In an old movie called The Gods Must Be Crazy a light plane pilot throws a coke bottle from his window and it hits an African Native on the head. The African Native hasn’t had much to do with western culture and thinks it came from God. He decides it might be a weapon because when he hits people with it, it hurts.
Most know it as a coke bottle. However, the ‘truth’ is that it’s both and neither at the same time. It’s what you make it to be. There is no absolute truth just versions/stories of truth.
You might be saying to yourself that education removes the ignorance and science reveals the truth but even then the reality is limited by the language and measurement capability you are able to use to describe, measure and classify things like a coke bottle. The coke bottle is silica it’s not a coke bottle. The coke bottle is atoms. Nope, it’s a string theory construct. Not it’s not. We may never know the truth that many of us seek.
Get the drift? No truth, no reality.
The good news. This means Santa is real! Yep I let my kids choose that if they want. Knowing this truth, that there is no truth makes life a joy! It allows you to be a creator of your own world how you want it to be, a God like power.
Inspired by some other good posts on Santa by Rosemary , Lance and Rowan
I like your example of the coke bottle. Truth, it seems to me, is just like you illustrate with infinite layers of deeper understanding. But I would suggest rather than saying there is no truth there instead is truth (reality) but we can only glimpse it. There are countless examples of things where glimpsing it is quite sufficient. It is true to say that there are tree in California. One cannot just make up truth and say there are no trees in California without being considered a little dangerous. To tell your children they can just believe what ever they want is also very dangerous. We should remain open to all possibilities but use a scale of probability to determine if invisible pink unicorns or santa exists. Why waste our time devoting our lives to delusions when we could be really trying to get a better understanding of reality? Or easing suffering? Thanks again for your post.
I agree blatantly accepting anything as truth its dangerous, nearly as dangerous as when people declare they have the truth and everyone else is wrong….
I’m just saying there are some things where it wont hurt anyone and while it cannot be proved Santa doesn’t exist it’s ok to let my kids believe. After all he is real, his name is St. Nicholas. He was a real person, a Christian who received great wealth from inheritance and gifted it to the poor. Sure the story has changed over the years a lot, that’s just the magic you add to make a good story. Everything is just a story while the truth isn’t know. The Atom was a story, it wasn’t the smallest particle. The earth being square was a story etc. I’ll post an after thought. Thanks for your comment!