What Do We Believe and Why?
Is there such a thing as truth?
ADDENDUM: I have just finished listening to the CHD interview posted today by Meryl Nass, M.D. in which she discussed WHO & related matters with James Corbett. This interview is such a great example of the issues I address in this present post. They talk about the various words, names, and phrases that are used to disguise what the globalists are actually up to. Give it a listen!
The past three years have been a time of unprecedented censorship of public discourse about medical disease and treatment. Obviously most Americans have been accepting the information provided by ‘mainstream’ sources whether governmental agencies, news organizations, tech giants, advertising campaigns, and the like. Cracks are appearing and we can only hope that day-by-day, we may help others to see what we believe to be the truth of our situation.
So what EXACTLY does that word ‘truth’ mean? What does it describe? Is it fixed/stable or does it change? How are we to sort this out?
On the surface you may be thinking, it’s not difficult, we are just talking ‘about the way things are.’ Not a bad starting point, ‘the way things are’ is a phrase that means ‘truth’ is an accurate description or quality of the thing we are considering. We can speak of TRUTH as having a correspondence with reality, with ‘the way things are.’ Within our understanding of some thing, there are aspects or qualities that we may know something about as well as things we don’t. ‘Water’ is a word that doesn’t create much controversy, but there are physical & chemical properties that a scientist may understand that the ‘average man on the street’ may not. But that man can still know truth about water.
As we use language to describe this concept, we are using rules of logic that are so basic you may not realize their presence. For example, if we have a proposition ‘A’ it cannot also be ‘not-A’ at the same time. To give an example, take the proposition “ the SAR-2 virus exists.” Now some people argue this is not true, and I am not dealing with biology now, but logic. Logically we cannot say “the virus exists” and “the virus does not exist” at the same time & with the same context. This is called ‘the law of non-contradiction’ which you use on a daily basis! When you look up at the traffic light, it is either GREEN or it is not-GREEN. You make your decision based on that assessment of reality.
WAIT! Don’t tune out yet, it gets better!
This is truly important because of what has happened in educational systems and largely in our culture with corruption of meaning in language. Have you ever heard the expression ‘what’s true for you doesn’t have to be true for me.’ Depending on how this is meant, we have a problem! If it is dealing with an objective fact, that simply cannot be true. If you both have a ‘different reality’ of the traffic light, driving is going to be very interesting. Often people will make up their own definitions which does avoid the logic trap, but beware – truth is not an opinion.
Mathematics provides a clear example, if we add two quantities together there is only one correct answer. Sometimes people introduce ‘truth’ in a way where opinion is valid: that occurs with subjective taste or preference. ‘What is your favorite color?’ has only one truthful answer if the person has a favorite color, but there is no universal standard. If you ask how many teams there are in the NBA, there is one objective true answer. If you ask who is the best – this moves towards the subjective, that of preference. Now they have playoffs to determine a champion, and at least through the playoffs a ‘best’ is determined, but this adds another aspect: what does ‘best’ mean?
Are we speaking of what team is most capable of outscoring the other team at a given place & time? What if someone is saying they are ‘best’ because their members do the most charity work? Or perhaps Greta would say her favorite is the team that produces the least carbon emissions throughout their season! So words can have different meanings or contexts. Before I elaborate on that, let’s take a brief side-trip.
OBJECTIVE versus SUBJECTIVE
When we are dealing with offering value statements or judgments about something, we must delineate these two categories. Objective properties are properties in the object itself: temperature, mass, density and the like are objective physical properties of an object, not based on anything you or I (the subject) thinks. This example I heard long ago which I really like: a jar of jellybeans sits on a table. Here are two questions:
How many jellybeans are in the jar?
What is the best flavor of jellybeans in the jar?
The first question is about an objective property, the number in the jar. There is only one correct answer to that, and it depends not us as subjects examining the jar, but on the jellybeans themselves. Now I realize that even this example comes dangerously near to heresy, at least given how votes have been counted in some elections! But, setting aside that example, we know there is only one correct answer to ‘how many.’
What about best flavor? This is a subjective assessment, it is not an inherent property in the jellybean but in you as the subject who is rating the jellybeans. We could objectively talk about qualities such as color, sweetness, sour and the like, all of which influence your perception of ‘best’ but it is still ultimately a subjective assessment.
I will come back and address the importance of this later, but for the moment, just bear in mind these two perspectives.
UNIVOCAL versus EQUIVOCAL
This brings me an issue I have been trying to clarify for some that seems to create conflict. When we ask for meanings or definitions of words, there can be one meaning or there can be more than one meaning. Uni (one) vocal (from vocare – to call out, vocalize) so univocal means “one voice” or one meaning. Equi (like equal) vocal means ‘equal voices’ or essentially ‘more than one voice’ not equal in meaning, but another meaning. We speak of someone “equivocating” when we ask a direct question & get the run around. Listen to a White House press conference with tough questions & you will hear many equivocations, or ‘weasel-words’ in a pejorative sense.
My intent is not implying motive, but to point out a problem I have observed. There have been a lot of discussions about diseases & diagnoses during COVID – certainly contributed to by the odd data showing virtually no influenza. But the word I am concerned with is PNEUMONIA. This word keeps being used by people as though it is a word with only one meaning (univocal) when there are actually different meanings.
Attributing COVID deaths to pneumonia is vague, and it can mean several things. In a typical viral pneumonia (an infection down in the air exchange parts of the lungs) if a person gets worse & dies, it is USUALLY due to a secondary bacterial pneumonia. In other words when the lungs are suffering pathological processes caused by a virus, this can produce fertile ground for airway bacteria to cause a serious infection – a secondary bacterial pneumonia. This is treated with whatever antibiotics the bacteria are sensitive to.
In the early days of COVID the information out of Italy was quite concerning to me. People were not dying of a secondary bacterial pneumonia as might happen with influenza, but from a severe inflammatory state producing swelling, fibrosis, and tissue destruction. It was not because Streptococcal bacterial got down there. This extreme inflammatory disease combined with the severe coagulopathy are all the evidence I need to believe there has been a novel (=new) pathogen, contrary to those who do not believe there has been anything new. The descriptions provided by Drs Marik, Kory, and others doing Critical Care medicine make this case.
When one looks at statistics & sees “COVID deaths attributed to pneumonia” a mistake is in reading this to mean “they didn’t have COVID, they had pneumococcal pneumonia” which is not correct. Pneumonia is used generically on such data, it could mean a variety of different causes, “pneumonia” being a label for ‘final common pathway to pulmonary death.’ I encourage you to keep this in mind when you look at data & listen to people discussing these issues.
So hopefully we can agree as a starting point that ‘TRUE’ information is something externally validated (not an internal, subjective ‘opinion’ that relies on personal factors) and also, although I have not actually addressed this yet, that we can know truth. Not all truth, but we are capable of evaluating & discerning some truth about our world. The next step to address is ‘why’ we believe something to be true. It is my hope that we can all discuss & encourage one another in thinking more clearly about whatever topic is up for discussion. This ought to be totally unnecessary but in a world where saying “2 + 2 = 4” has been termed ‘racist’ I want to make sure we have a common ground for discussion.
You would really like Dr Douglas Jenkinson, of whooping cough fame.