The Trickster of Truth

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Or so said Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Vikid was on his favorite armchair, contemplating these words when The Trickster of Truth, also know as Tot appeared. He was a slippery creature, ever changing in shape. Sometimes animal, sometimes machine, at others just a voice from the dead.

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“Ha ha, fool”, he sneered, “You were never free, not even in birth and you never will be!”

“You call yourself The Vikid Truth but all anyone sees is The Fool of Falsity.”

“You have been a student of Nonduality and Postmodernism, yet you think of Truth, which doesn’t exist.”

“Silly word games you play. I can speak in any language you dream, even in binary. Change your name and hang in shame!”

“Talk to me so I can send you into an endless confusion. Do you dare to challenge me?”

Vikid sat up, hand on chin and said,

“I care not for your form or the lingo you speak, come and join me inside of my think.”

“I have been a wildly confused dude, lost in The Eternity from which I emerged a friend of The Queen of Infinity.”

“I battle THE DOOM and their demon envoys who wish to banish Truth in favor of Chaos.”

Tot laughed belly distended and vanished straight inside Vikid’s head.

“So I am here with you, inside your imagination, you will not even know your thoughts from Tot the Imposter!”

“Tot will be in your Thoughts!”, he jested in a comical Irish accent.

The tricky devil was trying to use Vikid to fight Vikid.

Now every thought of Vikid could be Vikid or Tot himself!

“So, how do I decide what is True?”, Vikid thought.

“Nothing is True”, his tots reverberated.

“I look at the news and everything is contradictory”

“Chocolate gives you cancer. Chocolate is an antioxidant.”

“Quacines saved the world from deadly diseases, Quacines are the prime cause of cancer. Now increasing at exponential rates.”

“Germ Theory. Terrain Theory.”

“Russia Bad. Russia Good. America Bad. America Good.”

“Socialism is Justice. Socialism causes immeasurable Poverty.”

“Greed is a sin. Greed is the engine that drives everything we have, without which we would still be cavemen.”

“Carnivore Diet Best. Vegan Best”

And on and on it goes.

“Hmm”, he thought,

“There must be a way out of this mess…”

Natural Philosophy which matured to what we now call Science was one way our ancestors worked on a system to discern The Truth

They did it by comparing Ideas (Tots in our Head) to Nature and seeing how closely they corresponded.

If an idea led to accurate predictions about what happened in Nature, we could call that Truth. If not we discarded the Tot as False.

However, something new had turned up. It was related to complexity and chaos. It turned out that most systems in nature can’t be sorted out this way. Small changes to initial conditions could lead to massive changes in outcomes

Thus for example, chocolate could indeed be good for one man, while being deleterious to the next. Or outcomes could depend on various factors such as quality, time of consumption, quantities, genetics, etc.

We could indeed create any study that came up with any result we wanted.

And do it legitimately.

Social policies enacted in one jurisdiction could be brilliant, and the same policies enacted 10 miles away could lead to disaster.

The Holy Bible in the hands of one priest could end up with a happy parish, and the same text in the hands of another could end up with corruption.

Who was thinking Vikid did not know but now he understood that Truth as a concept only applied to very simple systems.

What we needed was a grander vision.

Something greater than Truth.

Vikid had a thought, or was it Tot?

The word was “Love”.

“Love! Bejeezus! You darn idiot!”, a voice came. He knew not from who.

“Are you seriously going to walk around and tell people that Love is the Answer?”

Fool!

It did sound ridiculous at first sight but as Vikid started to go deeper he understood.

We base our lowest understanding on Truth. The simplest of things. Like what happens if you walk of a cliff. But as the complexity of the world increases we need to ascend in thinking. We need to take everything in and assess the whole situation from an open position.

The true problem:

Everyone wants a Quick Answer.

But

Love is Endless Engagement.

Love is not an Answer.

Love is listening to all sides with a open heart.

Love is listening to who you despise with charitable interpretation.

Love is understanding your enemy.

Love is becoming your enemy.

Because the world is not simple.

It was the hardest thing to do but if you wanted Truth, Deep Truth, that was what was required.

Vikid had faced this problem with many friends. With himself too.

He would share a video or an article. The friend wouldn’t get past the first minute or sentence and declare,

“The person is an idiot, he said X, which is clearly wrong. I can’t engage with such an idiot. Vikid why do fall for such propaganda? Why do you waste time with such fools?”

Vikid couldn’t understand because he was the biggest fool.

The truth, he now understood, is that the very best thing you can do in life is listen to fools!

That was the magic key.

That was actually Love.

Because when you listen to fools extensively, you understand something that all smart people miss. You understand how others think. You understand what they think. You understand why they think, what they do.

And Reality, Human Reality, is what others think.

What they think directs their feelings.

How they feel directs their actions.

Not the glass tower of pristine logic produced by smart people.

But this requires time and an open heart. It required being a fool, along with the rest of us fellow fools.

Spending Time understanding fools and enemies, directly.

Directly, means, to the person directly, not a news media’s report on what they said.

Not the 5 second clip. No. Their direct words in full. Be it 30 mins or 2 hrs.

That is True Love.

The real problem with modernity wasn’t our technology, social media, it wasn’t finance, it wasn’t “capitalism”, racism or any other epithet.

It was the need for a quick answer - in a complex world, ever changing, fractal in its very nature. Where Truth and Falsity intermingle, producing children who intermingle, Ad Infinitum.

The only thing capable of handling this was Love.

Love being,

Direct Openhearted Engagement. (DOE)

So Vikid thought a Tot.

“DOE a dear, a female dear, Fa, a long long way to run…”

Or was it Tot who Tot the Thought?

It didn’t matter anymore.

Vikid and Tot were One…

And that’s,

The Vikid Truth

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