I Am Not Religious
In the war of ideas, one casualty is truth. It is twisted, augmented, inflated, diminished and hammered out of shape like a car that's been in too many accidents. Yet it is no accident how this comes to be. Look up truth in Wikipedia and you'll see just how easily such a simple idea can be driven to abstraction.
When it comes to the discussion of religion, there is hardly a truth out there that doesn't have a tow bar and is trailing around so much agenda behind it. But like the tail wagging the dog, it becomes who is driving who. I guess I was pretty naive when I was young, to think that agenda was an occasional by-product of truth. Now I see that truth is a by-product of agenda. You start with what you want to be the world view and then you mold your truth to suit it.
Dogs are so domesticated that it's rare to see one in the wild. They have evolved with us over the millennia to become animals that we train to our needs. Some people are very skilled at this, other are not, yet most still have a dog. Out in the wild, they are more true to themselves. They are not pets, subject to our will and constrictions. Truth is a lot like dogs - very hard to find in the wild, but tamed and trained to follow our will. And just as with dogs, it has evolved over the millennia - some people are skilled at training truth, others are not, yet most have truths they keep as pets. But truth out in the wild is very different, not subject to our will and constrictions.
There are people on all sides of the religious divide, hurling spears and shouting insults. There is even the occasional casualty from friendly fire. But it all comes down to agenda. And what drives agenda? Surely it has to be truth. Actually, I think when it comes to agenda, truth is more of an afterthought, a crowd-pleaser. Agenda is more about survival. At the heart of my tribe are the things which help it to survive. You can change one man's mind far more easily than a whole tribe. But with the tribe at the back of that man's conscious or even subconscious mind, survival dominates.
In the poker game of life, survival is like a Royal Flush, whereas truth is like a pair of deuces tied to three useless cards. Which hand will you be holding?
When it comes to the discussion of religion, there is hardly a truth out there that doesn't have a tow bar and is trailing around so much agenda behind it. But like the tail wagging the dog, it becomes who is driving who. I guess I was pretty naive when I was young, to think that agenda was an occasional by-product of truth. Now I see that truth is a by-product of agenda. You start with what you want to be the world view and then you mold your truth to suit it.
Dogs are so domesticated that it's rare to see one in the wild. They have evolved with us over the millennia to become animals that we train to our needs. Some people are very skilled at this, other are not, yet most still have a dog. Out in the wild, they are more true to themselves. They are not pets, subject to our will and constrictions. Truth is a lot like dogs - very hard to find in the wild, but tamed and trained to follow our will. And just as with dogs, it has evolved over the millennia - some people are skilled at training truth, others are not, yet most have truths they keep as pets. But truth out in the wild is very different, not subject to our will and constrictions.
There are people on all sides of the religious divide, hurling spears and shouting insults. There is even the occasional casualty from friendly fire. But it all comes down to agenda. And what drives agenda? Surely it has to be truth. Actually, I think when it comes to agenda, truth is more of an afterthought, a crowd-pleaser. Agenda is more about survival. At the heart of my tribe are the things which help it to survive. You can change one man's mind far more easily than a whole tribe. But with the tribe at the back of that man's conscious or even subconscious mind, survival dominates.
In the poker game of life, survival is like a Royal Flush, whereas truth is like a pair of deuces tied to three useless cards. Which hand will you be holding?
By:
narrator
Age:
51-55
,
Male
