The Truth Is

If we aren't seeking truth, then what are we doing? I can't think of a useful alternative.

Should we seek change? All that really means is doing something different today than yesterday. So why do it, unless we see that, ahem, in truth the change was worthwhile?

Perhaps we want diversity. Well, murder and carpentry are certainly diverse. It appears though that we can legitimately be a carpenter while we should not murder. How can we know this? By seeking truth.

Follow science? Science is a very raw and unfiltered discipline. It merely demonstrates low grade, rote truths: aspirin can cure headaches and the like. What we do with science is useful only through the guidance of higher truth. Science tells us poison will kill a life form and that is all. Whether we ought or ought not kill it comes from a consideration of the truth of such matters. 

Education? But don't we have to make judgments about what to teach and how to teach it? How do we determine that? By looking for truth.

I'm open to suggestion here. But you're going to need some incredibly convincing arguments to sway me. That is, if you want me to accept the truth.

Religion and Change

Should we change simply to suit other people? I would say no, at least generally. 

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not against legitimate and necessary change. Indeed, we cannot become better people if we aren't open to becoming different, even to altering ideas which we may have thought were at the very fiber of our being. But the operative term here is the word simply, in the sense of changing only to satisfy someone else. 

It's fair play to ask: maybe they're the ones who need to change. Maybe you aren't the one who should become different in a given area, but they. That's an important point.

That's the reason I'm skeptical of those who argue that religion should change to fit their worldview. Have they considered, honestly, openly, and fully considered, that maybe they're wrong and religion is right? Because if so, the need to change is on them.

The demand for change simply to suit you may be nothing more than indulgent and selfish. And we should not want to be that.

Being Myself This Morning

For much of the last few years we've heard, ad infinitum if not also ad nauseum, that we need to 'be' ourselves. Notwithstanding that all this actually means is that certain people want me and you to accept certain ways of thought and living which they find agreeable and little more (a rather hollow, selfish, arbitrary and dictatorial mindset on its own terms, frankly, as you may notice that those same folks don't particularly want you to be true to you), it flies in the face of what I remember being taught in the generation before this one. Namely, that we ought to embrace change.

Those familiar with my rants over the years know that I have slight regard for that, uh, I suppose it might be an ideal, either. Those even more familiar with my rants over the years, and I do apologize and feel genuinely sorry for you, know that I don't take kindly to useless phrases and terms. Yet here today I'm giving you two more. Perhaps three.

Exhortations to be yourself have absolutely no meaning outside of context. Neither does any concept of change mean anything worthwhile without the asking and answering of various pertinent questions. 

Be yourself. Well, and I've asked this before, what if you're a jerk, indeed a rather supreme and self satisfied jerk? We tend to ignore that question, and understandably. We would never have urged Adolf Hitler to be himself and follow his dream, would we? So to the point: I'm not convinced that there's an entirely natural 'your self' for which you are, for which you exist. Aren't we always developing to some point? Do not people and events in our lives, quite obviously, direct us in one way or another? Isn't 'yourself' altered by these various forces as they happen upon you? 

Thus, as a practical reality, you seem never to stay the same. Few if any of us are the same at 60 as we were at 20. Things affect us whether we would care for them to or not. And that alters the self. Yet being yourself at its very core indicates that there's an eternal and unchanging self within you. What else can it mean, if we leave being yourself entirely to its own terms?

So it appears we do, and indeed arguably must, be changing. But from what into what? And why? We can't take that to mean we are simply evolving from one blob of cells and matter into another, can we? Don't we want to take shape, to form into something worthwhile? Why wouldn't we?

Of course, the key trouble here is that answering all those questions demands making judgments. Judgments about the good and the bad, the well and the ill. Yet - here he goes again - by modern parlance, we're not supposed to judge. This leaves me with one final issue this morning.

What the hell are we supposed to do then? 

Change? Why?

I see no point in changing anything just to change. It borders on senseless, quite frankly, and is arguably childish.

There's nothing wrong with change per se either, I'll concede. Still, that being the case, why do it at all? is a fair question to ask.

Expand your horizons, perhaps? Well, what if the horizon isn't all that clear? Besides, it becomes fair to ask in answer to that, what's wrong with I'm doing now? I realize that either question calls for a certain amount of extrapolation, as it's ultimately all in the details. But remember the question is, why change simply to change?

When we took the kids out for ice cream I almost always got black cherry. Why? Because I like it. Why try something new when you can get what you know you like?

Am I being obstinate? Perhaps; but aren't you being equally obstinate in ordering me to change? I mean, what's it to you? It's not like I'm doing anything immoral (on the ice cream question, of course). Further, as I have the right in that sphere to order what I want, what argument can you possibly have against me?

It might be nice to change. Okay, but it might be nice to get what I want too. It's almost a moral wash; wait, no it isn't. It's my right to do what I want among legitimate moral choices. What you think I should do merits nothing for your position. It's only you being bossy.

Maybe I should have labeled this becoming a curmudgeon to the nth degreee. But so be it. Leave me alone where I've the right be left alone; that's all I ask.