9.14.2009

When you are wrong.

Today, I was wrong-woo, big surprise.

It was in an argument with my Physics "professor" (she says she does nuclear physics, but...come on. That's not rocket science.) about the speed of falling balls. (Heh.) I did something uncharacteristic and called her out on what I felt pretty sure was faulty reasoning.

Anarchy ensued. Voices were raised. Hearts were broken.

The question was about whether or not two balls thrown from a cliff with the same initial velocity, one up and one down, would hit the ground with the same speed. She said yes, I said no. My argument was simply that we needed more numbers on the situation. She told me numbers were important in science. At that point, she had it coming.

If you really want to hear why it turns out she was right, ask me sometime. Although for the record, she never managed to explain it well enough to convince me.

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I am struck by the fact that the opposing sides in an argument are identical, if you take away the truth of the matter. Truth is a third party to the incident; it's not something that either side can create or destroy. The best they can do is show you who else thinks, believes, derived, or proved that it is true.

Even then, Truth is something else. Every type of thinker is trying to describe why something is true, but no one can make it so. Truth is a state of things that exists entirely outside of mankind-we can't make it, manufacture it, or destroy it. It is something that we constantly aspire to and seek out, but it doesn't matter whether we get it wrong or not. If everyone in the world still believed the earth was flat, that wouldn't make the planet any less round. The reality of things will never bend to our reason, no matter how hard we believe.

It makes me wonder what we think that is untrue. It makes me think again about holding onto anything too tightly. It's easy to believe mankind is at the pinnacle of knowing and understanding...but haven't we been there before?

And aside from that, it's irrelevant. People who don't know they are wrong will fight tooth and nail, and every bit as hard as the side that's right, provided that they care enough. It's why we have war in the Middle East, and why everyone can't stop talking about Kanye. It doesn't matter who's right...the same wounds can be inflicted, the same damage can be done. It's why terrible things said in an argument can hurt so much. Because it doesn't matter what exactly was said, all that matters was the terrible look in his eye when he said it. Or her.

So if we can make it to the moon, move mountains, create civilizations, lie, give life and kill, what is it about Truth that makes it so untouchable to us?

It's that one thing. The constant. The unwavering will of the universe.

Maybe that's God.

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