And the truthiness shall set you free by Kenneth Kidd, The Toronto Star

[applegrove]

And the truthiness shall set you free
`Feeling' the truth might be as good as thinking it
Dec. 17, 2006. 01:00 AM
KENNETH KIDD
FEATURE WRITER
The Toronto Star


Long before Stephen Colbert happened along to give the world "truthiness" — voted last week as word of the year in a poll by Merriam-Webster's dictionary — there was a certain Pontius Pilate, circa the first century A.D., who is said to have asked a relevant and seemingly urgent question: "What is truth?"

He never did get an answer, which is scarcely surprising since, in the ensuing 2,000 years, we've yet to provide anything like a simple one.

Theories abound, of course, "Truth" being the big game for hunter-philosophers — the definitional trophy everyone would love to hang in their study, just above a brass plate with his or her name on it.

Any philosopher worth his salt has tackled the issue. There's the ancient "correspondence theory" (Plato, Aristotle; a proposition is true if it corresponds with the real world), and "coherence theories" (a variety, most of which say statements are true if they "cohere" with other statements accepted as true), and even a "consensus theory" (if most of us agree something is true, then it is).

..........SNIP"

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[pretzel4gore]

1. truth is the footprints that facts make...

remembering the clinton impeachment spectacle years ago, i recall nazipoohs/freepers/gopigs etc always saying the point was not the act itself but the lying, and it only takes a minute to realize that even in this the freepers were being dishonest (see the Arkansaw Project). the problem is, to get them to admit it would take capturing them and subjecting them to 'productive interrogation' using thumbscrew/waterboard or whatever.
Basically, human society works on some basic premises, that 2 reasonable members, even if opponents, still value truth and live/work accordingly. The neocons and their henchmen have seen any willingness to compromise or agree on anything as fatal weakness to be exploited:

"Lying is an accursed vice. It is only our words which bind us together and make us human. If we realized the horror and weight of lying, we would see that it is more worthy of the stake than other crimes...Once let the tongue acquire the habit of lying and it is astonishing how impossible it is to make it give it up" - Montaigne
from pg 71 of Gore Vidal's 'Dreaming War, blood for oil...etc'

[applegrove]

2. Very true. I like the part where they say that the people who know

the truth, or are closest to it, are good with their emotions.