Truth

Since my last post I've been thinking about the existence of truth.

Is there an objective truth? Most of us think so, I wager. Many spend their lives trying to find it. Are you one of those people? The people who are on a constant quest for knowledge, truth, and understanding? The question I pose to you now is why? Why are you spending your life looking for this truth to know and understand?

I'll tell you why I'm not.

Life on this planet, as I currently understand it, is finite. Humans have created our fortunes and now we are creating our end. Plain and simple - we are killing ourselves with our lifestyles of fat, sugar, and fossil fuels. The planet doesn't need saving - we do. Papatuanuku will right herself again when we're gone. I think this because I believe if earthworms disappeared overnight - everything would stop growing and the planet would get very sick indeed..... if humans disappeared overnight - the planet would flourish. This is my truth. It might not be the ultimate truth, or it might be, I don't know. I'm not going to spend decades trying to find out. Instead I'm going to act on what I think is happening - because I don't think I have the luxury of illusory time.

I'm not going to do this by recycling, using my compost bin, or buying biocups and plates etc. I do these things because they're better than the alternatives - but I'm under no illusion that the newspaper recycling bins in the Air NZ terminal will mitigate the millennially-captured-sun-energy I just used on the plane. Some scientists are saying we're at the peak of no return re climate change anyway. I'm going to do this by fine-tuning my social justice scruples and looking after my fellow human.

Now, how does this relate back to the topic of truth? I don't know if anything is true. I don't know if we can save our people from extinction. I don't know if we're even on the verge of it. I do know (oh dear - someone's gonna hang me for claiming to know something) that cause and effect seems to exist - and is quite useful. Cause: you help your fellow human in a positive, non-environmentally degrading way - Effect: your fellow human has an awesome time and passes it on. This may be karma, this may be good faith, this may be simple opportunistic point-scoring - but it's not sitting around wondering what the truth is before we act.

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