Ron Paul Versus Truth Decay

"What is truth?" Pontius Pilate is reputed to have mused. Answer: It depends on your angle.

When we believe that we are have in our possession “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” regarding political matters, we subject the body politic to infection and “truth decay.” This is because what we regard to be true is dependent upon our personal perspective, or our cognitive vantage point, that is structured by the nature of our brain and senses and the experiences that we have recorded in memory. Nothing is as it appears.

What we think we see or know is always a function of our interpretations of our sense data. So, by remaining solidly wedded to a given personal perspective on an issue or situation and broadcasting that viewpoint to others as “the Truth,” we create a spreading infection that can cause TRUTH to decay and ultimately lead to the crumbling of our Republic.

The following is a commentary that I made today (8-18-07) on Evrviglnt’s “Political Vindication” blog. It was in response to his comment to my initial posting that was in turn a response to his entry entitled:

“Ron Paul: Hanging Out With Truther Kooks,”

In this rather lengthy response, I present the analogy of a number of people in a room who are each looking at a particular part of the room from a very nearsighted perspective.

http://politicalvindication.com/?p=544#comment-807

In my response, I use Evrviglnt’s term “Troofer,” which is an infantile rendering of “Truther,” obviously designed to suggest that anyone who would advocate for further investigation of the 9/11 disaster is either infantile or “dimwitted,” another disparaging term that he uses in his response to my comment.

I want to point out, however, that reprinting my commentary here is not meant to legitimize or call attention to the highly focused concerns of the “Truthers” as key points of discussion for the Ron Paul Revolution. For, in my opinion, while finding out what really happened on 9/11 is important, it is not our urgent priority at this point in time.

Our #1 priority is to work singlemindedly for the election of Ron Paul to the Presidency of the United States. All other issues must give way and fall in line behind this principle focus. We are not working to promote Ron Paul as a servant of the "Truth Movement.” We are working to promote Ron Paul as a servant of the “Freedom, Peace, and Limited Government Movement” that we have called the Ron Paul Revolution. So, with that caveat, here is what I wrote earlier today:

* * * * * * * *

Yes, Evrviglnt, I agree. It was “an awful lot of writing.” But, there is so much to say to try to heal the divisiveness in this country, and I thank you for your thoughtful response. Indeed, your response was civil, particularly, given your very passionate vigilance in guarding America’s freedoms. Sometimes, I feel a bit like “Peter at the Dike” trying to stem the flow of intense passion that surges through the different holes in the seawall around the Republic.

Passion is something that I value highly. Without it, we become like slugs crawling through our existence. It is what infuses us with life and vitality. Thus, I really do appreciate your capacity for passion and its ability to move you to take action in America’s defense. However, I have become mindful of the need to insure that our capacity for passion does not run away with our rational intellect, or vice versa.

Imagine, if you will, two overlapping circles. One represents the “Emotional Mind.” The other represents the "Reasonable Mind." Mathematicians call this a Venn diagram. The area of overlap where passion and thought are integrated has been referred to by some as the “Wise Mind.” Most people tend to jump back and forth between their emotional minds and their reasonable minds, rather than seeking that quiet area where the two minds intersect and are used synergistically together. They either “react” with passion without much, if any, brakes applied to the expression of their emotion, or they obsess on ideas and think things to death. The area of “Wise Mind” gives individuals the capacity for thinking with their “Whole Minds.” Using the “Whole Mind” gives one the ability to see a larger picture and not just fragments of it.

Imagine, again, that you are standing in a room with your nose up against a door that is painted with vertical, red and white stripes, as on the American flag. All you see is an alternating field of red and white stripes. That is your view of your world.

Now, imagine further that someone else is in the room with you. That person is standing with his nose against one of three walls covered with wallpaper that is a field of tiny, white stars on a dark, blue background. That person’s view of the room (an analogy for his view of his world) is quite different from yours. He sees the world as a field of stars, as in the night sky. It is the dark blue that dominates his perception.

Finally, imagine a third person who is standing with her nose against the one wall that is painted a brilliant white. If all walls were painted in this scintillating white, it might be a bit overwhelming, thus, the wallpaper on the other walls dims the brightness a bit. Her wall, in fact, turns out to be the wall in which your door is situated.

So, if the three of you carry on a conversation or discussion, you will not be able to agree regarding the nature of the world (i.e., the room in which you are all situated). You will feel nothing in common with the others and you will, no doubt, regard them as either misguided or simply as “kooks.” Their personal “truth” is not your “truth” in any way, shape, or fashion.

The person who sees her world as all white gets a substantial proportion of what the world is like for you, so you don’t regard her view as quiet so foreign as the guy whose world is dark blue with only little splotches of white in it. Perhaps, you let her slide, but you vilify him as a “Troofer” who obviously hates your world because he comes out of darkness and cannot appreciate its brilliant red and white patriotic intensity.

Now, suppose that you take a very small step backward. Your visual field expands, and you now see that the red and white striped field is really a door that has a dark blue frame around it that is the same color as the background of the wallpapered wall of the “Troofer,” although you still cannot see his wall.

In other words, your perceptual view of your world has expanded and has become differentiated into different parts, i.e., the door and the door frame. You may even begin to see a hint of the white field around the door which is the wall seen by your female companion in the room. What a difference taking one step back from your ordinary way of viewing the world makes!

Evrviglnt, the world has the potential for creating a lot of different viewpoints. It all depends on the stances that we take. If we remain rigidly stuck in place, we will never be able to see that others have a little piece of the truth of this wonderfully diverse world, even those whom you say “slander my country with bloody inanities.” We are all standing in the same “World Room.”

It just so happens that the way our brains are constructed predisposes us to look at things in a particular way based on the experiences that we have in the “Room.” If we have never stepped back from the conditioning of our life experiences, then we can only see what we have been programmed by life and our genetic structure to see. It comes down to the fact that it is NOT “What you see is what you get.” It is, instead, “What you believe is what you get.” This is because our beliefs, developed out of our learning experiences, determine what we perceive (i.e., where we stand in the room). If you were to take another larger step back, i.e., suspend your beliefs for a moment, then you might see that the wall that the “Troofer” is observing, while limited like yours in not giving a full view of the Room, is none the less a part of the same Room (World) in which you dwell.

My point is that we need to respect the viewpoints of others as valuable inputs into building a more accurate representation of the nature of the “World Room” in which we all dwell and see in many varied ways. We may never be able to step back far enough from our positions to see the whole picture of the “Room.” We may not even at that point have a conception that we are all in the same room together. So, we need to use our intuitive "Wise Minds" to recognize that we need the views of others in all of their diversity to complement what we are seeing and thinking.

Seeing the white wall might be taken as symbolic of using the “Wise Mind.” White light contains all frequencies. It represents the capacity for appreciating both your red and white door with its blue frame and the blue and white wallpaper. I chose red to represent your passion and the white to represent your willingness to enter into “civil” discussion with a “nice doormat” such as me.

Accordingly, I must point out in this context, that “Troofers” are NOT all the same! There are those, admittedly, who pursue their cause with single minded devotion and passion that completely blinds them to the views of others and the fact that there are multiple views possible in the “World Room.” I, personally, now find it difficult to be patient with the relentless, almost mindless chanting of some who march around saying “9/11 was an inside job.” However, I have read the thoughtful, considered, scientifically-based opinions of a number of people, who I would not lump into the same category with the robotic chanters. These are professional people who hold responsible positions in society, but who are not satisfied, after analyzing the existing data, that the 9/11 Commission has covered all the bases. This does not mean that they believe that individuals in the government purposely orchestrated the 9/11 disaster at all. Such an idea is generally presented as only one of a number of possible scientific hypotheses that must be considered in view of the data. And, in this regard, I must also say that even if data did point unequivocally in this direction, it would not provide an indictment of the American People. It might only point to certain rogue elements who had come to power in the government "by hook or by crook," if you will pardon the pun. I am harkening back to Nixon's famous disclaimer, "I'm not crook."

It is a known fact that governments throughout the world and throughout history have attracted rogues, who often have extremely narcissistic, abusive personalities, or even those who manifest psychopathic or sociopathic character structures characterized by the lack of conscience. But, again, I must emphasize that the suggestion that there were such individuals involved in the government is only a hypothesis, not a purported fact. There are those who have advanced hypotheses for consideration that have pointed to individuals outside the government itself who may have had the criminal motive, and the lack of human conscience to orchestrate such a disaster. These have included foreign intelligence agents, such as the Mossad.

But, there are those many more numerous individuals who think the evidence points, perhaps, in the direction of incompetence and poor management of our resources and a resulting cover-up of the misdeeds. Ron Paul appears from my reading and viewing of his statements to fall in this category and so would support a new investigation.

To generate or pursue alternate hypothetical explanations for 9/11 does not make one a conspiracy theorist any more than does suggesting that Islamofascism is a movement bent on dominating the world. Both could be thought of in the same conspiratorial terms. It is a matter of collecting the evidence and evaluating it with the input of others who see different aspects of the "World Room."

As I see things, it is the passion of the unrelenting “Troofers” that conflicts with your patriotic passion. To you, their passion seems to grow out of darkness, out of something evil, it seems. But, this is from a perspective that arises from having your nose to the door (better than a grindstone, I think). It does not mean that “Troofers” hate America and that they are slandering your country “with bloody inanities.”

I have investigated Alex Jones. I do not agree with his way of going about things, just as I, likewise, don’t agree with your attacks on him and the “Troofers.” Just as you are passionate in your defense of America, he is also very passionate in pursuing his way of saving America; he does so, in my opinion, with no less intensity than you manifest. It is that you are both coming at the situation from very different viewpoints; you are both “ever vigilant” but in different ways. Both of you jump back and forth between your emotionally charged views and very reasonable, intellectual defenses of your positions, without spending, in my view, very much time at all in that area where wisdom inheres. He would tend to call you "a wing nut" in a no less intense way that you regard him and the other "Troofers" as "dimwitted, black hearted tools."

So, I believe that we need to look for viewpoints upon which we can agree and which unite us and not focus on what divides us. To do the latter, is to bleed off valuable, passionate energy in endless, emotional wrangling. We need to try to get beyond the position of not being able to see the forest for the trees, i.e., the room for the walls. We need to work toward dwelling in that area of whiteness that is the “Wise Mind” that encompasses all the colors of the “World Room.”

Both you and the “Troofers” are concerned about the security of America. That is something upon which you can all, I think, potentially agree, if all of you will just take a step backwards and see that your perspectives come from having your noses too close to your subjects. The “Wise Mind” position is to move back toward the center of the room, so that one views all of the walls, floor, ceiling, and the furniture of the room. The more that one steps back from his initial view, the more “wise” his view, the more he will see the component parts of the “World Room.”

Since this has grown long, I shall stop here and comment on your views regarding Ron Paul in a later posting, since I have studied him in depth, as I have the other candidates.

Thanks again for your thoughtful response.