information would have seemed fantastic. The idea of using that computer to access AI or Super Intelligence would have seemed about as realistic as colonizing Mars.
Information gathering today is quite easy. But is the information you gather true? Does it have any value beyond opinion? Do you spend all your time gathering information which improves your life, or do you spend valuable time screening through opinions that may be helpful or harmful?
We all must struggle through this information overload. On the one hand, it can be very exciting to have the world of knowledge at one's fingertips or voice. On the other hand, it can be extraordinarily frustrating to discern the truth from the fiction.
To this end, I have found it most helpful to identify a lens or grid through which one can evaluate and decipher the information we receive. Most people do this unconsciously. A humanist, for example, will view reality and seek to understand things from the point of view or lens of the human mind as the measure of all things without any added concepts, while a socialist will view the same reality strictly through the lens of social structure, while a behaviorist will see everything through the grid of human behavior. The list of lenses or grids is endless.
But is there a grid, or lens, that exists which brings all the various thoughts, hopes, wishes, aspirations, and dreams together? That would be the big question. For if there were no unifying principle for the human experience, then it would be hard to consider what the point of life really is.
Philosophies, and religions, as well as a host of isms, will all in some way try to get at the answer of who we are, and why we are, and how we are, and where we are going, if anywhere.
For me, the lens must be Truth. Where is truth found? How do we know it? What are the criteria involved? Consider this: Could the answer be the one given by a simple fisherman who came to know the Heart of the Creator, and then introduced this Lens to us in the opening verses of his writing? Could that reason be perhaps the reason that one of the most beloved pieces of literature in existence is the Gospel of John from the fisherman from Galilee? I would encourage you to read the first 18 verses of that Gospel and then focus on the 14th verse. Then relate this to what else the fisherman writes with respect to Truth, as in 14:6, and then 8:32, and 8:36.
Information comes to us today with such volume that we need a means of evaluating it. Perhaps this Lens or Grid could become for you the key to a life filled with purpose and meaning even as our brains are filling with massive overload. I hope so.
JAMES R. CHANDLER JR.
Sumter