Recently, a letter by an individual who had 50-plus years of experience as an attorney provided his perspective on truth (Stephen Maseda, letters, March 17). It was less than objective.
Without coming to the aid of the target (Gary Horton) of the attorney’s polemic, consider this: Honesty requires objectivity, and justice requires honesty and a preponderance of where we are compared to where we could be. Egotistic indulgence moves some to try to stake the high ground via their career choice: a Department of Water and Power apparatchik, an attorney, a businessman… but, why concur to such claim?
An attorney has no greater claim upon righteousness than any of us, nor any greater weight of opinion via his career choice. A cynical, critical, objective review of an attorney’s charter reduces the occupation to an effort to present a biased case supporting a singular position. Attorneys are probably the least “honest” people you could possibly refer to when considering justice. Fostering divisive competing truths is their daily bread: pricey and by the hour.
There’s difference between truth and justice. Justice requires objectivity, but truth does not.
“Truth” for an individual is whatever that mind had subsumed and coalesced into a moral thesis and a belief system about the universe that exists outside of that mind. “Truth” can be corrupted if the search for it is less than objectively honest and/or if it is guided to or intentionally seeks biased sources for depth, strength and superiority.
Worse: We are betrayed by our very tissue. It guides us to seek superiority via survival instinct. It gets in the way of communication and interferes with the formation of community. We are here, “spirits in the material world,” stuck in this corporeal existence. We all deal with mortality and our corporeal limitations. Humans continuously compare their technological capability to their spiritual existence and trade between the two. Technology, our applied knowledge about the material world, provides avenues to remedy corporeal/spiritual problems.
We no longer perform bloodletting to treat disease, and instead design tiny stimulants that train cellular biology as a remedy. The technology is on the way to reversing the cellular aging that underlies many diseases, especially cancer and organ failure. All who want it should benefit from it independent of their sex, creed, race, etc. We have technology to imbue women with augmentations (some of them much more intimate than breast modification) that make them happy, or happier, satisfying a deep human need that underlies their truth, their moral thesis, and their spiritual existence. All who want it should benefit from it independent of their sex, creed, race, etc.
We have in-vitro procedures that mitigate fertility problems. A moment of lifespring begins not within a womb, but in a laboratory. Millions have benefitted. Is that still conception? What of the blastocysts that are not implanted and are subsequently destroyed… did someone kill a baby?
Objectively, true equality of freedom would allow developed technologies to be used by anyone in their search for personal happiness and personal truth. All who want should benefit from technology independent of their sex, creed, race, etc.
This is likely where “woke” resistance, a resistance to spiritual freedom, will fail. Locales and the executives ruling over those locales will seek political currency from zealots in the meantime.
Justice requires that the culture of objectivity is greater than any other cultures that may arise. If we lose objectivity, we lose justice.
For the individual, objective truth only comes to those seeking it. If all individuals pursue objectivity, then all would always qualify for jury membership. (In case you do not recall, jury selection is subject to the competing attorney’s cherry-picking/bias.)
Intentionally biasing the truth you seek, promoting a particular (cultural) position among all possible positions is not “truth,” and it is not honest. It will subvert justice. It will undo the principles upon which the nation was founded… principles that enshrine the search for life, liberty and happiness. These principles are (or were) inalienable. They cannot be infringed.
Long ago, but not so very long ago, our founders determined that the search for greater freedom and liberty was worth the fight. We hope freedom reigns.
Christopher Lucero
Saugus
