Is Everything a Lie? 2805.1 to 2826 Miles: 12/30/14

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Virtual Hike Animated Street View Today's Weather This southbound leg in North Western South Dakota may be the straightest 30 miles or so on the entire route. Each frame in the animated street view looks almost like the frame before. For some reason, I enjoy stretches of road like this.

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Introduction

Today's post may seem unrelated to road walking. However, what a person thinks while road walking is a major part of the experience. 

Note to self: wear long underwear and mittens when
it's below 10 degrees

Is Everything a Lie?

Someone I know shared a post on Facebook that said Monsanto lost $156 million last quarter. The truth is they made about $2.74 billion. The person who posted said, "Come on Ben, you know lying is the new truth in America!" 

How will people react if this is true? I'm beginning to think it is true that people on both sides of the political spectrum lie. Often it is not intentional. They pass on a lie from someone they thought was telling the truth. Eventually it becomes what people believe.

The Kedushat Levi has an answer: "For whoever is false, nobody will desire to do anything with them, even business or speaking with them." I've been noticing I'm withdrawing from contact with others as there isn't much truth out there. For all the feel good posts on Facebook, I see others withdrawing. 

The Kedushat Levi goes on to say: "If it was possible for the world to be established without truth, a person would not arouse themselves to come to truth."

This is hard to grasp without knowing the whole book. I'll restate it. If the relationships between causes and effects disintegrate, then people will stop seeking these relationships. 

College is an example of this. It used to be going to college and getting good grades in a reasonable major had the effect of a good job. This relationship has disappeared. The truth of college has disappeared, so kids aren't going. The new truth is no matter how hard someone works, they will likely get a minimum wage job. There are exceptions, but not enough to make going to college a truth.

There is a hidden meaning in the word established. Established in this context means to bring into permanent existence. Without truth, our society cannot exist permanently. Even without education, people used to be able to find truth by observing causes and effects.  This is no longer the case as the relationship between causes and effects has been severed.

It gets worse. Our deepest need is survival. When people find they can no longer survive by telling the truth, the truth becomes they can only survive by telling lies. The Kedushat Levi also discusses this when explaining the meaning of the name Jacob. Jacob means to act towards others as they act towards you. This includes telling lies. The result is that in order to fight evil, a person must use the same type of evil.

Let's use coaching as an example. I read a post today by a person who obliquely stated that if you used them as a coach, you could make a bundle writing eBooks. All you have to do is write a great book the first time. 

The truth is, this doesn't happen often. Even if it does, the truth is it might be worth a couple hundred dollars a month for a couple years. The truth is, a person has to be in about the top 0.1% of eBook authors to make a living. That's one in a thousand. The truth is, a writer doesn't get there without writing many great books. The truth is, the number of eBooks has almost doubled in the last two years and is increasing by about 78,000 books a month.

I'd be more impressed if the coach had said they could help a writer publish a book they could be proud of. That is reasonably attainable.

Nature has truth. If I go in the wilderness, the wilderness will do what it does. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's beautiful. Sometimes it sends avalanches, etc. But it never lies. Mostly it's benign if a person knows the causes and effects and avoids obvious dangers.

Since falsehood cannot survive, those who live by it cannot survive. Neither can those who try to stay in the false system. The path to survival is to withdraw into those parts of society that are truthful, and they are becoming harder to find.