When do knowing 'facts' become our downfall?

Here at ATS, although I am new here, it is plain to see that facts, whether opinion-based or not, are praised on many different levels. The human necessity and obsession to knowledge drives all conscious thought, but will that bring us down? Will it bring an end to tyranny, discrimination, ill-justice, and war all together by obliterating the human race?

It is fair to say that Humans are their own demise, as well as the demise of life on Earth as we know it (again with the knowing).

I have given thought to this subject quite a lot lately and a few questions have come to mind:

1) What will happen when we figure out the truth? Will it mark the end of an era, or will life go on?

2) Do we falsely believe something to be true just because we feel the need to know everything?

3) What is true for that matter? What is the truth and how do we know if it truly is truth? I know common sense and logic come into play here, but again with the need to know. We feel as though 'common sense' is basic knowledge and we always seem to fall back to it when we aren't surprised by any given 'truth.' But what if common sense is wrong?

The ultimate questions is, what will happen to life as we know it if we do know everything there is to know? Is that even possible? Are there things out there that are unfathomable? Of course there are, but how can we be so sure?

We cant.

We feel the need to know that we know nothing at all. A paradox, no? But what if we created a paradox in order to understand things we cannot comprehend with logic?

Here are a few examples, ones actively being discussed on our home of knowledge, ATS:

The 9/11 Conspiracy
Truth Movement "leader" Jim Hoffman Debunks CIT Flyover "Hoax"

Yep, It's Thermite! So Much For the Oxygen Excuse

Theism vs. Atheism
The Creation of Israel does NOT Fulfill the Biblical Prophecy

What Makes Something a God?

New World Order
"5 Ways You're Treated Like a Crimminal"; Stand Up!

Over-population IS a Myth

______________________________________________________________________

These are just a few examples. I tried to keep it balanced, so please don't attack me for posting one side over the other.

When will emotion and gut feelings take roll in our knowledge? Isn't that our primal instinct? Do we think that we are above primal instinct? I think we do, given the word 'primal.'

Would the world be better off if we didn't rely so heavily on fact rather than emotion? I cannot say. I want to see your views on this subject.



[edit on 19-8-2009 by Bushido Kanji]

If a moderator would be so kind to move this thread to the Philosophy section, I would greatly appreciate it.

I inadvertently posted this in the wrong section Thank you!

With so many groups of so many people forming so many sides, representing so many ideologies, preaching so many beliefs, and labeling this and that truth and this and that false to conform to and support their own agendas, it is difficult to figure what is real and what is not.

Our entire reality is manufactured and manipulated by every thing from media to government to religion, all for greed and power. Many people see this as unnatural and a sign that humans have strayed from following the laws of nature to following the laws of tyranny. I, however, see it as a sign that we are still very much under the control of nature because of one basic law: Survival of the fittest.

The greed and power the men and women in positions of power who force their beliefs and laws upon all of society strive for stems from the will to survive. Humans take the will to survive to a much higher and much more violent level than all other animal species, but the same basic principle still applies: If you are not willing to either fight for the power or fight against the power, by the laws of nature, you are weak and you will not survive.

Our technological and intellectual ability to manufacture and manipulate multiple realities within the same society to influence the belief and opinion of the masses has as much progressed us as it has enslaved us; it has as much separated us from nature as it has shackled us to it.

The more we progress technologically, the less the truth becomes relevant and existent. The less the truth becomes relevant and existent, the more we rely on our basic instincts as an animal species on planet Earth.

At one point or another in our very near future we will be forced to choose between our manufactured belief in peace and our natural instinct in war. When the walls of reality we the people have built for those we have blindly surrendered our rights and freedoms to become the walls of our imprisonment, we will be faced with the ultimatum that nature gives us when it once again slaps down our arrogance and exerts it's superiority: Kill or be killed.

True, no matter how much we try to detach ourselves from nature, our trials will go in vain. Whether you want to see it as population control or not is your choice and it should ultimately be that way for everyone and everything.

Freedom is a right, not a privilege; you should not be forced to believe something to be true just because someone in power expects it. You have the right to decide for yourself what is true or not.

Researching facts, I believe, is redundant. If you want something to be true, then so it shall be, but only for yourself and to only satiate your own desire to understand something bigger than yourself.

Once you push your 'facts' onto someone else, you are infringing on their right to form their own opinion on what truth is.

Call it Anarchy if you will, but we should be free to govern our own thoughts, beliefs, and speech.

[edit on 19-8-2009 by Bushido Kanji]

When do knowing 'facts' become our downfall?


They become our downfall when we deny other truths. There are an infinite number of truths as far as I am concerned, and they are all simply an issue of perspective. How you are looking at something. When you look at something through Newtonian Mechanics, you can "prove" "facts" with it. When you look at something through Quantum Physics, you can "prove" other "facts" and even contradict some apparent principles of Newtonian Mechanics by including additional information.

The downfall is when someone cannot see the truth in both places, and truly in all places simultaneously.

Originally posted by Bushido Kanji
1) What will happen when we figure out the truth? Will it mark the end of an era, or will life go on?

I suppose things will just keep going on, because I can't imagine that a single and universal truth will ever be discovered that doesn't already exist somewhere in or around the universe.

2) Do we falsely believe something to be true just because we feel the need to know everything?

Yes! It is more to the point to realize you really know nothing. Or maybe more accurately, all the things you think you "know" are coincidental illusions.

3) What is true for that matter?

Yes is true; No is false.


As far as "facts" vs. emotion, they are integrally related in the human psyche. We should try to become aware of the entire system in our heads and let none of it falter.

reply to post by NovusOrdoMundi


It sounds like a pack of dogs. You're explanation is disheaterning but spot on. It would seem that as animals, we are doomed to end ourselves on this world through our territorial pissing and the inevitable disputes that follow.
I want so much to prove that there is something I KNOW. I want to prove that I have some value. I want to prove that I'm worth something.
In the end, I don't KNOW a thing. I can't prove a thing. My value is three dollars and fifty two cents in commonly available minerals. I take little comfort in thinking that YOU don't really KNOW anything either. You can't 'prove' anything either.
Why do I need to know steel? Because you only know copper. Why do I need to know bombs? Because you only know guns.
What happens if I decide that I don't need to know these things? I perish. I'm erased. I'm forgotten.
What if I can spend my life becoming stronger, and learning more? What if I can know more than YOU? Then YOU can fertilize the tree. In the end, the same awaits us all anyway. Your language, your sticks, your steel, your bombs. None of them have saved you. None of them have saved me.
I can know that my sticks are stronger than your leaves when we both prepare for the approaching wave. It's too high anyway. It doesn't make a difference.
Reduce the world to two and I'm afraid that is one too many. Truth doesn't matter. It doesn't even really exist. Truth is proof and proof is violence. Truth is blood. Yours or mine, it doesn't matter, but we can't both have it.

reply to post by KSPigpen


Good post and great analogies!

I guess it can be seen that way, our desire to be recognized and to become better than the last and remembered by the next. In the end it really doesn't matter. Our accomplishments and failures will not be known beyond our own minds, belief of extraterrestrials aside; even if there were ET's to come to our planet and see our eroded structures and broken and lost civilizations, they will not understand everything that happened here, no matter how much further along the technological scale they may be.

What a wonderful thread topic. It reminds me of an old Arthur C. Clarke story, The Nine Billion Names of God. A Tibetan Buddhist sect is engaged in articulating all the names of God, of which they estimate there are nine billion. They believe that when all the names have been recorded, the universe will have fulfilled its purpose and will come to an end.

So for hundreds and hundreds of years, they've been labouring away.

And then they buy a computer.

I'll never forget the last line of the story: Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

You can read the whole story here.