The Truth We Sell

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

But this all points to direct face to face verification somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash basis whatever. You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade each other’s truth. But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure

William James wrote those thoughts in his 1906 essay, Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth. Truth does have its own type of value system. We want to believe each other, but there is a deep sense of doubt that surrounds our desire to believe. It seems the truth we sell has been discounted by own idea of worth. We have an enormous amount of influences and associations attached to our version of truth. If any of those elements are in question, the truth created by them is considered suspect.

Our truth may not be fact. It may be fiction, but we still believe and live it. We live it because it has mental structure. That mental structure becomes real. It gives us hope and faith, and those emotional unknowns are the foundation of our time-motivated knowing. Without faith and hope no one would buy the truth we sell because they are the primary influences within our truth. But even after we sell our truth there is a constant influence at work which alters it in some way.

That influence is our innate knowing. Innate knowing is the foundation for all truth. Our internal timeless clock separates the fabric of our subjective truth and then mends and shapes it into another suit of truth. Once that suit of truth is ready for sale, we offer it to our faithful and hopeful bidders. The successful bidders then wear that truth as a belief. They, in turn, sell, trade and barter those beliefs. When they do, they feel the rewards associated with physically feeling the effects of their prize influences--- hope and faith.