Reflections From a Murky Pond

The Truth will not set you free. Truth is a tyrant that will enslave you and cast you into a bondage more absolute than any falsehood or ignorance could.

— jonolan

The old adage, “the Truth will set you free” is sadly wrong. No freedom is bestowed by knowledge of the Truth. Knowledge of any Truth removes the possibility of error or judgment, and thereby eliminates one’s freedom.

The enslavement by falsehood or ignorance can be replaced by another falsehood or error that provides for more freedom than the original lie or error did. However, no such alternative exists for the Truth. That is an absolute and does not brook dissembling or evasion.

While the truth is unknown one has the freedom to take various actions, many of which will be based on false premises. These opportunities represent a freedom that falsehood or ignorance provides. A person, innocent of Truth, can do many things; one’s choices may well be near boundless.

Once one knows a truth one can no longer dissemble or evade the consequences of that knowledge. It is a thing that is. The choices one has are now chained by that Truth. To act differently is to act in willful error.

All life is conflict; there is no peace this side of the grave.

— jonolan

All living things are in a state of conflict with other living things. Even plants struggle against each other for sunlight, water and soil. The natural cycle of predation is a very basic and primal example of the constant struggle between lifeforms for their very survival.

There is also the even more basic struggle the living engage in with their environment. The old adage of “adapt or die” is a perfect summation of this struggle to adapt to changing conditions that are at odds with a creature’s or plant’s continued survival.

Among people these primal conflicts are often expanded into conflicts over wealth, status and power. No longer just a struggle for survival, the conflict turned into wars of ideologies as Man grew to think beyond his immediate fleshly needs.

Finally there is Man’s internal conflict – his struggle with himself. The unrelenting struggle Man engages in with himself will outlast all other forms of conflict that he engages in and will continue until death.

While it is a truism that a man without fear is a man without hope, it is a truth that a man without hope is a man without fear.

— jonolan

Hope is the belief or faith that an individual’s circumstances will improve, or at least not deteriorate further. This allows for the existence of the awareness of- and concern about consequence. A man who possesses some hope for his future is necessarily concerned about the potential negative impacts of his actions; he will not make a habit of engaging in potentially self damaging acts without at least some concern and trepidation. The lack of such hope removes the specter of negative consequence from a man’s mind and leaves him free to take such actions as he will without restraint.

Most men who lack hope are sunk in apathy; the lack of fear is concomitant with a lack of motivation, so that the individual tends to initiate few activities. These people are essentially passive, but may respond in unexpected and unrestrained manner to externally imposed stimuli. Some men however respond to the lack of hope with perilous vigor. They undertake courses of action that engender great change and greater danger to all those unlucky enough to surround them.

Do not fear strong men. Fear weak men; they will cause more harm through their failures than the strong will ever cause by their successes.

— jonolan

While strong people have the will and the powers to directly effect change their strength has a basis in action and therefore must be brought to bear on a subject to be effective. The actions of the strong can be tracked and in most cases predicted. This allows a person to either adapt to- or mitigate any personally harmful effects from the actions of the strong.

Weak people do not have the will and the powers to directly effect change, but they have a nearly immeasurable capacity to cause harm to those around them through either their attempts to take action or their complete failure to take any action at all. Attempting to predict or mitigate the harmful effects of such failures is exceedingly difficult and consumes much of the efforts of any society.

Strength must be measured by both will and power and must always be viewed within the context of the given situation and environment. A thug with a handgun and the will to use it may well be considered strong in the immediate context of a mugging, but that same thug must be considered weak in the context of his society because he lacks the will and power to effect any changes on that scale.

In the alley the thug’s power can be adapted to or mitigated in many ways depending on the training, fitness and preparedness of his potential victims. On the other hand, the negative effects of this thug’s weakness and resulting failed actions and failures to act on the society as whole are far harder to accurately predict and to mitigate.