Truisms...any truth in them?

[Guest]

The big argument has got me thinking about pearls of wisdom that people accept as truth, but can be easily proved untrue.

 

All my life I have lived by courage truth and tolerance.

 

So truth is hugely important to me, and I always question truisms to see if they are true. Because such things left unchallenged can produce dreadful results in the publics perception of truth. What is obviously true is not necessarily.

 

On the other hand, some such truisms (by which I mean often quoted as gospel quotes/sayings not to be challenged) are indeed watertight...until someone proves them wrong of course! but some are certainly more true than others.

 

I wondered if anyone else has come across any....either that they like or that they think are bad/untrue

 

But these are some of mine:Bad ones; clearly untrue yet accepted as truth especially by modern man:

 

This has ben one of the most damaging lies ever accepted as the truth. Waht motivates animals to kill is adrenalin not need. Adrenalin is exciting and therefore "sport". chimps cats and foxes kill for fun. But actually most find it exhilirating.

 

"Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself" (James Anthony Froude, historian)

 

"there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it" Jean Paul Sartre : Existensialism and Humanism 1946

 

Nietzche;

"is man only a mistake of God...or God only a mistake of man? "

 

Neither of these gives any credit for the 4 and a half billion years that man did not exist...therefore they are untrue. Not even religion is that arrogant that it puts man as centre of the universe.

 

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat before he eats them" Samuel Butler's notebooks.

 

Again not born out by careful observation.

 

 

 

Some of my favourite ones that I see real truth in, ironically the first one from an imposter:

 

Grey Owl:

 

Civilisation says Nature belongs to man"

Indian says: Man belongs to nature"

 

Woodrow Wilson (again an irony however);

"No nation has the right to sit in judgement of any other nation"

 

"To confess you are toatlly ignorant about horses is social suicide; you will be despised by everybody...especially the horse" Sellar and Yeatman british writers 1933

 

"Adam was human-this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake...he wanted it because it was forbidden" Mark Twain