"What Is Truth?"

There's a profound irony in Pontius Pilate's question, "What is Truth?" isn't there? Whether it was said as an attempt to dismiss the profundity of the Man he was about to hand over for crucifixion, or asked as a genuine question, I don't suppose he really wanted to hear an answer.

It's a question that continues to haunt us through the ages. Looking through the annals of history, so little of what is perceived as 'truth' tells the whole story. Events can be reported factually but there is a great deal of difference between facts and truth. Events can be reported untruthfully, but there might be a grain of truth even in the lie. History is usually written by the victors but the victors' triumph is often temporary and a century or two later, someone arrives with a different version of the story.

After researching a little of the life of Franz Ferdinand (whose murder sparked the outbreak of the First World War) I find myself surround by so many different viewpoints about the subsequent events. The initial reaction is that so many people used his death to their own ends. There was the vile Montenuovo, who so cruelly sabotaged the funeral of Franz Ferdinand and his beloved wife by denying the public the opportunity to pay their last respects by arranging for the train, bearing their bodies home, to arrive late in the night and ensuring they had only the shortest time to lie in State (with Sophie's coffins considerably lower than Franz Ferdinand's). There was Von Hotzendorf baying for war, and Berchtold and the rest of the 'war party' using the tragedy to their own ends...and into the slaughter. These same people hated Franz Ferdinand and saw his death as a relief, while using it as an excuse to further their own ends in a show of self-righteousness. It's the 'truth' of little boys. The 'truth' of gangs and gangland killings and it is nonsense. It's the idea that 'truth' means upholding whatever we happen to believe and so it goes on throughout ages.

What if we all found our own truth? What if we turned to our own demons and outed them rather than projecting them; and then turned to our own beauty and lived it - lived our own lives and our dreams, lived our reality, without a need to make someone else wrong, or to avenge perceived attacks? Then, we would know the Truth and the Truth would make us free. Alas, in this world, we complicate so many things and make people innocent or guilty; decide that the world is wrong because it doesn't match our version of Truth; or else we hand over all of our power to ministers who, we think, know better than we do but who are really equally small beings seeking their Truth but, often, finding it easier to impose notions onto others than to look inside themselves and see what is driving them.

"What is Truth?" said Pilate.

"I am." sounds like the most accurate reply.

The Importance of Language

Isn't it interesting how the founders of every major religion in the world today came from the East? Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, the great Gurus of Hinduism and Sikhism, the Patriarchs of Judaism were not of a Western culture at all. They all spoke in languages which are not easily translated to the Western mind. They had (and still have) a language which is quite distinct from dividing everything into boxes, carefully labelled and everything in its scientific place. There are words in Sanskrit and Hebrew which simply cannot be translated to an equivalent European word (in much the same way as the French 'ennui' cannot be accurately translated into English, though the sense of it is understood; or the Italian 'disponibile' doesn't ring quite so true in the English translation) but can only be understood.

It seems that many centuries ago the Western world developed along such patriarchal/thinking in boxes lines that we curtailed our language to fit that pattern. We all went along with it and let it become our natural way of thinking. In the West, things are black or white, good or bad, one way or another. It's limiting and stifling as is our language. We have alphabetically ordered dictionaries that explain everything, every word we speak - and they are useful but there are so many things for which we don't have sufficient language. In the East, the language goes deeper, is more powerful and has a more profound resonance. We waste our words. We write dross about any old rubbish and call it poetry. The Eastern mystics chant the same word repeatedly and find the meaning and power in it and that is real poetry: the power of sound finding its way to expression of things which cannot be simply labelled and classified.

Language is surely so much more than the basic communication of needs and wants, or the throw-away words of social chit-chat. Language is something incredibly powerful and sacred. What we speak is what comes from within us. How many of us would be ashamed to pass water, to burp, vomit or break wind in public, yet we pay so little attention to what comes from our mouths, to the words we form and to what we express? All the time you hear people expressing all kinds of negative notions, paying so little regard to the words they are using. Drift through a typical shopping centre and hear the many conversations and hear how many people are speaking negatively of their health, their circumstances (and if you're in England, they're bound to include the weather, whether it's sunny or raining!!) and life in general. So much of it is taken up by social niceties or people just speaking for the sake of having to have something to say. Why waste words? ("By your words you will be acquitted and by words you will be condemned," said Jesus). People lie about global warming and other people respond by being very careful about their so-called (nonsensical!) 'carbon footprint' but how few people in the West take care about what we actually express in our everyday conversations?

Freedom and Learning from History

In the ancient days of 'O' levels, it was necessary to learn dates and names - The Treaty of Vienna, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Treaty of Versailles; Hastings, Agincourt, Edgehill, The Somme...So much of it was made up of battles - who won, who lost, how the boundaries of countries were redrawn.
Behind the dates and facts were outcomes and it was very much like the old cliché of 'history is one damned thing after another.'
Eventually, social history was introduced. Out went the battles, the treaties and the maps, and in came what was basically a history of 'the poor'. In came factories, children at work, inventions, railways, unions, schools: a kind of history of 'the people.'
It is my firm belief that the only way to learn from history is to understand the individuals - not 'children at work' not kings and rulers or politicians, but individuals: their motivations and psychology because the more we looks at these things, the more we seem them played out time after time.
How many insane rulers have dominated societies? And, more the point, how many millions of people have listened to those rulers, believing themselves powerless until it came to a point where they could stand it no more and the outcome was either a bloody revolution or a war? It seems that throughout history 98% of people have wanted to be led. They did not want to look into psychology or motivation - their own or anyone else's - to see beyond the appearance of things and so sleepwalked into their own abyss. They did not ask, "Why does this man want to rule us? Why do we need to be ruled?" Instead they said, "He is the king/president/Fuhrer/Caesar and he will change everything and make everything wonderful for us!" Perhaps he is a wise king and does his best. Perhaps he is an avaricious power-seeking person. Perhaps he is completely insane ..It doesn't matter what he is - what matters is that people have forgotten that they have the ability to choose their own course, make their own decisions and have entrusted their lives to him.
The bad news is (to my mind) that person can never deliver the expectations.
When they wake up to this fact, the response is anger and a sense of betrayal. If the ruler is a good man, wanting the best for his people - like Tsar Nicholas - they destroy him. If he is a power-seeking individual, like Stalin or Lenin, he destroys them.
The good news is (to my mind) we can learn from history and the biggest lesson is to realize that no one is going to change our world and make it great and make everything right. Only we, as individuals, can change our own lives. There isn't anyone to do this for us. I would venture so far as to say - from a religious perspective - Jesus and all the great spiritual leaders, handed power back to people and what did they do? They ran after him saying, "Saviour! Saviour! Save us!"
King, Tsar, President, Fuhrer, Comrade, Saviour....They never deliver and we kill them are allow them to crush us. Our choice is to wake up and say, "We no longer need to look outside ourselves to someone else to give us freedom or prosperity or hope. It is all within us and there is no one to blame, no one to depend on and no one to deceive us." Freedom comes when we stop expecting it to come from someone else.