The Truth

Published 2017-07-05 on Minds

Not 'a truth', not vague 'truth'; The Truth. The one, and only.



We all yearn for Truth. Some answer that will not shift with passing seasons and circumstance, some iron law that will not flee us in our hour of desperation. Something to have faith in, without that trust being betrayed, being misguided or manipulated. A reality beyond the warping of men, gate-keepers and prophets and poets and all the other liars.

So what if I told you that I had one answer, one single tautology that trumped every other, that surpassed the vagaries of language, that was true in every time, every place, every scheme. The ownership of no person, no entity, as evident to any creature upon the earth. One rule, to trump any other, a single answer that by force of testament could unravel any opposition, could trivialize and dismantle any other. A truth no book could ever instill, no art or artifice could contain, but that every living soul could bear fully-throated.
What would you say to me, then? If I promised you that Truth. The singular one, highest of all; the end to the longest of quests?

I can only offer it to you freely, and on the strength of my own long history with that quest, ask you to take it earnestly, as the highest I have known. To know this is no trivial intermediary point, as so many are, and to treat it as more than one; a curiosity, an indulgence or tool. It is a philosophy in itself, one whose transcendent character becomes manifest the more you apply it. Indeed, fully realized, it will become the final philosophy, and take the rightful position of philosophy as arbiter and king over all other disciplines. Look to your own truths, whatever you have now or whatever you seek, and tell me its ambition: what does it aim to do? An epistemology seeks to distinguish and demarcate knowledge; an ethics to guide the actions of men; a metaphysics to explain the precession of events. These or others, I guarantee you that nothing equals this in scope, and nothing else is fit for totality, for that prime, highest place among the stars. All this I say merely to convince you to be severe in your approach, but though the truth of what I have to say is self-evident, its consequence one can only fully realize first-hand. This is not a final answer which unravels all life, reveals a final scheme, and settles all accounts through magic intellection; though it is a destructive truth, it is so only to the mind; the thing which survives, is even affirmed, will be this unresolved and irresolvable life. However long the road to reach it has been, its attainment is not a conclusion in anything except language. The questioning may cease, but there will be much left to do. But again, it is best that one sees this for themselves.
So without further precaution, let me encapsulate this most fundamental truth, though there is nothing special about its recitation:


Existence exists.


Or, once could formulate the tautology in an even more concise form: "Existence."; that itself is the truth. With an undefined referent: "This exists.". But really, it is a truth beyond language, and whatever way we formulate it the truth it hearkens to will be the same. It is a truth that can be felt with any sense, any emotion, and any logic; what words we choose are simply a matter of form.

This might not seem revelatory at first, but its true potential begins to unfurl in contention, in contest with any other statement about what exists. To an answer which distinguishes between what exists and what does not, it affirms that "this exists", denying any phenomena to be invalidated. To an answer which makes one existence subservient to another, it affirms all existence to the same absolute degree, denying any to be independent of the rest or self-sufficient; all things to hold their own value, their own metaphysical efficacy. Simply by repeating itself, by iterating this undeniable present-ness, eminence of everything, it rebukes all other systems. It shows them their exceptions, their neglected aspects, their weaknesses in their perspective, their logics, showing how they are as valid as any of its favored subjects, favored angles. In the same way that the utopian is denied their bravado by reminding them of the homeless, their fully-real suffering and pain, so this statement allows no exceptions, no narrowness of view, no convenient omissions. For it hearkens at totality itself, the sum of all things, none reducible to another, and no scheme will stand before it that only acknowledges, only accounts for some incomplete fraction of that, as what remains will exist aswell, and demand acknowledgement, accounting. And what can honestly be said about the totality, with any confidence, and remain cogent? What truth can we really know which extends to all things, to everything?

That it exists. And so the tautology proves itself the very highest, the alpha and the omega, the precept and the result. The greedy man's philosophy, the wide-eyed perspective, which is insatiable at anything less than the very utmost extent of all things, however inattainable. It frenetically turns over rocks, peers into the gloom to withdraw strange novelties and say, yes, this too must be accounted for, included! And to the fool who refuses to acknowledge these perennial upsets, these externalities to any stable scheme, and out of pique ignores them... The philosopher pelts the fool with them, each little exception, until bruised in skin and pride the fool consents that revision is necessary. So happily the philosopher, the perennial ascetic, goes on his merry way disrupting the contentment of all men, showing them curious tricks and relics, prodding them ever onward to higher and higher perspectives, endless curiosity, to lust after that same edgeless totality. He accosts those who would claim to understand it, to have by seeing only a small sliver arrived at a sufficient end, most especially those with one encompassable in a single book, a set of texts, by showing how narrow they are, how little in the wider scheme they contain, and lamenting theatrically at oh, how much structure and intellection these men have accrued, how grand their designs, yet it has only made them both blind and deaf and numb to the world about them! There is only one structure the philosopher respects, and that is the tower, which rises so as to enable one to see more of the earth at any given time than if his feet were left on bare earth.

Such a man is a comfort to no comfortable man, who he tends to threaten with disruption and curiosity and greater ambition should he dwell too long. The history books are riddled with tales of the discontent provoked by philosophers, and the ire of those provoked. Indeed, a long study could be made simply of the men who made enemies solely by pointing out insistently the existence of something another did not want to see.

But, to the weary and desolate, he can yet be of the greatest solace. For in affirming everything unto itself, the very presence of all things, he disabuses the obsessions after one or another, some particular much-missed quality or aspect. To the man who feels abandoned, cast-off from some higher chain, some ultimate hierarchy, is there not a certain relief to being reminded of his own flesh, the reality which surrounds him all the same? However many men the priest will say are damned, however many may feel disenchanted with life after loss, however many should feel dissatisfied with their meagre lot, such a number can find solace in the assurance that they, their life, their actions and experiences, their pain and their joy, are no less real, no less existent than that of any other. No man can be cast at the wayside by the philosopher, no man can be forsaken by such a fundamental law; nothing which can be called true averts its gaze. Each man stands in his own light, and his life is never another's; it cannot be washed away like so much dust in the rain, but remains stubbornly present. Even the suicidal is haunted by the fact he cannot simply disappear, and become nothing, that his existence is no lesser than another's, that it is not imperfect or fallacious. Each man worthy of the name can find comfort in this, their existence, whatever its details. No man is without a history, no man is without a path, no man is without himself.


And that is only the beginning. Not only the fact of his life, but all of its little details, its affairs and intrigues become just as solid and undeniable as his very breath. Leave no moralizers to say his pain is trivial, his attempts inconsequential, to discount his deeds. Leave no-one to stifle him with inadequacy, in a hierarchy of roles; even the philosopher, so widely read and wise, cannot replace even the meagrest laborer. Leave no condescending physician to tell him what of his is imaginary, and what is worth attention, to make one second meaningful and the next utterly null. And on, and on, until through defiance to every opponent even the meanest man declares his sovereignty, in his life, in all of its little details, and takes a prime interest in it, and no artificial priorities of another, their schemes and their ends which would stratify and evaluate him as less than an end in himself.



The road goes ever onward. On that you will have to take my guarantee. But it does lead us to some places, some further answers as implicit results of the first, the only tautology one needs remember. One of these is the liberation of all men, their full self-possession in view of their unqualified presence, as outlined above. The end of priestly castes, and moralists who would place one thing inherently above another, or create a hierarchy among men or means by arbitrary selection. These things are implicit, expected results simply in the affirmation of the one Truth, which is like an alkahest to every tyrant and every soulless reductionism, every quantification and attempt at control.
If such a philosophy can make a man free, through such simple words, even wordless sentiments, and give him a deserved and fulfilling faith in a reality that will not betray him, is that not the most that he can want, in a philosophy, in an answer? Is it not what we have all, those of us who think, been wanting most urgently for the longest time now? Is it not the perfect end to these desires, all this intrepid endeavor, such a perfect treasure?

Have I not, in other words, fulfilled my promise?

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