Schindlersword

the origin of humanity

Substack

Truth, the ultimate

https://beatschindler.substack.com/p/truth

And why it doesn’t work so well

Truth is a word.

The evolution of truth — how the word happened or came about — is a different story entirely, but typical of words, the fact it exists can be denied only by confirming it.

That explains why the one thing everybody agrees is true about true is that it is a word. Everything is a word and nothing is a word, says more about words than a word-user ever could, and truth is simply no exception.

“Call it a dream, it doesn’t change anything.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

That is because we don’t live in a dream world. We live in a word-world.

In the wordless world

In the wordless world, truth doesn’t exist for self-evident reasons.

In the wordy world

In the wordy world, I’m told there are two different types of word-users:

  • Those who are looking for the truth.
  • Those who claim to have found it.

But call it as is, a word, and everything changes. Your interest shifts from trying to understand truth to understand words instead, and when you figure out how truth works, you have the key to how all words work.

Call it a perspective, it doesn’t change anything. Everything we have a word for is.

Pre-internet

Pre-internet, that is back when the truth was off-line and hotly debated, the truth had been just that for thousands of years. For the adults, that was alright because they had gotten used to it, but for the children, caught in the middle of it, it is confusing as hell. Whom to believe?

  • Who claims the truth is in a book they have a copy of, each their own?
  • Who insists the truth is what school is about?
  • Who pretends the wisest and noblest teacher are the wordless, also known as nature, evolution, or the wild?

Post-internet

Post-internet, the truth is everything it was before, however, with a sizeable difference. The internet provides the short-cuts to truth we had, it seems, invented the internet for.

Now, true is “about 4.24 billion results” (Google), “most commonly refers to truth” (Wikipedia), and “connected with facts rather than things that have been invented or guessed” (Oxford Learners Dictionaries), to name just a few of those short-cuts.

Then as now

Then as now, shouts for “Will the real truth please stand up!” is a waste of energy and time. You might as well ask:

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the fairest truth of them all?”

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the fairest truth of them all?”

Things have changed, but the mirrors have remained constant. A mirror will still only tell you who is looking at it, that is what mirrors are for, and the internet cares only about storing as many truths about you as it possibly can.

But what matters to us is for us to decide, each their own, and for many it is like for the children, a decision between black and white. That is all there is, they want you to believe, but my eyes tell me it’s colors everywhere and truth isn’t one of them. And I know I’m not alone, we’re all in this together which explains, I think, why the truth doesn’t work so well.

Fresh perspective

There are no truths here, only words.

What happens next is anybody’s guess. Were I to write, “Look, my friend, we are talking serious business here,” you might respond with, “That is a matter of opinion!” and both of us would be equally spot on. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the truth is a question of character and personal preference, to each their own.

When you see truth as is — a word that never happened — you can let go of it and just deal with people’s points of view and perspectives instead.

However, keep your expectations in check. Letting go of truth won’t simplify your life beyond recognition because that is not how simplification works. Simple isn’t a place you find, it’s a decision you make.

Ditto with truth.

The best you can do is decide to forget about it, and when in the presence of people who claim to have found it, run for cover.

Do animals have ____ (fill in the blank)?

https://beatschindler.substack.com/p/do-animals-have-__-fill-in-the

The unconventional way to simple

People want to know

“Do animals have belly buttons, blood types, cell walls, conscience, culture, empathy, feelings, free will, humor, language, morals, periods, religion, rights, schools, souls, thoughts, or wants?”

These are genuine inquiries on the internet.

Or as Peter Drucker would have it: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

To understand why that is, you must return to when it all began.

In the beginning of the world is the word
In the beginning of you is the word

In the wordless world

In the wordless world, words don’t exist for self-evident reasons. This, we all know from personal experience.

In the wordy world

In the wordy world, we use words to describe other words.

What have words got to do with it?
  • In the wordy world, we have gone from animal to the top of the food chain, the most advanced specie ever, ready for breakfast on Mars, in the most recent 0.0003% of Earth-Time only? Why not earlier?
  • How in the world did the wordless manage without us for the first 99.9997% of Earth-Time?
  • Why are we here? Why are the wordless absent?

What have words got to do with it?

All kinds of things are being said, depending on who is saying them.

Some say the reason we’re here is our upright walk, disposable thumb, naked skin, wisdom, meteorites, aliens, Cambrian explosion, a bang of some size, genes, memes, or any combination thereof. Others insist the universe is written in math and it is our thinking that got us here, but overlooking math and thinking are words, they are barking up the wrong tree.

“Words become works.” – Seneca

Whether a word happened or not doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that it’s true, and you can’t order people what to believe, the word or the word-user, for beliefs are a question of character and personal preference, to each their own. And I think that is a good thing.

Having hit that milestone time and again, I can assure you, when you change the way you look at words, the world changes.

What’s in it for you

Before you knew your first word, you knew how to make yourself from scratch. After you spoke your first, everything was different not because you were different, but because you now had words. It may have taken years, but the moment it happened was still a surprise to you as well as welcome news to those who had been waiting for just that moment to arrive.

“It is true that my parents were worried because I began to speak fairly late. They even consulted a doctor. I can’t say how old I was, but surely no less than three.” – Albert Einstein

That is where your freedom is.

You can simplify your world without having to wait for the world to change first. Instead of asking, “Do animals have words?” you can ask, “Does it have words?” Not only is it a simple question but it also comes with the added benefit of an answer even the word-beginners, also known as children, can understand.

  • “Yes!” means it is one of us and we have everything we have a word for.
  • “No!” means it is wordless.

“To see, we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.” – Claude Monet

Begin

https://beatschindler.substack.com/p/begin

A good place to start.

If you’re new at B@’s perspective, this is a good place to begin. Here’s a bird’s eye view what it is about.

We live in word-world

In the beginning is the word.

In the wordless world, beginning doesn’t exist for self-evident reasons.

The fact can be denied only by confirming it and like it or not, there is nothing we can do about it.

But you can tip the balance in your favor.

We’re conditioned to pay attention to knowing what we’re talking ABOUT. B@’s perspective demands the bulk of your attention to knowing what you’re talking WITH. It makes sense to know the beginning, the benefits of which can be understood only after the fact, but having hit that milestone time and again, I can be your guide.

That is, in a nutshell, what 5 years in the making — B@’s perspective — is about.