Some quotes to help put things in perspective.....

"In time of war the first casualty is truth." -- Boake Carter

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on." -- Winston Churchill

"The truth is not always the same as the majority decision."-- Pope John Paul II

"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it." -- General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

"The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none. Recognizing our limitations and imperfections is the first requisite of progress. Those who believe they have arrived believe they have nowhere to go. Some not only have closed their minds to new truth, but they sit on the lid." -- Dale Turner

"Truth is our most valuable commodity - let us economize." --Mark Twain

I have what can only be described as a physical pain in my chest regarding the news of late....a sizable portion of this country refuses to see the obvious, whether it be Y2K or Bill Clinton. I seek some way of understanding this pain. I believe I have found it....truth, to a majority of this country, is dead. Truth is now what you want it to be. We are in an ideological war, and truth has indeed become the first casualty. Many Americans stumble over it, but dust themselves off and keep going. Truth has now become what is in our 401K. Truth has split into "My truth" and "Your Truth". We no longer believe in an objective standard of truth. Some of us believe in an objective standard of truth....something that is applicable for all time, to all people, in all situations. If you do not believe this, then I ask you to please give me your formula for what is "true", and please include all possible combinations of all possible variables. "That is unfair", you say. "I cannot predict all possible variables and combinations, and some of the variables or combinations are mutually exclusive...". That is my point. When everything is relative, nothing is for certain. There are some certainties, of course. I am certain I will die. I am certain of several other things. If you are not, then the cause might be the yardstick with which you measure.

Truth is indeed our most valuable commodity. And as Mark Twain states, we are indeed economizing......

He who has ears let him hear.

-- abcdGoldfish (mnoGoldfish@osar.com), February 12, 1999

Answers

I always liked Merlin's line from _Excaliber_

"The greatest quality of knighthood..... Truth then. Yes. That's it. It must be truth. For when a man lies he murders some part of the world."

-- Tod (muhgi@yahoo.com), February 12, 1999.

...loud and clear...

-- Reporter (foo@foo.bar), February 12, 1999.

You got the cat to type all that?

Good stuff, fish.

Regarding other "truths" (china, plasma, etc), I honestly believe WE CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH.

Which scandal is next? Can we deal with it?

-- lisa (lisa@tappin'.on_the_glass), February 12, 1999.

Lisa,

I think you're right. Also, maybe the majority of people don't really want to know the truth. As another infamous person put it:

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth." -- Adolf Hitler

Apparently many in our government today believe this as well.

BTW - The cat is a touch typist (big paws). A bit hard to motivate, but good once you get him going.

-- abcdGoldfish (mnoGoldfish@osar.com), February 12, 1999.

There are as many "truths" as there are minds. We may be able to focus on some set of presumably objective coordinates - lack of Y2k progress, vulnerability of interdependent systems, etc. - others may see things we cannot, perhaps things equally important, we cannot say. It is one thing to be certain of ones coordinates, to verify same via proven, reliable sources, and to consider one's perception and analysis to be, provisionally, "the truth." It is quite another to generalize from one's certainty to the existence of a reified, monolithic "TRUTH" hovering, out there, somewhere in the noosphere, which we mystically either "have" or "don't have." When we talk about "absolute truth," we are ever and always talking about the perception and analysis that takes place withing individual craniums. Even if we are able, amongst ourselves, to recieve and transmit laryngeal/labial signals that indicate that *some* features of our perception and anaylsis are *similar,* it does not necessarily follow that our individual or collective perception and analysis are, or mystically partake of, some absolute, cosmic "TRUTH." Even if no opposing "truth" is expressed or even consciously held, we still can never be certain that our minds grasp the whole, undistorted, undiluted "TRUTH" of what surrounds us. In fact, we can be certain that, as our nervous systems are a subset of our environment, that such apprehension of absolute truth, even in relation to the smallest phenomenon (like a tree, as opposed to a forest) borders on the impossible.

This is, I will grant you, a hard pill to swallow. It becomes problematic to create stable social organizations among humans without reference to some set of common beliefs about themselves and the world. Many perceptions and analyses exist, but group decisions must be made. It is part of our heritage as higher primates that we look to a single "truth" (usually in the form of an alpha male truth-giver) to define the borders of our reality. But I think we are capable of living alongside eachother with multiple truths. The fact that our assessments of reality can never be sure or complete, need not cripple our power of decision. We can hold beliefs provisionally, and yet act on them decisively. The only thing we sacrifice in eschewing the illusion of "absolute truth" is the opportunity to brand others as (absolutely) "wrong" and ourselves as (absolutely)"right." We are not absoulute beings. Attempting to grasp and wield the absolute is like staring into the Sun: a prescription for blindness, and pain. When you said "When everything is relative, nothing is for certain," you stumbled over the humbling, perhaps horrifying, truth. Then you picked yourself up and carried on.

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), February 12, 1999.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

God is Bliss & Love.

Death comes on the wings of tremendous bouyant joy. We're riding the crest right now. Horror and ecstasy mingled. God is attentive to the dying. Aum, Shanti, Amen.

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), February 12, 1999.

What is truth?

-Pontious Pilate 30 A.D.

"there will come a time when every man does what is right in his own eyes"

Folks, I think we're there.

-- INVAR (gundark@aol.com), February 12, 1999.

E -

"But I think we are capable of living alongside eachother with multiple truths. The fact that our assessments of reality can never be sure or complete, need not cripple our power of decision. We can hold beliefs provisionally, and yet act on them decisively."

It is this very problem that lands us in the state we are in. I submit as exhibit A our present day society.

"It is one thing to be certain of ones coordinates, to verify same via proven, reliable sources, and to consider one's perception and analysis to be, provisionally, "the truth." It is quite another to generalize from one's certainty to the existence of a reified [sic], monolithic "TRUTH" hovering, out there, somewhere in the noosphere, which we mystically either "have" or "don't have." When we talk about "absolute truth," we are ever and always talking about the perception and analysis that takes place withing individual craniums"

When we are talking about "absolute truth", we are indeed exiting the realm of physical neuron-firing, synapse crossing, grey matter existence and entering that which is "hovering, out there, somewhere in the noosphere". We are told, or have (supposedly) surmised what some of these "truths" are. But truth itself, exists independent of our ability to perceive it. Everyone in this world can think a certain way, but that will not make a "truth". In arguing for the definition of truth, you err in a very modern way - truth is not ours to set, evaluate, or own. It is merely something we agree to submit to, or not. The more people we can get to not submit to a "truth" the better we feel about it, but that doesn't mean it is true.

"The only thing we sacrifice in eschewing the illusion of "absolute truth" is the opportunity to brand others as (absolutely) "wrong" and ourselves as (absolutely)"right." "

We sacrifice significantly more than this. This is the ultimate shame...we are sacrificing something we didn't even know we had. It is this very discomfort we as a society have at being branded "wrong" about something that causes us to seek a more comfortable solution. One in which nobody is "wrong" seems on the surface to provide the right balance. But this animal will grow, as it has been of late, into something that will turn on its master. Evidence of our discomfort with anyone claiming to "know" the truth can be found everywhere:

"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." -- Andr Gide

The real polarization is between those who claim to have found the truth, and those who claim to harbor it. To this end, I would modify Andr's quote to say "Believe those who are seeking the truth; envy those who have found it, and doubt those who claim ownership of it."

This universe continues to function by a set of universal truths...some pertaining to physical matter, some pertaining to higher orders of thought and action. To believe that we are the creators and owners of the latter set of truths, but not the former (which of course, we are not) is absurd at best. We are neither the creators nor owners of either.

-- abcdGoldfish (mnoGoldfish@osar.com), February 12, 1999.

E.,

You've done it to me agian. While reading you thoughtful post the phrase "we look to a single "truth" (usually in the form of an alpha male truth-giver)" cause a brain flash. Are you familar with the bonobo chimps? They are the ones that are genetically closest to us. Others great apes are, as I recall, about 93% overlapped with us. The bonobo are about 98%.

The flash came from a visual I remember and the fact that the bonobos are the most er...um.."loving" of all the chimps. They spend some unordinately large amount of their time in the sex act. Terribly preoccupied with it, they are.

I just thought - what a match up with todays celibrity and your phrase " we look to a single "truth" (usually in the form of an alpha male truth-giver)".

E, would you please quit tempting me like this ;-}

-- Greybear

- Got Epistemology?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 12, 1999.

Yes, GB, the relationship to the alpha male is one of erotic submission, regardless of gender. That seems to create the "love him or hate him" effect - if our belief-system/programming clashes with the truth-giver on a symbolic level, and we are presented with the alpha male's erotic charm, it will create an internal conflict and irritation which expresses itself in rage. On the other hand, if the symbol-system of the alpha male is consistent with our own, then the masculine presence of the leader will be comforting, and our submission will bring a sense of relief and belonging. In chimp and baboon societies, this is shown in the way sub-alpha males display their buns and are ritually mounted by the alpha male (normally without penetration) to establish the dominance/submission hierarchy.

Goldfish: You misunderstand me. I'm not a solipsist, claiming that the Universe doesn't exist, or that truth is "created and owned" solely within my own mind. The situation is more like the Moon reflecting in a pond. We do not see the Moon, ever. We only have our pond (nervous system) to work with. That doesn't mean the Moon is not out there. It just means that we all reflect it in subtly different ways. Even our own representations, the surfaces of our pool, are ever-changing. It's safe to assume that some kind of Moon is out there. But the poet's Moon is not the astrophysicist's Moon, or the child's Moon. These are broad catagories, but the same principle applies to individuals, each with their own store of memory, their own set of data, their own habitual patterns of processing and expressing that data.

You want there to be "right" people, and "wrong" people, which there most certainly would be, if there were an absolute truth that can be found. This is a seductive idea; as you say, we would "envy" the one who found this truth. The obverse of this statement is that we would despise those who refused that truth; also compelling, if we harbor agression that cannot be otherwise conveniently expressed.

I'm not saying that "right" and "wrong" are obsolete categories; they are useful as provisional categories with which to determine appropriate thought and action. We can say that the truth is Bliss, or the truth is My Guru, or the truth is in the Book of Truth, or whatever, and from that spawn lesser, situational "truths," i.e., "this or that, which makes me feel blissful, is the truth," "this, that my beloved Guru tells me, is the truth," or "this, on page 199, is the truth about topic A," but we start from an a priori assumption; we're bootstrapping our way to the absolute, and not questioning our motivation too deeply. The same goes for what is wrong, or bad. You submit nothing less than "our present day society" as "exhibit A" for the assertion that straying from this type of bootstrapping from revealed truth is harmful. This is not an argument for truth, but for expediency. You are telling me "It creates confusion and disorder." But at that point you seem to be departing from a discussion about truth, and arguing for your position on the basis of the effect it has on society.

And what effect does it have? Have things been going well up to now? Have we been living in a world of peace and harmony until cultural relativism crept in? Were the Nazis a big problem because they were too tolerant of other's views, and conscious of the provisional nature of their own? Have all the wars of history, with their billions dead, been waged by people who respected the right of each to arrive at his own truth? I'm not a cultural relativist. I am stridently anti-socialist, a constitutionalist, etc.. But the reason I am is that the Constitution represents a truly transcendent political philosophy. It offers the only hope of living in a world where we as individuals are allowed to arrive at our own truth and communicate it without interference or coercion. That is It's truth. It is a meta-truth. Socialism puts an iron lid on that possibility; like most religions, it's truth is the sole, absolute truth, and others must be actively discouraged in the harshest possible terms. All others are "wrong." In America, we have ALWAYS been contending about what is true and what isn't. We've ALWAYS been getting up eachother's noses with "wrong" ideas. And the only way to stop this is to line up all the "wrong" people who won't keep their mouths shut, and shoot them to scare the shit out of the less talkative "wrong" people. That's as absolute as it gets. It's a continuum: the more vehement you get about imposing your absolute truth on others, the closer you get to this all-too-familiar situation.

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), February 12, 1999.

As a budding young scientist, I try to make a living off a system of beliefs that is founded in the notion that there is some kind of absolute objective truth out there. We get a glimpse of this truth, first, through our senses. This idea has helped make science and technology possible, allowing us to concoct things like antibiotics and Moon landings. It has also lead to an understanding of science's limits, where the mere act of observation imparts a change in the observed phenomena.

I believe in the frailty of the human condition. Our senses influence our perceptions and vice-versa, leading to a very limited but compelling view of this objective reality. So for all practical purposes, truth is relative from person to person but Truth does indeed exist. We only get our glimpse of Truth like in the story of the blind men around the elephant. (Can you imagine where we, as blind men, are standing in relation to this Y2K elephant? I would guess right below the tail. And we will all soon be intimately acquainted with the animal's gastrointestinal waste products!)

Therefore I say be skeptical of anyone who claims to have a monopoly on the truth; this person is either delusional or divine. But by the same token, be wary of anyone out there who tells you that there is no such thing as objective reality--that "it's all in the perception." I think Socrates confronted one such person 2400 years ago. That person said, "There is no such thing as an absolute truth." Socrates said something like "Do you really believe that?" The person said "Yes, absolutely!" Socrates then asked "How can you be certain of something absolutely when there are no absolute things to believe?" "Oh," said the man.

I think there's danger in either absolutism or in subjectivism. The former leads to delusions of godhood, and the latter leads to nihilism and doublethink.

-- Django (coprlith@rocketship.com), February 12, 1999.

Quote for Y2K

"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?"

You know who

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), February 12, 1999.

So...do ya feel lucky? Are ya gonna trust luck to get you through?

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), February 12, 1999.

"If you always tell the truth, eventually you will be found out."---Oscar Wilde

Oh, my. Nineties philosobabble is such a turn-on. Ohhh, ohhh...reify my noosphere, baby. Wish I could find my high-school essay on consensus reality. But, then, we all know what the meaning of is is.

Greybear, I'll see your epistemology and raise you a koan (sorry, Sam's was fresh out of periods):

"is is not not is not is is not is"

(That rustling sound you hear is Alan Watts spinning in his grave.)

Got punctuation?

Hallyx

"I hope what's true is true for you too." --- Country Joe MaDonald

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), February 12, 1999.

Uncle Deedah, here's another. "In this territory your life can hang on a single scrap if information." Clint Eastwood in A fistful of dollars.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), February 12, 1999.

First,

>>Can you imagine where we, as blind men, are standing in relation to this Y2K elephant? I would guess right below the tail.

Big, big yuks! And great quote, Uncle D..

But again, we're dealing with an argument from effects: "A. Science presupposes absolute truth. B. Science resulted in putting us on the moon. Science is powerful, therefore the suppositions of science are validated." Non-sequiteur; a mere association, not a demonstrable causal relationship. I believe the moon is made of green cheese. I can do the backstroke. Therefore the moon is made of green cheese? Likewise with the kick-ass Dirty Harry approach. The implication is that because an irrational leap of faith is rejected, the only alternative must be random "luck." Again, the argument is not about what is *true* but about what *works*: "Are ya gonna trust luck *to get you through*?" Do we want comfort, an insurance policy, or do we want truth, no matter how harsh or unpleasant it may be? I know what coping strategies work for me. But I try not to confuse that with "the truth."

If you examine what I've said, I'm not trying to say that there is no truth. I'm not a nihilist. I'm suggesting that the truth is more likely to be found not by a leap of faith followed by blind assertion, or by a (consciously or unconsciously selective) gathering of data and pattern-recognition followed by a positive assertion of "what is," but rather by a process of elimination. Or, since I'm addressing the primacy of one's nervous system, a kind of purification of the mind and senses. Kind of like taking something out of your eye...

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), February 12, 1999.

E. coli, The truth is the truth and a lie is a lie. "I DID NOT HAVE SEXUAL REALTIONS WITH THAT WOMAN," a lie

None of us can say with certainty what the exact consequences of Y2K will be. The truth. Not really a difficult concept to grasp.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), February 12, 1999.

Yes, I can say "he lied" in that instance. I'm approximately 95% sure of it. As best I can tell. For now. But absolutely? Not possible. All assessments are limited and provisional.

I don't know that no one knows what will happen with Y2k. There are a lot of unusual people out there.

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), February 12, 1999.

Niky

Stop fixating on Billy C. It is over...

He is lucky!

Are you?

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), February 12, 1999.

Unc, luck didn't have a damned thing to do with King Bill getting off and you know it as well as I. My own luck is still in question but I can assure you I know exactly how many chambers are loaded in my gun.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), February 12, 1999.

E, did you ring?

This thread may be getting as close to an analysis of the GI - DGI dichotomy as any thing I seen so far. (Otherwise know as "Why in the HELL dont they Get IT") My $0.012 worth (that 2 cents after 40% taxes):

The essential question for me is the epistemological question: "how do I know what I know". Meaning, that the knowledge (and thought processes) that I have is obviously subjective and therefore should be subjected to scrutiny. Problem is that the only tool I have to put the scrutiny to it with is, yep, my mind. You can twist yourself around enough on the problem to screw yourself into the ground. I know I did back in my 20s.

My solution is, after as much rational (?) examination as possible to establish (not once and for all though) a set of baseline things or "facts" as givens. And proceed to examine the rest of my universe with these as "truths" (stretching the word a bit here). Without this I only find myself in a kind of Mary Baker Eddy type Adam dream where *nothing* is real. About that time I notice Lewis Carroll hurrying by carrying a big watch. And soon afer that I start to contemplate all the pink mud in my navel then the boys in white arrive with the nets. Apologies to Ms. Bakers advocates, but that system just does *not* work for me.

As for the "once and for all" aspects of this "truth". New evidence arrives constantly (and with an ever increasing rate). If I am to contend that my personal universe is more or less balanced (sane and/or rational) then I must re-evaluate constantly. And there lies the rub. To evaluate any one datum one *must* consider the source. But a more or less equally important consideration must be the substance of the datum independent of the source.

The reliability of the source is usually decide by a simple lookup. For the non-geeks this means reference to a predetermined set of values. The validity of the substance must be determined by comparison to that changing set of truths that make up my universe. If it passes the test it then is admitted to that universe. This is also as close to a corolary of booting up as I can find here in the human universe. For a good read on some of this try "The Minds I" or "Goeddle, Escher, and Bach" both by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

As to the GI - DGI problem. Each group is populated by a set of individuals with universes that overlap with sufficiently coincidence to wellmake them a group. This is the 75 cent way of saying they all agree on something. But it would see to me that there may be a fundamental difference in either the thought process (how new stuff gets admitted to a universe) or the basic setup of that universe. The distance between the extremes of the two poles on this Y2K subject is as great as I recall seeing in the non-religious world.

This may partially explain why we tend to break out in all these philosophic / religious rashes here so often.

-- Greybear, who decided to run this one through the spell checker (as if you couldnt tell)

- Got dictionaries?

Ps - E, could we make that scotch. I just never developed a taste for that fruity stuff. And BTW, "hot chilli" is a gross redundancy.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 12, 1999.

I understand that there is an elderly man in white robes carrying a lamp around Wonderland on the Potomac and crying because he knows he hasn't a chance now in that town.

-- Lobo (hiding@woods.com), February 13, 1999.

Nik-Nik

You and I should go and poke holes in paper someday together.

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), February 13, 1999.

ONLY if I get to go too. I think Nik and I aren't that distant.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 13, 1999.

Unc. and Greybear, sounds great to me. Got a gunshow in Longview tomorrow, I'll be there. P.S. Unc. I tote a colt peacemaker, 1873 model with a 5 and a half inch brl. Keep five in that puppy. .45 long colt to be exact.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), February 13, 1999.

I sleep with Gaston G's plastic thing-a-ma-gig near and dear ;)

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), February 13, 1999.

M21 here. yours sm, md, or lrg Unc?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 13, 1999.

Since weez dropping our drawers so to speak,

Les model numero #30

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), February 13, 1999.

Unc,

I think you would have gotten a kick out of a bunch of threads I ran across on another board last summer.

This was a bunch of VERY er..conservative types, survivals all. I am NOT that's NOT proposing to start the same type discussion here, ever.

But what they talked about for about week was "what do you have on or around your nightstand". There were some pretty amazing answers and I laughed quite a lot. Then one evening I stopped to *really* check what was around mine.

Bunch of flaming liberals, all.

BTW, Unc, was that really you earlier this evening offering to pucker up to somebodys well ...six?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 13, 1999.

"As rare and precious the truth may be, supply always exceeds demand".

- Somebody

-- Nathan (nospam@all.com), February 13, 1999.

Great discussion everyone. But I just gotta add a few thoughts.

Is there an Absolute Truth? Plato thought so. He seemed to think that we were exposed only to the "shadows of reality" in the "Alegory of the Cave." He seemed to also think that people could look at the world and the things in it and make the "mental" jump to the Reality or Truth beyond the illusion.

Kant was one of the early ones in our current state of Cartesian rationalization to seriously discuss the "influence of the senses" on our perception of Reality. In the early 20th, Phenomenology came into vogue, one premise is that we must gather many impressions of something from all possible angles before we can make a statement about it.

My thoughts are partially inclusive of all three ideas. I think that open communication from many sources are required to get an "idea" about the reality or truth of any situation. This openness to other viewpoints helps us to avoid the "blind man's assessment of elephant." If the four of them had gotten together and had a discussion of what each "saw" then they may have been able to come to a reasonable approximation of what the "camera" sees. One study I came across once, but don't remember where :( had five people and a vedio camera "witness" an event. When interviewed after the event, there were six versions of what happened.

As to Y2K, I am personally thankful for all the "discssion" that is offered on this forum. It brings me closer to understanding what is really, or should I say "truthfully"? going on.

Merlin

-- Merlin Emery (MerlinEmery@yahoo.com), February 13, 1999.

>>My solution is, after as much rational (?) examination as possible to establish (not once and for all though) a set of baseline things or "facts" as givens. And proceed to examine the rest of my universe with these as "truths" (stretching the word a bit here). Without this I only find myself in a kind of Mary Baker Eddy type Adam dream where *nothing* is real. About that time I notice Lewis Carroll hurrying by carrying a big watch. And soon afer that I start to contemplate all the pink mud in my navel then the boys in white arrive with the nets. Apologies to Ms. Bakers advocates, but that system just does *not* work for me.

This is the barrier or the "desert" that we have to cross to reach the truth. In this state, life seems empty of meaning, and we either cling to cultural sources of meaning or lose ourselves in sensuality or madness of one kind or another, moving from distraction to distraction (I believe we're undergoing this passage as a civilization, as evidenced by the return to ethnic identity and folkways, hunger for entertainment, drug use, promiscuity, etc.). But though the passage is arduous, there is an "other side." Meaning, the "set of baseline things or facts as 'givens'," is necessary and good. But we can plug these in and out freely, in the context of emptiness and impermanence (not nihilism, but the recognition that all things change and flow, and that all phenomenon are aggregate rather than possessing a fictional "platonic essence"). Of course, we want to cling to "something" (simian heritage again), and the temptation to stare into the desert and imagine monolithic, permanent "true things" to reassure us, is great.

I never really got into M.B. Eddy, but I'll check out the "Adam" dream thing.

The "morality" question, telling the truth v. telling a lie, is worth addressing, and I think I gave Nik too glib an answer. I think it's really important to tell the truth, and that lying does grave psychological and social damage. With the above view of impermanent and shifting reality, it's still possible to be truthful. But it's more difficult, ethically, because there is the temptation to distort or create with relativity as a rationale. The key is a sincere effort to be internally consistent. My only "out" with telling the truth is that some people don't deserve the truth. If I'm tied up by NWO thugs and asked where I buried my beans, for example, I might feel compelled, but not obligated, to tell the truth. Same if someone's asking me about something they have no business asking, like if I've ever picked my feet in Poughkeepsie.

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), February 13, 1999.

Truth: just returned from the gunshow and purchased a M-4 upper for my AR-15's. This frees up my carbine upper for a spare so I can permanently mount my night vision scope on it giving me the capability to switch from day to night fighting in a matter of seconds. This switch will be performed on my H-bar, and the new M-4 upper installed on my CAR-15 shaves two more inches off of an already compact gun.

Lie. Wish everybody had one.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), February 13, 1999.

Unconditional Love.

Unfortunately most on this planet practice the conditional kind.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), February 13, 1999.