LETTER: Just give us the truth

The essential problem with human beings is that we live so much in states of misperception.

The essential problem with human beings is that we live so much in states of misperception.

Instead of seeing reality as the flowing unity it is, we reduce it to a perceptual model consisting of things with names. Then we use our overactive imaginations to make up stories about all these named things.

Journalists, whose medium is words and visual icons, generally feed our frantic flight from reality by playing on our confusion and fears about all these spurious versions of it, because typing fantasies is a lot easier than taking the trouble to find out what our biosphere actually is and how we are inseparably and always wedded to its fate.

We could start with the simple truth that each human being is an intimate part of the universe that is capable of thinking about itself and its relationship to said universe. From there we could recognize that the consciousness of each human being is an intimate part of an infinite mystery. As such we should regard ourselves and each living thing we meet with an attitude of respect, wonder and awe.

This is the only attitude that will see us out of the hell we are making on this planet. And journalists could help by waking themselves up to this simple truth and passing it on.

Just give us the truth. Yes, we are sleepwalking straight into hell but we do have the option of waking up to the well of wonder within.

Doug Wilton, Nelson

 

Nelson Star