What do we really know?
A question, which pops up in one's head often enough. Especially when the reliability of a person is being questioned. Like for most things there are explanations for this too. I am not in possession of one, though. Now I am merely wondering howcome I start questioning all I know just because I question one little thing. Fine, it is debatable, whether the thing is small or not.
When I question, for example what the kitchen lady at work told me there would be for lunch tomorrow, I start a chain of questions, which seems never-ending. This chain-reaction of the mind can be devastating and disastrous for one's mental stability or fruitful intro- and outrospection. I have at a point in my life started questioning just about everything I know because of one incident and it seemed to chuck me off the track completely. Now you can sigh "she never got back" or "that explains it"... Har har.
If I am to question a person's honesty, the first reaction I get is an urge to find out
for sure. As we all know, that will start a vicious cycle, which makes you chase your tail endlessly.
It seems like a bit of a paradox really. "I think you might be lying, I want to know for sure if you are. So are you? No. Why should I believe you? Because I am telling the truth. But what is the truth?" Ahaa... See what I mean?
I believe there is not really anything we can
know as such. There is just trust that we have in our free use and we can place it where we feel appropriate. You can choose not to place your trust in the atom-theory for example. Like I have, and oh, so conviniently it makes pretty much everything they tried to teach me in chemistry class useless and just plain lies. True beauty.
That is just the starters. It feeds my gradually growing contempt towards natural sciences, which over-simplify life in complex formulae. The truest of all problems with the distinctions between trust and knowledge, that I know of (yes, know of) is the problem of human complexity.
Quite frankly, there is no humanly possible way of acquiring factual knowledge about another person. Never will we ever be able to get into another person's head so sufficiently that we could state what we think we know of a person as true facts, i.e. knowledge.
With humans, we are only left with our trust. I trust you to tell me the truth. I trust you to be who you really are around me. Do you trust me? We can only know so much. Not even that really. We can trust in something, which makes it knowledge. One cannot impose trust. In this case the result should be that one could not impose knowledge either. But we do impose it upon others. If I believe that 1+1=11 instead of 1+1=2, I will be told by several individuals that I am wrong. How can I be wrong? I trust that 1+1=11 because in my head it makes perfect sense and it evokes the feeling of trust in me. Yet, most of the world's population would be on my back for being an idiot. We seem to think that the rule of trust does not apply when it comes to science.
Whether it does or does not is not my main concern right now. What I am concerned about is human relations.
Trust is an individual virtue. My trust cannot be shared with the boy next door. It is all mine and the controller of its use is no one but me. What makes us trust another person? Is there a so called rational explanation for it? I doubt it. Still, I find it interesting to look for patterns.
Is it possible to just decide to trust someone? Plain and simple. I think it is. I feel that it is very typical of me to set my mind on trusting someone. Just because I want to. The reason for me wanting to trust someone is out of this world, I reckon. If you do see this reason for my wants wandering around your neighbourhood, please send it to the following address:...
How do we even catch people for lying? When they say one thing to me and another thing to someone else? Maybe. Or is that necessarily lying? Because what is truth if not a flexible concept?
Can we be guilty of thinking that someone is lying when we are in fact not understanding what is being said to us? Definitely. Is it not the easiest way to reach a conclusion? It cannot be your fault, thus you understand everything perfectly. It must be lies. Or is it like that? I think it is in most cases far easier to think that you are being lied to rather than to think you are not comprehending.
A complex matter, in my opinion.
If I constantly pick up little bits and pieces from a person's speech, which contradict one another, does it mean the person is lying? Could be. What then when the person tells you s/he is not lying? Are you supposed to overlook all these contradicting factors? Here is where the trust steps into the scene. Now you are left with a choice. A though one, I might add. You can choose to trust the person because s/he told you that s/he is not lying. Or you can choose not to trust the person because there are too many things that do not add up.
Fair enough. But sometimes there are reasons for the little contradictions, which you pick up and assume to be lies. They might be hidden messages in disguise. Or they might not.
In the end the choice is yours. You can choose between trust and mistrust. People lie and there is nothing I can do about it. There is not only one solution that would work in all cases. You wish. I wish. Sometimes, though, it is good to give people the benefit of a doubt. If you do not find it in yourself to do that, it is understandable. Most of the time we cannot. But I can guarantee that there is nothing quite like the feeling of cracking the code. Being the Robert Langdon or Sophie Neuve in a person's mind and history. Find the right combination of words that give you the answer in between the lines. Fail and try again. Mix up the letters in the words to make yourself even more confused. Try to find the source of it all but keep your eyes on the prize. All the way. True beauty.
True.
