Fine line between Truth and Belief

What is truth and what is belief?

Is belief blind faith? The faith we have in religion and God. But the belief in God and religion is a belief based on a universal good values, religious extremism not withstanding. Blind faith then may be a good thing?

Then there is the belief in people and what they said. Some, no make that most, people believe in what a select few says to them. These select few are people with atatus or privileges. Or they have achieve some amount of celebrity status. And these status and privileges of the select few are bestow upon them by those who are now their believer.

We believe in the news that newspaper and newsreader feed us daily without much thought. Why shouldn't we believe? It is the news after all, not some make-believe movies we are watching here. We take at face value everything a trusted friend or relative says. Why shouldn't we believe? They are our most trusted people.

Blind faith too.

Should we then live without any faith? In the almighty, in people, in anything. What should our lives be based on then? No, i do not have any answer to that. No, not even an opinion. Most people i know lived in pursuit of material comfort for themselves or their loved ones. Won't deny i'm also one of them.

And i'm faintly aware many people live on faith alone. We can read about them every day in the magazines and news, if we care to. These are people who lived in abject poverty and war for a large part of their lives. Most know of only hunger and fear for their entire lives. Life has not been fair to them. No, opportunities will not come to most of them. We are only kidding ourselves if we said their lives will improve. For those who said life is fair are not living in reality.

Should not Truth be reality? Truth is what all good reporters should strive for. Their purpose must be to uncover the truth and report them to the masses. No artificial 'colouration' should be added to the mix. That is their only job.

I sometimes forget we're living in reality. The world we lived in is not a world where truth prevail. The reality is one created by man, not nature. We all are living in a reality created by the powerful few. We assume too many things and question too few or nothing.

We lived in a Newtonian physics world where 3-dimensional space and time are two separate events. Time as an absolute. Time is linear; once past is gone forever. It was Einstein, in his special theory of relativity, who reconciled that space and time are a continuum. "Time" is only a relative from different point of reference. Time is not linear. The concept of 'then', 'now' and 'future' loses their real meaning in his universe. Reality explained in mathematics. Such is the genius of the man.

Yet, our perception of reality is entirely our own. As i grow older, the more i came to believe that there is no absolute in reality. A particular sweet experience shared with another person lived on in my memory but does she still remember it? What if she deny it ever happen. No one else have gone through and feel that experience but the both of us. It is a reality which exist only in my memories now. But who could prove that reality if she denies it?

People believe in things which may not be true. And more people believe in things which another person promote and consider to be the truth. Some people may not or even refuses to believe in what is true. It is so hard to distinguish what is true and what is belief these days. We may lived most of our lives believing in lies and we may not even know it.

However, there is one truth i know of and subscribe to; the laws of cause and effect or 'causality', so effectively explained in Buddhism. Believers in God and atheists should be made aware that Buddhism is as much a concept of how to live one's life as it is a religion. Even western economists believe in 'cause and effect'. But economists are also very aware of another concept called 'correlation' which people often mistook as 'cause'.

Even western sciences held faith in 'cause and effect'. For was it not Isaac Newton who said "for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction". That is cause and effect working in an instant. But cause and effect also work across time and space.

Just a thought. If more people believe in the laws of cause and effect, would it not lessen the sufferings of humans? Would they not think twice about committing crime and injustices against their fellow brothers and sisters.

But then again, to them it may just be a belief with no truth in it. And they certainly would not be subscribing to some blind faith, would they?