I found an old journal of mine a while ago.
Fourth grade booklet, spiral bound.
“I wonder where I came from,” I wrote. “If I were to ask an average person, their reply would most likely be ‘you were born from your mom and dad. Duh.’ No, that isn’t the answer that I’m looking for. No, who am I really? What am I?”
And on one hand I’m thinking, “Okay, little Amanda. Way to be a thinker.”
And on the other, I’m saying, “Please just go to the playground.”
I wonder what nine year old me would think if I called her today and told her that I was still asking her exact questions.
I grew up in an extremely conservative religious setting, which will be lovingly dubbed Cult School.
Cult School heard little Amanda’s existentialism, and told her to pray more.
As I prayed more, I thought:
What is this, really?
Senior year of high school, I was assigned an essay on CS Lewis. I wrote:
“Humanity has a tendency towards numbness. We don’t want to feel pain, or fear, or anything negative. We choose not to feel in a variety of different ways- be that drinking, drugs, or even religion. I wonder if we’d rather believe in Jesus than a potential reality that nothing matters at all.
I don’t want to believe in the Bible or what CS Lewis hypothesized just because I was told to. I want to believe in the truth. And what if the truth isn’t what they say?”
Cult School wasn’t too big of a fan of that one.
And this opened more questions for me:
What is the truth?
How do you define truth?
Is it better to believe what’s helpful over what is true?
Plato speaks about this in The Republic, Book III. He calls it the “noble lie.”
The noble lie is an overarching myth that exists to unite a people group and better society as a whole. Without this, the society would fall into meaninglessness.
Using a ridiculous example in practice, it looks a bit like this:
A whole city believes wholeheartedly that Santa is real. Due to this, they are happy and find a sense of purpose. They act morally because they believe they will be rewarded by him. They find joy in feeling like they’re making him proud.
Without Santa, they’d significantly decrease in happiness, morality, and productivity. They’d still be okay, but with decreased output and increased nihilism.
If you know for a fact that Santa doesn’t exist, do you tell them the truth?
Do you risk the crisis they’ll feel without him? What if they’re better off believing?
I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this one.
What purpose is God truly serving in western civilization today?
Is it helpful or is it true?
And again, not to discredit the joy of faith, the peace of following His will, and the sense of order in being virtuous.
But rather to emphasize the pros of the noble lie.
Who are we, really?
I’ve been trying to work on my thoughts on that.
I don’t enjoy the idea of being subjects continually being fed a narrative so as to stay submissive. I hope the truth isn’t that.
Hegel had some thoughts that I’ve been resonating with. While Plato’s noble lie explored intentional untruths by those in power for the collective good, Hegel’s “Geist” theorizes that humanity will collectively progress toward truth and good naturally.
To Hegel, humanity is one conscious entity, evolving throughout history to freedom and higher self awareness. This collective is what he calls “Geist.”
In 1/100, I explored the idea of “the history of humanity passing the baton forward into the future.” For Hegel, that is the evolution of Geist.
As Geist progresses, truth is achieved through a continual debate (dialectic) within humanity: a thesis, an antithesis, and ultimately a synthesis.
We can easily see this in a variety of revolutions throughout the world: an oppressor, the oppressed, a revolt, and resulting gained freedom.
To Hegel, these dialectic processes are consciousness experiencing itself, moving toward absolute understanding. Absolute Geist.
Who are we?
What is our capacity for truth really?
Geist is treading new territory lately.
I watched the political debate the other day, and I felt myself fluctuating between Plato and Hegel’s theories.
I opened social media, and I watched Geist exploring itself through a medium neither ever saw.
In my opinion, Geist is experiencing itself at unprecedented rates.
Online discourse: thesis, antithesis, thesis, antithesis. I wonder how we’ll synthesize, and I guess we’ll only know fully in retrospect.
More interconnected than ever, subject to an influx of information- truth and lies alike.
As we move forward, it is evident to me that it’s our belief systems that shape who we are and how we function as a whole.
I’m inclined to side with Geist on this one. I believe that we are destined as a collective to discover who we are, regardless of which lies are thrown at us (noble and otherwise).
I’m also just a twenty three year old with a surface level understanding of philosophy and a blog.
A subjective Geist, if you will.
Open to hearing your thoughts.
Here’s to moving toward truth- however you define that.
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