Good Morning Jessicca

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 8 February

Good Morning Jessicca…

We’re suddenly having a flood of birthdays.  Three are being celebrated here today and then there is yours tomorrow, Monday.  What is it about June that makes it such a fetching month for lovers?  Maybe it has to do with spring being in full bloom and the summer heat hasn't yet arrived.  Everyone seems naturally attractive.  People get playful beneath the glow of lightening bugs and the distant sound of music.  There’s a fragrance for all of this.

It’s difficult to write anything these days.  There’s little by me that ring true.  Truth is not an approximate location.  You have to be standing directly on it to know it.  It’s a dangerous thing to break free from a life of unnoticed, small lies.

Maybe lie is too strong a word.  We have misunderstandings; basic ones about the nature of life around us.  We aren't meant to know too much.  Too much truth creates new falsehoods in our minds.  True believers in knowledge of any sort take their conclusions to the point of absurdity.  We make grand conclusions with little supportive evidence.

Feelings enter into our thinking.  Life must have its rewards.  Fear gives our thoughts immediacy but it warps ideas subtler than survival.  I quickly arrive in a briar patch if I pursue a thought very far.  There are too many variables.  There’s too much I fail to understand. 

Much of my truth is based on hope.  I hope there’s something decent managing this whole complex affair.  I’d like a soft landing at the end – not just for myself but everyone I care about.  Life has beautiful moments but we deserve heart-felt congratulations and a period for recovery once it’s over.

You've a birthday tomorrow.  Everything is still ahead for you.  You’re entering prime time here and now.  Blow out every candle with a single breath and wish upon a star.  Birth is the magical trial of entry into this curious realm.  Happy Birthday, Jessicca!

Love,

          Dad

© Tom Taylor

Good Morning Jessicca...

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 23 February

Jake

Good Morning Jessicca…

I took Jake, the dog, to a large open field a few miles from where I live.  I wanted him to be able to run about freely without being stuck on a leash.  He almost immediately got the idea and took off.  The trouble was he looked to be getting as far from me as he possibly could without any intention of coming back.  I began calling after him but he might as well have been stone deaf.  I yelled his name, “Jake!”  The truth is I don’t think he knows his name.  He was left to my care probably about a couple of years ago when he was ten.  I’ve never known him to respond to his name.  So I yelled “Come!”  Actually, he’s not familiar with any commands, either.  Finally, I just decided to endlessly yell after him as he set out on his new path in life.  Eventually he turned towards me as if wondering what all the commotion was about.  He was already a couple of hundred yards ahead and only briefly looked my way before continuing his dog trot for parts unknown.  The tables were turned.  Without the leash I was no longer top dog of our little pact.  It was my turn to follow his lead.  I began running after him.  Before long he would reach a four lane thoroughfare and he’s never shown much sense regarding cars.  True to form he left the vastly interesting environment of the field in order to race up the middle of the street.  Fortunately there were very few cars at the time.  I was horrified a car might get him before I had the chance to throttle him myself. 

I probably ran another half mile before he allowed me to catch up with him.  Thank God the dog is old.  Patience is not among my natural characteristics but I do possess a bit of reasoning.  If I punish him on the spot what chance have I to catch him the next time he springs loose?  I merely take the leash from my back pocket and snap it to his collar.  Once again we’ve become a chained tandem just like always.  We finish our walk.  He and I have some work to do.

I’m not crazy about this sort of relationship.  It constrains both of us.  Jake wants to snoop about.  I want to snoop about.  He’s a dog and I’m not.  We don’t want to snoop about the same things.  Had we been in wide open spaces of desert I would have said “I’ll see you when I see you.”  Civilization isn’t healthy for dogs roaming free.  Sure a dog can die from a rattlesnake bite but, to me, that’s more acceptable than being mauled by a car.  Rattlesnakes are an acceptable risk.  Cars aren’t.

There’s this Danish philosopher named Kierkegaard.  He talks about personal truth.  It’s not like the objective truth we associate with math and science.  Personal truth doesn’t even have to be true like the equation 2 + 2 = 4 is true.  Personal truth is more about what it is we as individuals believe.  This is important because what we truly believe determines how it is we act.  I may or may not be correct in my belief about something but the action I take based upon this belief does create a truth.  Did I or did I not walk away from an accident victim:  true or false?  The importance of personal truth to me as an individual is whether my actions are sincere.  Am I acting true to my beliefs?  Do I live an authentic life or am I dozing through one meaningful after another?

Our education is filled with objective truths – the Earth is round.  Few of them have much to do with how we live our lives.  On the other hand, personal truths are inescapable facts about us – you and me.  They not only govern our actions, they are our actions.  We are not our intentions.  We are what it is we do.  Aren’t we… ?

Love,

           Dad

What is Truth?

I think, therefore I am

“I was especially delighted with the mathematics, on account of the certitude and evidence of their reasonings; but I had not as yet a precise knowledge of their true use; and thinking that they but contributed to the advancement of the mechanical arts, I was astonished that foundations, so strong and solid, should have had no loftier superstructure reared on them.”

René Descartes

A Discourse on Method

Rectangle 

Area of Rectangle

A = area

b = length of base

h = height

A triangle of the same height and base length as the rectangle containing it will always take up half the area of the rectangle.  This formula will hold true no matter the shape of the triangle.  In the countless uses of this formula by humans on a human scale there has been no instance where this has proven not to be true.  Thus it can be said that no amount of empirical data has ever contradicted these formulas.  In science that would be a very high probability of truth.

Triangle

Area of Triangle

Truth is always subjective because the only truth I know is what it is I believe.  This holds true for you, as well.  Ultimately all truth is subjective because it is an inner belief.  You can make the same claim regarding mathematics.  I might say the formula for finding the area of a triangle is one half the base times the height and that this is an objective truth because I read it in a book and it is what is taught at school to kids everywhere.  It is a fact that no one has yet found to have a fault according to what I have been told.  What can be a more objective truth?  Still, I have to believe it for it to be true to me.  Maybe the formula to find the area of a triangle doesn’t make sense to me.  I don’t believe it.  Now the formula is no longer true in my mind.  The formula may, in fact, be true to most everyone else but it is false for me.  Truth is ultimately subjective.  Maybe I am right.  There is possibly a flaw in the formula that makes it true most all the time but not always.  It is possible that if the triangle were large enough that we would have to take into account the curvature of the earth then this simple formula would no longer be true.  If I believe the formula for finding the area of a triangle then I believe something that is objectively false.  But I believe it so it is subjectively true. 

Kierkegaard says that objective truth is an abstraction.  Basically he is saying that objective truth has no meaning unless someone believes something to be true.  He says, “Truth is subjective.”  Does that mean that if I believe the Area of a Triangle formula to be true then it must be objectively true?  Obviously no.  If the object, the formula, is objectively false then my believing it to be true does not make it true.  What is true is my belief that the formula is true.  The truth of the object, the formula, is irrelevant to my truth – my relationship to the object.  So what is true is not the object itself but my relationship to it.  This is Kierkegaard’s subjective truth.  In this regard objective truth is irrelevant to what one believes is true.

Certainly we cannot rely on anyone’s subjective truth to land a man on the moon but for truth to have any meaning, for mathematics to have any meaning, it must first become subjective truth - someone must believe it for it to exist.  This statement would be true for Kierkegaard but not for Descartes because Kierkegaard sees truth in purely human terms.