How To Define What Is True And False Philosophy Essay

The topic of choice states that “there are no absolute distinctions between what is true and what is false”. Because of the way that the world is today, as corrupt as it is, it is easily distinguished that this statement could, in fact, be true.

Knowledge is defined as an “acquaintance or familiarity gained by sight, experience, or report”1. Each and every person has some knowledge about some subject or another, be it math, literature, science of any type, history, or anything miscellaneous, such as news, family, gossip, or anything of the sort, that knowledge is then passed on to others in the form of verbal communications, written transcriptions, internet messages, or anything like that. However, due to common human perception, as knowledge is passed from person to person, it becomes altered, diminished, and further from the original chunk of information. As it’s transferred, and altered, it becomes further than the first evident truth, if it was an obviously and accepted fact to start with. If not, then the passage of information has already become a falsity, and therefore, renders the chosen topic a fact.

In most cases, “history is written by the victors”2. Therefore, the tales from the losing sides are, most of the time, never heard of, because they are not shared with the rest of the world. As the story the victors pass on travels to the ears of those who care to listen, the unknown sides slowly begin to fade with history, to be lost among the river of time. As half of the truth, the victors’ side of the story is passed on and on, the second half, the losing side of it, is forgotten over time, thus only giving what is wanted to be known. Because what someone may want you to know, compared to what you should know, are two different things, it leads to falsities being spread, instead of the cold, true facts. Lies sprout from this, and because of that, the truth fades into nothing over time. And that is the beginning of corruption.

A prime example of the corruption that lies cause is the fact that Germany denies the Holocaust. Because they do not embrace the fact that Holocaust did indeed happen, all those whom reside in Germany, who learn about the history, they only learn what the German government teaches them, and they leave out those six years of history. Because of such, it shows that the truth, at least in that region, is slowly diminishing, to be taken over by the lie that the Holocaust never happened. That proves that the truth and lies cannot be distinguished between.

Despite the large amount of lies that circulate through the world, and despite that on a main basis we only learn what “they”3 want to teach to us, there are truths that we as human beings ourselves learn. Those truths are unbiased emotions, at least, in my opinion, and they are the things that come to us naturally. In life, no one teaches us how to love, no one teaches us how to feel resentment, not how to forgive, and show compassion. It is only when we experience these “truths”, these raw emotions, that we gain semi-clear hindsight on what it is that is the truth.

The more we wrap ourselves around our emotions however; there are situations in which we would use the truths that we feel, in order to create a lie. Despite what the actuality of the lie is, in certain, specific situations that we become blinded by our emotions, and believe that our actions are the truth, because of how we feel towards what we are dealing with. Many of us have had a personal experience in something as such, weather it is a pretty girl we had a crush on or simply trying to be a part of certain circle of friends. A person can be heavily infatuated with a girl which can easily make him do literally anything in order to get that girls attention. All the things such as attempts to get the girls attention might be lies and false, but at the time they will appear as truth to him. He simply does something he is not familiar with, a lie, and then makes it into a truth. This can also be observed from aspect of peer pressure4 where an individual needs to conform5 to certain group’s norms in order to be part of that group. Nowadays many peers persuade their friends to start smoking which is an obvious lie perception to most people that have knowledge about it but to teenagers and those who wish to be a part of groups, it is a truth they will easily accept without asking questions.

“The Truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it.”6. In my opinion, there could not be a more truthful quote. Because of the complexity of lies that people can weave, it makes it easier for people to grasp the concept, because they can mold it into something that they prefer, something that they could cope with easier than the truth, if it’s something absolutely horrid. Acceptance of a lie is a way to escape the truth and making yourself believe what you want then dealing with truth you do not want occupying your thoughts.

All throughout history, there have been evident truths, and extensive, elaborate lies. Each and every person has their reasons lying, some to keep them out of trouble, some to protect others, and some to gain something that they could not achieve on their own using truth. Whatever the reason may be however, the evils sprouted from their lies, although they may not be automatically seen, they have negative repercussions, in the form of harm, even if it is a tiny amount, almost unseen. The harm may not be seen by the liar, nor experienced by anyone in the immediate vicinity, but one can be sure that the lie will affect someone, somewhere, in a negative aspect.

In each and every person lies a string of emotions that lead to false truths, and a string of thoughts that lead to lies. While some people utilize the lies more than the truths, there are others who do the exact opposite, and choose to bear the weight of the truth, despite what it may, or may not carry for the ones they love, or the ones around them. Some lies can destroy, while others can help build up to see the truth. While the ones that destroy can be small tools of destruction, or larger ones, it all depends on how they lie is presented. While everyone claims to want to be told the truth, or everyone wants to not lie anymore, or whatever their intentions are, we all hold the same, selfish desires that lead to the construction of lies, which then lead to the destruction of somethings, if not all things that we hold dear to ourselves. And it is only in the process of destruction that we realize, maybe the truth wasn’t so bad. Maybe all of this could have been avoided. “Maybe, just maybe, the lies that we all tell, aren’t so bad after all5 .”

Reference 1 – http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Knowledge

Reference 2 – http://precursorblog.com/content/internet-history-written-victors-or-it-victor-go-spoils

Reference 3 – “They” refers to any and everybody who is in charge of teaching us the necessities that we need to know.

Reference 4 – http://library.thinkquest.org/3354/Resource_Center/Virtual_Library/Peer_Pressure/peer.htm

Reference 5 – http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/conformity.htm

Reference 6 – http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/truthquotes.htm