Wizard's First Rule

"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool. ...
People need an enemy to feel a sense of purpose. It's easy to lead people when they have a sense of purpose. Sense of purpose is more important by far than the truth. In fact, truth has no bearing in this...
People are stupid; they want to believe, so they do."
—Wizard's First Rule Chapter 36, p.560, U.S. paperback edition, Available on Amazon or BN.com

The first rule as told in the first of Terry Goodkind's supreme series, "The Sword of Truth".  Like most fantasy or science fiction books, the book is more than just magic or weird creatures, it has a point.  Each of the books is centered around one of these great philosophical observations regarding the nature of reason or truth.  Over the duration of this blog, I'll undoubtedly focus on the other rules, a set of which I have posted next to my computer screen as a general set of rules for life.   As I sit contemplating recent events, this text in particular rose to my mind and I'll attempt to break it down segment by segment.

I believe people ultimately do care about the truth, but as this passage points out, people don't want to admit that the truth they have might not be the only truth.  I say this fully aware that I am in fact a Catholic Conservative type that might not be automatically thought to acknowledge such philosophy, but this is perhaps the first and most terrible conceit - believing that we, personally, know something when reason might tell us otherwise.  If we are to concede that God is Truth, then the converse must also be true - no truth can exist outside of Him.  But as part of that, we must concede something else, and perhaps something far worse in our fallen state - we are not God and accordingly, we might not have all truth such as it is. Now, none of this is to present an agnostic point of view in any way shape or form - the universe seems to want to constantly acknowledge bits of itself and bits other than itself at all levels and this acknowledgement indicates knowledge and therefore truth such as it is.

Let us now cast our minds to the aspect regarding the creation of an enemy and thereby the creation of a sense of purpose.  We all do it - we create enemies all around us and in so doing often miss the truest enemy of all (who incidentally uses a rather appropriate title "Father of Lies").  The creation of enemies is convenient, it helps us distinguish ourselves from others and is perhaps derivative of that early mental state achieved by older babies and young toddlers.  More importantly, it does contribute that sense of purpose to what we do.  But this creates a problem in and of itself as it contributes to that earliest curse of alienation from each other.  And yet, we must overcome it.  One of the most interesting things about the Life of the Christ was how profoundly he looked around and sought out the true enemies.  The enemies were not those that necessarily inconvenienced us the most (such as tax collectors or the unclean) but rather those that made us believe we were in some way better than everyone else or we could judge others without due process.

The world in which we live is rife we all of these things.  In my own patron city, Washington, I can tell you that people exploit this inclination of people to believe a particular lie or half truth because people are often afraid of a truth that is often more complicated than any simple lie.  Both sides do it and both sides acknowledge it occurs (albeit never on their side).

In my own personal situation, I find that certain members of my circles have some mistaken beliefs based upon limited information.  I fully acknowledge that they believe what they say, but this presents a wider warning - we must be careful not to ignore evidence to the contrary of what we believe.  In fact I feel for these people, after all it must be difficult to be doing what they're doing to put relationships on the line in pursuit of a belief.  But I hope and pray that we might seek out the truth, being willing to acknowledge it wherever it is to be found.

In the end, I believe we must do what a Jesuit taught me early in my HS days, "Question everything.  Never be afraid to question, but when you do follow it through don't stop at the question go through to the conclusion.  Truth will always withstand aggressive questioning, provided the research is done."