It may well be argued that one of the greatest drives the human species possesses is the desire to search for truth and thereby begin to understand the nature of reality.  It strikes me as curious, then, when I observe so many of my fellow human beings clinging to anachronisms, afraid to look around lest they see something that may challenge what they choose, or have been trained, to believe to be true.  "Truth" is simply the best explanation we have for a situation that, when we apply all of the knowledge available to us, cannot be refuted.  Since new discoveries are adding to that pool of knowledge on a continual basis, it follows that today's truth will only hold until a better explanation comes along and yesterday's truth should already be considered suspect.  Certainly, if you examine the field of mathematics you'll recognize some truths that have been with us for centuries, but how many more have been replaced in that time?  The earth is neither flat nor is it the center of the universe, although if you choose to believe so that is entirely up to you.

This brings me to the axiomatic nature of truth.  Many people will argue that truth is something subjective; stating that what is true for one person is not necessarily true for another.  What they are referring to here, however, is not truth but belief.  Believing something to be true is, indeed, a subjective position, but it has little to do with what may actually be true.  Belief in something, especially when that belief is supported by a peer group, may be comforting to a person but it requires that person, that human being, to abdicate thinking and eventually atrophies their ability to reason.  Truth is clearly not subjective but highly objective.

Is it really human nature to cling to comfortable ideologies, embracing them as traditional and sacred?  No, that is a cultural concept arising from a desire to be an accepted member of a particular group.  Individual search for truth is often discouraged by our various cultures who train its members from early childhood to repress that innate drive in favor of following the collective creed.  For millennia groups have been able to suppress and withhold new information from reaching its membership, but not today.  With such free access it follows that more and more humans will now begin to question the so called truths they have been raised with and recognize that there is no such thing as a universal truth, that all truths are both objective and transient, and learn to embrace their humanity.


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