There are some things that are true and some things that are not true. There are some things that are good and some things that are bad.
A lot of people tell me that I think that way because of my “Christian upbringing.” I doubt it.
I think that way because of the huge dollop of German blood I have in me. My family got out of England when it was still racially Anglo-Saxon, so both sides of my family are Germanic.
People laugh at Germans because they take truth so seriously.
Africans are mystified by how seriously white people take the truth. Native Africans are much more pleasant. They tell you whatever makes you smile.
In the polite traditional conversation of Japan, when the dialogue gets around to a man’s wife, it goes something like this:
“How is the Flower of Your Household?”
“That pig is fine.”
Obviously this is not supposed to reflect objective truth.
No society before white society ever made a distinction between religion and science. There is Accepted Belief, and that Accepted Belief has a purpose. The idea of truth for its own sake reflects a sort of monomaniacal fanaticism that is alien to any other civilization.
Odin or Woden, the old god of the Germans, gave an eye for truth. Not for Truth, the capitalized word, and not for Wisdom, but for simple truth, for some extra facts. The Father-God, Woden, was the one-eyed god because he gave one eye to know more FACTS.
Very unromantic, very German.
Meanwhile all the historians are trying to find the origins of Western science in something written in the Middle East, or at least something more romantic and exotic than the one-eyed Odin’s fanatical pursuit of more facts.
But we are back where we started: the real origins of science and everything decent are based on the fact that there are some things that are true and some things that are not true. There are some things that are good and some things that are bad.
Very unromantic. Very German.
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