Definitions

The question isn't whether or not we need truth to live; the question is whether life without truth is worth living...

I heard that somewhere recently, or read it, or something. My immediate response was one of all out rejection and contempt. I will always prefer my particular delusion over any type of empirical truth, no matter how unpopular or how refutable by logic or science thank you very much. Drag me over hot coals and into a lava flow and I will believe I am simply going for a lazy swim until the last of my cerebral cortex is consumed by the molten rock. But, that's nothing unusual. People always choose whichever delusion serves them best. It's like a natural law or something.

I find it ironic that in the movie The Matrix, we are asked to believe that everything we have ever known is a delusion. I did choose to suspend reality, for a moment, and believe that a subterranean society exists in the real world, and all humans are actually batteries powering the ubiquitous population of machines that have conquered our world. Even if this were, in fact, the actual truth, we would still need to be tricked into knowing it through some very clever delusions and mediocre acting. Then, we all return to our pseudo-reality as we walk out of the movie theater and go about our lives, remembering that actually we are nothing but chunks of flesh and bone trapped in billions of slimy cocoons and thanking the writers of The Matrix for making our delusion that much more convincing and intricate. After watching that movie, with a frosting of reality television, we might even be more immune to discovering any vestige of fact-based truth among this grand fantasy of ours. But, some contend truth does, nonetheless, exist, so let's explore...

Let's look at something everyone believes is true...money. We use it every day to acquire things and to snort coke. I always thought money was one of those real, actual things. Then, I realized it is an arbitrary thing whose value changes based on the decisions of very over-rated specialists; specialists who specialize in being popular with large masses of people rather than economics. The fact that our money is a lie is not even a fact our government tries to hide. It is well known that the US dollar is a fiat currency. In Latin, Fiat means "let it be." In terms that could be understood by most humans, that actually means bullshit. Money, my friends, is a delusion as sure as The Matrix.

To make a long story short, money is just one of the things that I personally used to think was real and now know is not.

But then, if everything we formerly thought was true ends up being a delusion, consider the ramifications. Since the word "truth" still exists, we simply need to look at the relative truth of the things that we once thought were not. In other words, since money is a delusion, doesn't this make movies like The Matrix just a little more true by definition?

It's Friday and I have beer to drink, or I would digress...