Dave Hodges wrote:
Kevin Solway wrote:Forget about enlightenment.
Seek after truth - not for what you will get out of it - but simply because it is truth. It's the right thing to do. It may not bring you happiness. There are no guarantees. But the right thing to do will always be the right thing to do.
I know this has been asked a million times, but it's just not clear to me. Why should we value absolute truth?Turbatio wrote:To me, there's nothing more important than knowing the truth.are there times when you think that you would have been better off had you not set off on this journey to begin with - i.e. was the amount of time and toil it took to get where you are - was it worth it? Or do you sometimes wish you had spent that time doing something else?
Don't we all just want to be happy? If so, if that's the reason that we strive for anything at all and that's the reason we continue living, what does absolute truth bring to the table?
Of all the things we can choose to learn about, there's this absolute truth thing sitting there on the shelf. What makes it any different from the other things we can learn about? We shouldn't I learn about, say, boating? Then I can have fun sailing! I can't go sailing if all I know is absolute truth. I can't do anything if all I know is that. So what's the point?
Who cares if we're right or wrong? Being right doesn't put food on the table. Most of the time, being a good liar and a con man will get you much further than speaking the truth, so why should truth even enter our consciousness?
Kevin wrote at one point that in regards to the long-term survival of the human race, our best odds lie with wisdom as opposed to ignorance. But on what basis can that argument be supported? Millions of years of evolution of dumb animals show otherwise. If we ignore the quality of life and just concern ourselves with enough quantity of life to meet the condition of survival, then I think we could probably screw up quite a bit before our survival is terminally threatened. We can be pretty ingenious and wisdom can't lay claim to the invention of one bit of technology whatsoever.
On the other hand, if the quality of life is what we want, does wisdom help us in that regard? Every historical account of sages points to the exact opposite of quality of life. They were all dirt poor and they were all either rejected or ignored by society and their activities led to no material profit whatsoever. Did they do anything to benefit society, like feed the poor or care for the sick? The answer is no. No sage in history has ever done any of that. Wisdom looks more like a mental disease.
So, again, what's the point?