In response to “Truth: Making Uncomfortable and Free” https://1040forpeace.org/news-and-blog/ on Sunday, Dennis Rivers wrote: ”It seems to me, after a lifetime of wrestling with the Angel of Truth, that Truth is one of the most important of three or four central human ideas. Like an essential vitamin, it plays a role in almost all other ideas. But I like the expression “truthfulness” better, because it locates the topic inside of us as living beings, rather than just “out there” somewhere.”
Dennis goes on to point out how truthfulness is something we do, not only what we think. That’s good!
Paul Clark said that truth talk took his mind back to grade school when he quit saying the pledge of allegiance, because it did not pass his own truth test.
In this blog are now asking whether the notion of American “exceptionalism,” or “manifest destiny” to conquer the west and now rule the world, passes any reasonable or useful test of truth. Or is a more truthful assessment of our “homeland” available, as I suggested on Sunday?
We are a “capitalist” nation, by all estimates, and that raises the question of whether we will judge our capitalist present by its ideal or by its historical record. Going with the historical record, we do find what Michael Moore called our “various nonsensical greed-induced behaviors and systems.” I think we do have such things. Would you help me name them, and suggest ways we should be changing them for the health of our own souls and the world’s?
John K. Stoner 5/19/20