Gery Seidl
If you enter the term "truth" in a search engine, you get the following answer: "Truth is a term used to describe facts, realities or perceptions." , when the "truth", which I have always seen as the irrefutable, can easily be bent under the guise of subjective perception. So someone said the "truth". From his perspective. Well. But is it true then?
What's true? I brood. 1000 examples come to mind and none of them fit. Maybe one. A very small one: We are sitting with Aunt Mizzi and she offers me a second helping of her unfortunately completely burnt plum cake. I decline thanks while my stomach growls. When asked whether I don't like it, I wring my hands in the negative, I make myself up for a sumptuous lunch and praise the cake beyond measure. Every child realizes that this is not the truth. It's a lot less. I would even like to say it is an outright lie, although I don't know whether the lie is necessarily the opposite of truth, even if this is only a perception.
"And even if Uncle Heinzi thinks the cake is burned and everyone else who tastes it, too. Is the majority right? "
Correct would have been: “Dear Aunt Mizzi. I would be hungry for a whole tray of your plum cake, but after the first bite I didn't know how to survive this one piece. ”That would have been the truth, but the question arises who will feel better afterwards. Me? Aunt Mizzi? Everyone who will visit you after me and enjoy the baked dessert? Maybe I was wrong and it's just kicking my taste buds out. Uncle Heinz loves the cake exactly as it is.
I am only a consumer and not a specialist. I can not prove, with any credible argument, as a hooded cook can, that this is a piece of dough that should have been saved from the oven 30 minutes earlier. And even if Heinzi thinks the cake is burned and everyone else who tastes it, too. Is the majority right? Was the cake too long in the tube and is inedible? Or is it a very special flavor and could be sold more expensive? You notice. Thousand question and no answer.
My example is admittedly very manageable, but I think the big issues in the world are similar. Had Saddam Hussein in fact components for nuclear weapons and was this circumstance reason enough to invade Iraq. Twelve years later, the American still has not found anything. Error? Or not? Was the reason another and you have
The world only lied. Or have the Bushs and Rumsfelds described the truth from their perspective, which is obviously not very widespread.
We now have a more recent example in Syria. Who should support whom based on what interests or truths? If Putin supports the Assad regime, he is obviously an evil one in the world. If he supports the rebels, the IS fighters will benefit. If he doesn't care, he's shivering away. And what does the American do? He does everything except a war in his own country. And Ms. Merkel is standing in Berlin and is amazed at the refugees, without wasting a single thought, perhaps not supplying weapons anymore. Because they are the grist of the mill. And religion is paramount. You can make a lot of money in their slipstream.
I come more and more to the conclusion that the "truth" does not exist. There are either infinite or none. But what is there is profit and power. And around them the truth is bent. Ex-decision makers who have "encrypted" themselves over the years can not remember anything and claim to have always wanted the best for the country.
However, what we have completely ignored so far is the even bigger question: "How much truth can man tolerate?" How would we feel if the masks fall? In politics, in encounters with other people, in everyday life, at work, in the family, in bed, and last but not least with Aunt Mizzi on the kitchen bench.
Everything would change! But humans never wanted that.
"The smarter gives way! A sad truth, it establishes the world domination of stupidity. "
Marie of Ebner-Eschenbach
On a small scale we can build our own world in which our own truth applies. True in the sense of being honest with yourself. You and your inner voice. We can choose to serve a lie every day or go through the world in such a way that no one else is harmed. Maybe even more - that we infect him positively. A spiral that never ends upwards. But the beginning is with us. Not in Washington, not in Berlin, not in Brussels or with anyone else. If I get up today with a good idea and reach you with it, then you will get up tomorrow with the idea, and the day after tomorrow your neighbor, brother, friend, wife… .. We will be an unmanageable crowd that starts asking questions again. And if the “true” answers don't seem credible to us, then it may just be that they are not. The Austrian writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach once said: “The cleverer gives in! A sad truth, it establishes the world domination of stupidity. "
Photo / Video: Gary Milano.
