Opinion/Editorial
TO BE SERVED COLD

by James Strauss

A fact can never be entirely proven to be fact, simply because there is never going to be enough data available to finally prove anything conclusively. Conclusively is the key word in that sentence.

What everything in life comes down to is something we call belief. There’s an old expression that goes as follows: “we believe in the things we overhear, rather than the things we hear.”
Why is that? Almost everyone reading that sentence will find it to be part of their social belief system. Why?

That subject has long been examined in any number of writings and presentations. If you’ve read the classics, then the name Epictetus might be Epictetusknown to you. He was a Greek stoic. He compared a rational being’s proper approach to life to attending a metaphorical banquet. Paraphrasing (because the language of that early time was so arcane) one should not reach out for the passing dish. You should let it come to you. If you partake of the dish, then feel at ease in doing so, as the dish is passed on. Those dishes prepared especially for you are to be accepted, but their content questioned. What did Epictetus mean? Don’t believe straight away those things you are told. Believe those things that you hear or learn in passing.

How is it that in these modern times the banquet is completely controlled by the media, and the dishes are prepared specifically for each and every one of us? Of what value is truth if each and every truth is delivered on a ‘balanced’ dish. For example, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are presented as equal. However, as that presentation by the media draws the race for the presidency ever closer, both are also presented as liars. No contests or games in America are ever considered great or interesting unless they are close in score, and the final ‘points’ are scored in the last few seconds. How can any truth be arrived at when the presentation of ‘facts’ is being made by forces only concerned with the appearance of the outcome, rather than the substance or nature of the outcome?

Are both Clinton and Trump liars? ‘We hold these truths to be self evident’ is a very popular and wonderful sounding phrase written by Thomas Jefferson in the opening of the Declaration of Independence. Well, in the first draft of that famous Declaration, Jefferson did not use the words ‘self evident.’ He used the word ‘sacred.’ Sacred means to be deserving of veneration, with veneration roughly meaning belief. ‘We know these truths to be those things we want to believe’ might have been a more accurate statement to start off the Declaration, but they might not have been as emotionally stirring. And it took a lot of emotional stirring to get the American colonies to split off from the economically and politically connected empire of Great Britain. Both Clinton and Trump are liars if you believe them to be. And beliefs are funny things. So many are not based upon any “truth” at all.

It’s important that humans can believe in things that they know are probably not real, otherwise most people could not get out of bed in the morning. But, there are those things and times where faith in almost nothing at all, will not do. Bridges, buildings, airplanes and more are not built on faith, other than on faith in the people who command the sciences to build them. Politics is a word used to describe the process of selecting leaders in America. Leaders have always been selected more on faith than substance, because it is impossible for large numbers of people to be fully acquainted with the few who may lead. The only change that has occurred in this ages old process is due to the invention of mass media. There is no longer any attempt by the few to either be exposed physically to, or to get to know, the people who will select them to lead. That process is now handled solely by mass media.

The discovery by the owners of mass media that the entire public could be guided and led by how news is slanted and delivered has changed everything, except some of the basic principals on how the conduct of life should be led to allow for advancement and bliss. Epictetus commented thousands of years ago about this very process. The people bellied up to the banquet table of contemporary times are mad as hell. They’ve been served meal after meal of very carefully prepared food just for them. And they did not think to despise what was on their plates. They’ve eaten dish after dish of ‘food’ with no substance, of matter with no nourishment, of a meal in name only. They’ve been served thus until they could take it no more. On these last days before the coming critical election in November will the public rise up against what was, and attribute many of those empty dishes to Hillary Clinton, with her history and her husband’s, as well? Many are choosing anything but what has come before. They are choosing Donald Trump; a brutal meal, a bitter vengeance, and they want it served cold.
~ James Strauss

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