Truthiness. Word of the year for 2006 says Associated Press. Although I SHOULD KNOW BETTER, I was surprised to hear that ''words'' were up for consideration in an Oscar like environment. Guess I missed the original announcement for all the words that were nominated.
I don’t want to discuss the fellow who apparently invented the word and what he says it means. When I heard the word for the first time, it started me thinking about how it reflects on how our world runs in the 21st Century. Less and less on one truth…more and more on truthiness. What is put forth as truth. The entitlement of everyone to have their own truth.

This topic easily could turn into a deep philosophical discussion by using a comprehension defieing tangle of words that everyone except the word smiths who relish the opportunity to express themselves with massive explanations that leave mere mortals with blank expressions thick with a glaze of HUH?

A PHD to be, person I know often pulls out the phrase that goes something like this, ‘the essence of higher education is being enlightened to think critically about everything’.
This concept is very idealistic in the sense that to me it creates the ground rules for everything to be questioned with potential total disregard for the facts. That does not mean that I don’t accept that critical thinking is not an important part of the education process. Thinking that is grounded in finding solutions to problems, determines the facts, sorts out the problem areas and then figures out how those problems can be fixed: Man is very good at this as evidenced by all the technology imbedded in everyday life.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but to me critical thinking seems to be aimed at creating intellectual and spiritual anarchy. In the spiritual vein, preferably people would not acknowledge any god but if they choose to, which ever one they picked is okay because everyone is entitled to believe what they want. Once people are convinced to do that then all the moral codes of conduct rooted in Biblical ‘truth’ can be thrown out.

What I see us left with is truthiness. It eliminates a single truth for anything. If it sounds like the truth to you no one has the right to disagree and they probably won’t. They’ll just be happy with what they think is right.

There must be truth. If there wasn’t, gravity wouldn’t be reliable, 2 plus 2 wouldn’t always be 4 and not everyone would die. So far all the health research in history has not kept one person from dieing. All the honest accountants always get the answer 4 and you will always get to the bottom of the hill on skis, even if you do have a garage sale on the way.

Find truth and accept it whether or not you like the answer. That is where our evolution as human being lies not in popularizing the idea that we’re merely smart animals and a little spirituality of some kind is just a genetic quirk.