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Letter: When truth collides with perceived reality
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Posted by editor Wed Apr 26, 2006 12:22:17 PDT
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0 responses 2 comments What emerges from the doctrinal struggles that cleave society is a frenzied tug-of-war between conflicting ideas. Essential truths are often trampled in the process. Everybody has opinions.

Much of our mental constructs are erected on a vast scaffolding of opinions, generally someone else’s. We adopt them, cling to them, claiming they are the offspring of our own cogitation because they encourage us not to think, because they shield us from what we fear most, reality, because they keep us warm and cozy in our self-created doctrinal cocoons.

As a journalist, I face my reality and I bare it with conscious self-awareness every time I compose my columns. I am painfully aware that candor and disquieting facts trigger caustic ripostes and bitter condemnation.

What emerges from some of my detractors’ deconstructionist arguments is the very subtle suggestion that telling the truth is tantamount to heresy. They read the words, one by one, but stumble on the verities they convey.

I do not pretend to have all the answers. I dig for the truth, groping in the miasmic darkness of ignorance and fear. I ask questions, some troubling, some unendurable. What I unearth will never please everyone. Journalism is not a popularity contest.
Let’s face it: there are more opinions than facts. We are enamored of them. They shield us from the risks of personal experience. Regurgitated by imbeciles, opinions are promptly espoused by other imbeciles.

Advocates of extreme political and religious doctrine, as are some of my fiercest critics, are exceptionally adept at blurring the truth to advance their own agendas (or shield against the glare of incontrovertible fact). This willful myopia helps subvert good judgment and defile truth. This practice leads to brainwashing, as witch-hunts ancient and modern have shown and, ultimately, as was recently the case, to censorship.

When flock mentality is at play, it is the myths, alas, that capture the imagination of the majority. Inflexible convictions render men blind, arrogant and, carried to the extreme, insane.

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Comment From: dhall

I guess just too stupid to understand this. Maybe I spend too much time in my New Testament and not enough time in the dictionary looking for words to confuse people with. For those who don't understand that comment just ask W E Gutman. Comment From: american

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. James Madison, letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822