"Inside Insight" ...

 ... excerpt from "Internal Wealth - The Attitudes" ... a brand new book by Wayne Roland ...

People of the Lie

I was listening to a friend recently who was describing his idea of ‘the truth.’ He was saying “there is my truth and your truth … if our truths are not the same it does not mean that either one is not true.” My friend is a writer, speaker, and philosopher … he is well-trained and I admire and respect him. I was familiar with the view he professed, and had considered it at length, of course within the limits of my own ability to understand … my unique life experiences and studies … my perspective.

I asked him if there was a difference between knowledge and belief. He knows me well enough to realize I sometimes ask challenging questions, and this was not a fleeting, light-hearted exchange of ideas. Like a pro, he asked “how do you mean?”

I simply asked, “if you believe something to be true, does that make it so?” He nodded, still pondering. “In other words, if you believe something is true, does that make it true?”

He said “it makes it true for me.”

“So if my belief is different than yours, than two opposing truths can exist?”

“Yes” he said.

“Is there universal truth?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then how do we tell the difference between what is true and what is believed, but may not be true?”

“How do you mean” he asked.

“The facts of what is true sometimes escape our perceptions, would you agree?”

“Yes, of course … history tends to change belief systems as we uncover more information” he said, brow furrowed.

“Examples?”

“Look Wayne, I read your first book and we’ve had the discussion … Galileo, Columbus, the four minute mile and all that … I get it” he chided with a friendly mental nudge.

“So then how do you know that ‘your truth’ as you call it, is really true, if you’re relying on beliefs to define it?” Silence. “Is there a difference between beliefs and knowledge?”

“Sometimes.”

“And sometimes they are the same.”

“Yes.”

“Seems like we need a way to tell when they are not the same, lest we continue being clobbered by new information that keeps forcing us to give up our sacred cows” I said. “How can we tell the difference between knowledge and belief?”

“Define belief” he challenged.

“As far as I can tell, beliefs are explanations for what we suspect is true but aren’t quite sure about. Since we don’t like being uncertain, we adapt quickly from believing something to calling it knowledge. Calling it the truth. My truth.”

He stared at me as his sharp mind connected the dots of what I was saying. Of course I could not prove what I was saying to him, if his mind preferred to argue, as so many minds do. But this was my friend Michael. He was receptive to expanding his mind. His attitude was curious. He was teachable, and willing to change as his awareness increased. This is not the case for many human beings. Often, once our minds identify with something (a belief, an idea, a mental image, etc) we attach ourselves to it, after which change is hard and slow, even if new knowledge exists that suggests it would be in our best interests to do so.

“So what are you saying?” he asked.

“That there is a difference between knowledge and belief. There is a difference between truth and belief. And that we tend to merge them all together and it makes messes of things.”

“So how do we know the difference?”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

Exactly, that is the question I’m asking.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“As far as I can tell, we need to define each word we use, beyond what the dictionary offers. Do you know the difference between ideas, feelings, and beliefs, for instance?” Long pause. “See, we use words every day and think we’re saying the same thing, and without clear definitions we cause conflicts … in our own minds, and in our communication with others” I said.

“Okay, so what’s an idea?”

“It’s an image in our minds. A mental picture about the future, past, or present. It’s common to have an idea of ourselves for instance, and everyone around us can see that we are different that our idea. Similar with beliefs. We may see ourselves as caring or generous, which is an idea, then support the idea with a belief that it is true, all the while being insensitive, impatient, critical, and demanding … feeling entitled that we should be receiving more because of all we do for people.”

Michael laughed loudly and exclaimed “that’s my Aunt Sarah!”

“So Aunt Sarah can go around calling her experience ‘truth’ when in fact she is living in a fantasy land of ideas, beliefs, and feelings.”

“Okay, how are you defining feeling then?”

“Well, we first need to see that we can have physical feelings like when we get burned or feel aroused. We can also factor in intuitive feelings that are harder to define clearly but still present. Problem is, so many of us make major decisions based on this ‘gut’ kind of feeling, then later pay all kinds of prices for them. For this discussion, I’m talking more about emotional responses that drive us to behave in certain ways. Emotional pain can cause us to seek comfort. We can easily do that by creating an imaginary world that we can refer to as ‘my truth.’ That’s why I’m going after this topic. It’s too easy for us to let ourselves off the hook by saying everything is subjective. Just because you believe I’m a self-absorbed miser doesn’t make it so. That doesn’t fit with my idea of myself, which I call ‘my truth.’ Does that make sense?”

“By George, I think it does.”

“Please, call me Wayne." 

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