That is a true statement
I used to work in banking. Twice. Big, big banks. My last title was Business Analyst, which meant admin with deadlines and lots of big multi-department meetings.
A very common rhetorical device in the big project meetings, and not a disingenuous one by any means, was “That is a true statement.”
It is ingenious, really. It doesn’t imply any agreement with any interpretation or extrapolation of said statement. It is careful, but not a dodge. There isn’t any wiggle room as far as the warrant the statement agrees to. The statement, and only the statement, is clearly true.
It is different from “You’re right” or “That’s right” in an important way.
(Were it used in a disingenuous way, this would not be a true statement, as it would be simply bullshit.)
And I move from here to 12 step programs.
A common tenant of 12 step programs (I, um, read somewhere) is, at some point, surrender to a higher power. The higher power doesn’t have to be God, just has to be something, even a tree (though the disadvantage there is that you might chop the fucker down to justify a binge and where did I put that fuckin’ ax?).
As a tool for addiction recovery, this makes sense to me. Because, really, how can you trust and addict like you to keep you from falling off the wagon? You can’t. Maybe the function here is to recognize why you can’t trust yourself – to accept you need the higher power is a sign you have accepted the truth about yourself.
Some friends and I were talking religion recently, and stumbled upon the idea of the 12 step version of religion. There are folks, especially progressive humanists, that attempt to smooth over differences between religious and spiritual belief systems by reducing them to the “God slot.” You know “Well, if you just substitute tree spirit for God, pagans and Christians are really saying the same thing.”
And I sidled up close to this with the Man of Faith post a while back. And, I feel the need to make my position clearer. I don’t think we can answer the God question merely by saying that one believes in something that fills the God slot.
What I am trying to home in on can be felt, at least, in the distinction between truth and right in that corporate project management rhetorical device I opened with, and maybe a couple of things I used to tell my students: “There is a difference between being right and finding truth” and “There is no right answer, but there are wrong ones.”
Truth merely is. Infinite truth is unknowable by finite beings. Being right implies having found the way to access Truth. But, because we as finite beings can not know infinite truth, we can never find the way to access Truth, but only a way. When we forget that, the trouble begins, and we actually distance ourselves from Truth.
The man of faith is content to have found a way, limited though it necessarily is, for a finite creature to touch upon Truth. Part of the nature of that which is true is that any attempt by a human to explain it, diminishes it. Similarly, any part of the belief that one’s access to truth makes them right, means that not only have they found a true statement but that everything they interpret and extrapolate from that true statement is also true, takes such a believer further from Truth. Truth is infinite, any attempt to reduce or contain it is a failure by definition.
This doesn’t mean that we can choose any old path to Truth we want. There are countless paths to take in life, and only some lead us to any knowledge of Truth. There are wrong answers.
Truth is truth. Wrong is not-Truth. Right is the belief that you possess one while actually falling toward the other.
The bitch of it all is how we negotiate all this. We can’t know all of Truth, we know such things as non-Truth exist, we may or may not understand these limitations. How does this not reduce to mere relativism?
Only by the fact that Truth exists, independent of us. And the common experience of engaging the question, no matter what the eventual outcome.
So, oh Foolish One, you believe in God?
That is a true statement.
A very common rhetorical device in the big project meetings, and not a disingenuous one by any means, was “That is a true statement.”
It is ingenious, really. It doesn’t imply any agreement with any interpretation or extrapolation of said statement. It is careful, but not a dodge. There isn’t any wiggle room as far as the warrant the statement agrees to. The statement, and only the statement, is clearly true.
It is different from “You’re right” or “That’s right” in an important way.
(Were it used in a disingenuous way, this would not be a true statement, as it would be simply bullshit.)
And I move from here to 12 step programs.
A common tenant of 12 step programs (I, um, read somewhere) is, at some point, surrender to a higher power. The higher power doesn’t have to be God, just has to be something, even a tree (though the disadvantage there is that you might chop the fucker down to justify a binge and where did I put that fuckin’ ax?).
As a tool for addiction recovery, this makes sense to me. Because, really, how can you trust and addict like you to keep you from falling off the wagon? You can’t. Maybe the function here is to recognize why you can’t trust yourself – to accept you need the higher power is a sign you have accepted the truth about yourself.
Some friends and I were talking religion recently, and stumbled upon the idea of the 12 step version of religion. There are folks, especially progressive humanists, that attempt to smooth over differences between religious and spiritual belief systems by reducing them to the “God slot.” You know “Well, if you just substitute tree spirit for God, pagans and Christians are really saying the same thing.”
And I sidled up close to this with the Man of Faith post a while back. And, I feel the need to make my position clearer. I don’t think we can answer the God question merely by saying that one believes in something that fills the God slot.
What I am trying to home in on can be felt, at least, in the distinction between truth and right in that corporate project management rhetorical device I opened with, and maybe a couple of things I used to tell my students: “There is a difference between being right and finding truth” and “There is no right answer, but there are wrong ones.”
Truth merely is. Infinite truth is unknowable by finite beings. Being right implies having found the way to access Truth. But, because we as finite beings can not know infinite truth, we can never find the way to access Truth, but only a way. When we forget that, the trouble begins, and we actually distance ourselves from Truth.
The man of faith is content to have found a way, limited though it necessarily is, for a finite creature to touch upon Truth. Part of the nature of that which is true is that any attempt by a human to explain it, diminishes it. Similarly, any part of the belief that one’s access to truth makes them right, means that not only have they found a true statement but that everything they interpret and extrapolate from that true statement is also true, takes such a believer further from Truth. Truth is infinite, any attempt to reduce or contain it is a failure by definition.
This doesn’t mean that we can choose any old path to Truth we want. There are countless paths to take in life, and only some lead us to any knowledge of Truth. There are wrong answers.
Truth is truth. Wrong is not-Truth. Right is the belief that you possess one while actually falling toward the other.
The bitch of it all is how we negotiate all this. We can’t know all of Truth, we know such things as non-Truth exist, we may or may not understand these limitations. How does this not reduce to mere relativism?
Only by the fact that Truth exists, independent of us. And the common experience of engaging the question, no matter what the eventual outcome.
So, oh Foolish One, you believe in God?
That is a true statement.
posted by JJisafool at 9:45 PM
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