Holte's corner

Thoughts on truthfulness

I wanted to share my thoughts on truthfulness

I think there are two points to learn here.

1. Is that while everyone is entitled to their opinions, some things are simply evidential or even factual, which means that as others have said "we are entitled to our own opinions -- but not our own facts."
2. There are two approaches to talking to people. One can be open-minded and treat an exchange as both teaching and learning opportunity (dialogue). Or one can be rude and hectoring and assume that one is sovereign, teacher or parent to your audience.

When dealing with other adults, which approach do you think works best?

Everyone has a right to their opinions. However, authority has to come from one source, truth, which can be surmised from personal experience, historical or written documents, and is advanced by argumentation and logic.

In any case whether or not one actually has authority when talking to people depends ultimately on whether one can respect the truth of ones sources. One may have a a legal right to make up facts, invent nonsense, or abuse texts but never not a moral one. The immediate audience might believe a lie, but a lie remains a lie no matter how democratically accepted it is.

People may have the privilege to lie, but that is because none of us have the power of omnisciousness to judge all arguments. We aren't always able to judge what is fact and what is not, what is opinion and spin, or what is simply a different view of the same animal -- so there is plenty of room for disagreement. Thus the "privilege" of lying is not due to any inherent legal privilege or right but simply due to that gray area of human doubt, confusion and multiple views, and because the rest of us don't have the right to make judgments on factuality absent clear facts. The privilege of lying is simply a unintended side effect of the right of freedom we all possess and the poor quality of both natural and artificial sources of information.

We all have a natural born freedom to be idiots or wise people, savants or fools. However, this argument implies that there are some limits to how much people can spin and abuse the truth before they reach beyond reality into pure fiction or even lying. And the reason is that lies are about untruth, which are ultimately unsustaining, untenable, instable, and self destructive to the systems or communities that entertain them.

Chris

Nichirenism and Nichikan

We've been discussing Nichikan at Sokagakkai Unofficial I realize its time to start talking about Buddhism and religion again. The country is starting to see the true face of the President, and I've convinced myself that I've done what I can on the subject. Time to move on.

Still my heart isn't in trying to explain why Nichikan's teachings should be abandoned or redeemed. First I still don't have all the source material. To properly critique a person's ideas we need them in our own language. I'll start reading again. I miss the hope that the teachings of the Lotus Sutra bring, and that especially those of Nichiren, Dengyo and Nichiren's disciples offer.