Knowledge

As any of my regular readers can easily attest to, I tend to write in torrents. There are times in which deep thoughts go swishing to and fro through my mind and once they've completed a circuit or two, the contemplations of such end up here in words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs. At other times, however, simple thoughts like "What do I want for dinner?" are more than I can handle and I write very little in this space. Needless to say, the last few days fall into the former category, not the latter. : )

This afternoon I was trying to make a list in me noggin about what things humans know for certain (column A) and what things we don't know for certain (column B). This is what I came up with:

Column A - Nothing
Column B - Everything

Knowledge, in and of itself, is a belief! All of the things we say we know are built upon a framework of stuff we don't know. We don't know if something created our universe or not. We don't know what life is or how the essence of life began. We don't know if we possess souls. We don't know if we existed before birth or what happens, if anything, when we die. We don't even know if this life is real or simply an illusion. The sad "fact" is that we don't "know" anything of the most basic elements of what appears to be existence.

Therefore, when you or I say that we KNOW something, all we are really saying is that we believe strongly that this is this or that isn't that. We believe it strongly for a variety of reasons: other people believe it just as strongly; it always seems to come out the same way in our experience and/or the experiences of others; it makes the most plausible sense; and sometimes for reasons we can't explain.

But even when we add up all these varying types of beliefs, it still doesn't add up to static and undeniable proof of anything because we don't and, probably, can't possess an underlying premise.

Now I'm not suggesting that we kick words like know, fact, proof and truth to the curb. Such words convey important thoughts for use in internal and external communications. I simply think it's important to understand that these types of words are a kind of shorthand for an approximation of strongly held beliefs.

In my mind's eye, belief, not truth, is the cornerstone of life.