It was a good
mirror when the times were bright
Reflecting
upon thoughts that had no trace
Of a cloud,
clarity had given it grace
That could
even to unfathomable night
Impart contents
in big measures of light.
But the winds
changed and what was a cool face
Turned into
falsehood’s, as though the twisting ways
Got ensnared,
perhaps, in deconstruction’s blight.
I have
friends over there, and they are wise,
And they
speak of critical subjectivity
And ontology,
in a language to them
Only known. In
that reasoning enterprise
It’s Platonic
cave viewed by a mind snooty
That suffers
fake idea’s ill-bred claim.
RY Deshpande
19 July 2009
"Time
Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy" by François le Moyne ...
Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy by François
le Moyne (1737)
Oil on canvas, 149 x 114 cm, enlarged to 181 x 148 cm
Wallace Collection,
What we see here is reflection in the Mirror of
Tomorrow. However, in the Mirror of Falsehood it is the other way round: Truth
is abducted by Falsehood and Evil working together, they vanquishing Time
which, obviously, you can’t see here.
And here’s Plato’s Cave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2afuTvUzBQ
Some snippets
about Truth
# Great is Truth and it shall triumph.
# In Judaism, truth is represented as an ultimate
ethical value both for the individual and for society as a whole. The rabbis
teach, "The world stands on three things, on truth, on Justice, and on Peace"
(Avot 1:18), for where there is
truth, justice will necessarily follow and then will come peace—the greatest
blessing for society. A similar idea is expressed in a comment on emet, the Hebrew word for truth,
containing the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet; this is
taken to indicate that from beginning to end, all basic personal and social
values are ideally built on truth. In Jewish ethics, truth is bracketed with
other supreme human values.
# Sigmund Freud's notion of truth evolved from a
factual conception into a relativistic method where the true and the false are
defined both in relation to a conventional and bounded space (that of the cure)
and the dynamic effects that "plausible" constructions might have on
the psyche. Truth as an ideal is inseparable from psychoanalytic inquiry and is
unattainable, except partially in the "nuclei" of truth present
within individual and collective distortions.
The notion of truth in psychoanalysis is tied to the
history the subject, in the same way as it is to humanity, because it is not
simply a case of a balance between understanding and the thing, but of a
narrative that is reconstructed using the residues left behind by legend.
# The worst feature of ignorance, Plato tells us, is
self-satisfaction. "For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is
neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire
for that of which he feels no want." (Symposium)
# Self-love, Plato recognizes, sees its own ignorance as wisdom; it seeks no
cure, "the soul wallowing in the mire of every sort of ignorance and by
reason of lust becomes the principal accomplice in her own captivity." (Phaedo) It will not let a more competent
person perform what he can. Ignorance can only be overcome by an outside force
of true wisdom.
# Plato describes ignorance as the "greatest of diseases" and says
that "the excessive love of self is in reality the source in each man of
all offences; for the lover is blinded about the beloved, so that he judges
wrongly of the just, the good, and the honorable, and thinks that he ought
always to prefer himself to the truth. (Phaedo)
# Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so
established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it. Blaise Pascal
# By the Truth the saints lead the sun; by askesis the
saints uphold the earth; the past, present and future find their refuge in the
saints Noble persons in the midst of saints have never any grief. (Vayas’s Savitri)
#
The face of the Truth is covered by a golden lid. (Isha Upanishad)
# By the Truth they held the Truth that holds all, in
the might of the sacrifice, in the supreme ether, they who reached the gods
seated in the law that is the upholder of heaven, reached by the godheads born
the unborn. (Rig Veda V:15:2)