Throughout our lives we are told truism. We nod our heads and go ‘ah, yes, very true, very wise’ yet when we actually start to think about what was being said we go, ‘wait a second, that’s complete nonsense…’. The philosopher Berkeley wrote, ‘few people think yet all have opinions’ by which he meant often people tell us their opinions without any thought being behind it. Just the other day I was witness to two people who, in the space of ten minutes, explained everything wrong with America (Trump), the UK (immigration, in case you are wondering), the Middle East (Trump again) and so on and so forth until I was able to leave the room they were in.
The basis of their argument was that it was something which everybody knew and, thus they assured each other, must be true, no question, no doubt. If, for example, a constitutional lawyer or and expert of immigration had tried to counter their points with ‘facts’ (i.e. comments born of reason and understanding) then, in all likelihood, they would have fallen upon deaf ears. And therein lies the rub- all have opinions without the thoughts (remember is school when they always said ‘show your working’?) to back them up and if one had countered with a clear vision of what was really happening, well…. I use the word vision very deliberately as from childhood we are told that ‘in the land of the blind, the one-eyed person is King’. This, we take to mean, that the person who can see more clearly and understand clearly is elevated above the others by that rarest of all things, the bane of the Ancient Greek philosophers, Reason.
Speaking of the Ancient Greeks, in the Odyssey we read about wise Odysseus who, when encountering the one-eyed giant, the cyclops, the cyclops is quickly called a monster and, this simple shepherd, is tricked by those who have invaded his home and blinded him. Thus, the wise Odysseus makes breaking into the home of another, blinding him and then tricking him into being humiliated ‘Nobody attacked me’ (Odysseus had told him that his name was ‘Nobody’) into a noble act of heroism and thus the one-eyed man who sees the world clearly is vanquished.
If we are to continue with the Greeks, we can look at Plato’s parable of the Cave. We live in a cave (see the connection to the cyclops?) and what we see as reality is merely the shadows on the wall. The philosophers are the ones who realise that the reality is not ‘real’ and make their way back out of the cave. The truly great then return to the cave and try to inform those within that they are being lied to and that truth is greater than fiction- they have, to use the passive-aggressive sarcasm of Newton when being accused of plagiarising, seen further by standing on the shoulders of giants. And what happens to these brave souls who have returned (pun intended- think Buddhist reincarnation), well to answer this we can move away from fiction and philosophy and look at real world examples- Plato, himself, was exiled, Socrates sentenced to death, Jesus nailed to a tree, Galileo forced to recant or be killed, and so on and so forth with examples ranging from ancient history to, literally, today, whichever day you read this on.
Whilst it is tempting to hear truism and nod along with them, once we start to think about what we hear and read we can often see that what we know as ‘true’ is merely opinion created without thought and those who do think quickly find themselves on the wrong end of a hammer and nail. Ouch.
‘till next time
thegreaterfool2016 