As we celebrated the Fourth of July, I thought of the truths that motivated the creation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. One of those truths is that men have certain unalienable rights. This Truth is fundamental to the creation and continuation of the United States. For me, a portion of the power of those documents is found in the philosophically sound truths that they present, such as the one above. They teach us the constitution of truth; that kindled by fiery and passionate thought, reason reveals truth. Understanding truth, whether absolute or circumstantial, leads to the formation of beliefs and manifestation of them as behaviors. Those behaviors and beliefs are consistent with truth as we individually understand it. Therefore, understanding truth and recognizing its application is critical for progression towards those beliefs and behaviors that make us free.

We have freedoms in order to protect our ability to live by what we consider to be absolute truths. The laws do not make the freedoms, rather they ensure that the society will safely abide in the freedoms that naturally pertain to them. One key to maintaining these freedoms is that we must fight for the same freedoms for others. Therein lies the true American spirit. We are a society of individuals devoted to protecting those rights given to each and every human being by our creator; namely the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is why we openly fight for the freedom of speech. We fight for freedom of religion. While these are all incredibly important, I have noticed that we do not value human thought the same way as these fundamental freedoms. I believe that it is such a basic and unalienable right to think and reason for ourselves that we forget to value it. Our ability to think, reason, and understand can help us to recognize truth and maintain our freedom. This freedom of thought is the foundation of all other freedoms. If we fight for freedom then we should be fighting for the most fundamental of those freedoms. Why then do we undervalue this fundamental right? …because we too frequently categorize information as truth. Truth without reason and rational understanding is just information. In this time with social media , news outlets, political parties, and every part of the world seeking to define what is and isn’t truth… we are constantly bombarded with information. What will we do with the information we consume each day? How will you value your own rationality more? The answers to those questions may have a profound effect on your continued freedom.

It is worth noting that I myself am not attempting to declare truth but to find how we arrive at it and point out those things that inhibit our finding it. Since the beginning of this blog, the purpose has been to prompt thought and discussion for those who read these posts. This post has the same direction, this is not doctrine but thoughts and reason mixed together just enough to prompt you and I to find the truth in it, if any. This, with all media, is meant to be viewed with an open mind… and then dissected by thought and reason. I do not have a premium on truth and neither does anyone else. In the interest of complete disclosure a huge reason for my writing this is because of the political climate in the United States right now. Not based on bi-partisan politics alone but the way average Americans communicate about thoughts and beliefs. Thoughtlessness on our part is as detrimental as assuming thoughtlessness on the part of others, indeed they are almost the same thing.

As noted above, we can do a much better job at valuing the thoughts of others. It is a great measure of the ability for others to think and reason clearly to see how respectful they are of thoughts that are not their own. Our tolerance of the thoughts and opinions of others is a great measure of our ability to think and reason clearly. Now you can respect an opponent by challenging his/her position but as soon as you begin to undervalue their reasoning you stifle your own ability to communicate effectively. We must continue to be free and rational thinking humans capable of forming our own thoughts, reasoning, pondering, and being respectful and understanding of the same attributes in others. When we think thoughts of our own we categorize them too quickly as truth and discount the thoughts of others as opinions. By so doing we hinder rational thinking and reasoning entirely. This is a destructive approach to any and all types of progression. Without reason there can be no legitimate compromise or, when necessary, the correction of false beliefs and clarification of truth. We are not as interested in the truth as we are in being perceived to be right. We discuss truth and beliefs as if we were playing chess with children, seeking to educate but not to be educated. So next time you play chess… play chess with peers.

Now that we have discussed the importance of human thought, our need to value it, and the equal need to respect the ability of all to reason, we ought to talk about what it looks like to think freely and how it actually makes us free. More simply put we are interested in what it means to be a Philospher. It is then necessary to emphasize the importance of true philosophy. A true philosopher is someone engaged in the study of thought, who is more concerned with finding and clarifying truth than anything else. They are preoccupied with the faults and gaps in their own understanding. They do not seek to be in the hierarchy of high thinkers or to be morally superior but to strip down information and thought to the barest and truest of its forms. They rejoice in understanding truth and bringing it to unmistakably bright light. That is the nature of a true philosopher and someone who is seeking truth because of the freedom it provides them and others. 

I would compare it to a peach (because they are delicious). For the purpose of this analogy, the flesh of a peach represents information and the seed represents truth. You are welcome to translate the sentences from this analogy to their original form. I have included some of those translations where important. The man who eats the flesh of the peach will indeed be satisfied….. but what of the seed? Some men would throw the pit away without recognizing that it was a seed. Others fully knowing the potential of the seed, would throw it out being deterred by the amount of work required to bring it to maturation. The wisest and most philosophically sound of all would keep the seed and work with it until matured. After all, doesn’t the flesh of the peach protect and make desirable the seed? (Doesn’t the presence of information suggest some associated truth?) Would that not suggest the most valuable portion of the peach is contained in the seed? Can you claim to fully understand a peach without intimately understanding what it took to reach peak ripeness?While this might be exaggerated, it holds true with truth. We are so satisfied by the flesh of information that we never plant the seed of Truth and by so doing miss out on the greater utility or personal benefit associated with said truth. The true philosopher seeks the seed of truth to plant and cultivate it. Wherever planted it will always be a peach. While the perception of the fruits taste may differ based on preference… truth holds that the fruit is a peach. That is an absolute truth and one only revealed by understanding the journey each peach must take to mature. While it may be equally true that some people do not like peaches it does not change the nature of the peach. (While people may have different ideas about a truth it doesn’t change the truth itself, neither does disliking or disagreeing with a truth rebut what is true) Much like our society, wherein we seek information and opinion in the place of truth, we seek the flesh of the peach without the seed. Not only do we want the flesh and not the seed but we would prefer it if the seed had never existed. Translation: Not only do we want information and not the truth but we would prefer it if the truth had never existed. So thinking freely has so much more to do with the ultimate end and goal of our thinking than it does with our ability to think. We are all relatively capable of thinking clearly but based on preference and patience we think and interpret information differently. A healthy portion of that difference comes from diversity of thinking, which we celebrate. A destructive portion of that difference comes, not from an inability to think, but from a lack of desire to understand the truth. This sort of apathetic and frankly fearful thinking is a threat to our continued freedom because it is in direct opposition of philosophically sound human reasoning that allows us to recognize and protect freedoms.

In chapter 6 of Walden by Henry David Thoreau, the author is recounting a conversation held with a passerby who was simple minded and content. He then reflects that “the intellectual and what is called the spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in […] which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child”. I love this quotation! It struck me and my jumbled thoughts that we are increasingly satisfied with information to the degree that it satisfies our political preferences and desire to change. Rather than using information to dictate what changes in our beliefs or behaviors, we seek and view information that warrants the beliefs we already have and requires the least behavioral change. This is self-evident. We vote party line because it is easier than understanding individual candidates, we post on facebook because it is easier than being a humanitarian, and we solve disagreements by unfriending and unfollowing not by understanding. We send our children and siblings to school without much regard for what they learn, we’ve become increasingly unavailable for each other because of Netflix and social media, and in a politically charged environment we rationalize disrespectful treatment of others because it is much easier than fighting for the common good. We can all see so many ways that we are more like men and women becoming children instead of children becoming honest men and honest women. This is clear evidence of the degradation in our ability to think freely and clearly about the things we say, do, and believe. It is evidence that we consume media, news, and information to the degree that we hear the message it presents but we do understand the truth it represents. Even more commonly, we understand morality enough to notice the mistakes of others but never enough to be conscious of our own faults… which in turn leaves us even more morally culpable. We are culpable not because we were conscious of truth and acting in the wrong but because we consciously chose to not understand the truth, acting in the wrong half ignorantly and half mischievously.

Hopefully this has provided some time for self-reflection on our own personal beliefs and understanding of what makes something true. Whether our beliefs are right or wrong doesn’t change the need to express them with dignity and respecting. Approaching this current election it would be wonderful to see more of that philosophically sound thinking that led to the creation of this country. Even James Madison  once said “ I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom… Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks – no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea”. The recent debate is a decent representation of this principle. We should analyze what having the current political candidates says about ourselves. Our love of virtue and wisdom must grow significantly as a society if we expect to have leaders who value the same things. So wherever you stand politically, morally, or religiously, we all ought to respect with greater reverence and greater awe the ability within us all to think and reason. Human thought ought to be protected more and more deliberately. I hope that we can all diligently seek truth for truths sake. Don’t let loud messages or heated rebuttals deter us from conversing about the truth of where we are at as a society, where we need to go, and how we can get there. Those are all questions that the founding fathers were able to answer and ones that we need to now answer again ourselves. Where are we at as a society? Where do we need to go? How can we get there together?