Sunday, October 13, 2013

Thought Provoker #7: Truth (and the lack thereof)


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As we age, we're exposed to more things, and we learn a lot of things about the world that we failed to notice as young whippersnappers.
I'm really impressed that whippersnapper is not underlined in red.

Anyway, one of these things that I'm becoming more aware of lately is the fact that many of my less desirable personality traits come from my upbringing. Which seems natural (or entirely unnatural, I'm not sure which), but it's still strange to realize the deep affect that parental biases (about races, genders, certain activities, the like) can have on your own opinion.

At a certain age, you may start to realize that some things your parents taught you to accept as fact are not necessarily true. 


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And then I go into this whole spiral of what-is-truth, and the reality is that it's almost impossible to deliver a perfect truth. Everyone, every author of every book and every webpage, is a human, and will therefore be (cue the awful word) BIASED. People have genders. Ages. Ethnicity. Lack of gender. The like.

And no matter how hard we try, at some points it's hard to deliver truth to other people. Sure, certain things like "Google was founded in 1998" are sort of indisputable, but life isn't full of such things. The facts that matter are the ones that aren't facts, and there will never be a source of these that doesn't have a slant of some sort. No one can present to you a totally clear view of the things that matter most.

Keep this in mind as you continue to age and absorbs things. You get to decide what your truth will be.

Okay, so clearly this isn't a let's-write-a-poem-now sort of thought provoker. This is a let's-think-about-these-things-because-questioning-the-world-we're-in-is-one-of-the-most-important-parts-of-being-in-it sort of thought provoker.

Oh, and a PSA: Thought Provokers will be changing their name soon. We'll keep numbering as we've been doing, starting with 8 on the next post, but just stay tuned. :)

Enjoy loveliness and remember to muse.


Absorb those truths.
Absorb them.

Then squeeze out your own. 



2 comments:

  1. This reminds me of a line from a book I just read, where the teacher gives the student a book and says “Try to be a filter, not a sponge.”

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    1. Oh I like that! Filter is a lot more accurate than sponge.

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