Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

maps. We form a narrative about the way the world is. But the map and the narrative are not the reality.

Back on the OS map, certain features of the land are lovingly picked out for our attention (I think it really is done with love!) There are contour lines, roads, built-up areas, open ground, forests, mud flats, beaches. Again, we do something similar with our knowledge maps – our narratives about the world. We are captivated by essence – by the things that we think of as ‘things in themselves’. The ancient philosophers used the word essence quite a bit. Along with form, substance, species and genera, essence was a way of defining and categorising the world. All of those terms are contentious now and thought of as having, at best, only poetic meaning – or otherwise the meaning has changed into something a lot more mundane.

But I think that, even so, we cling to notions of essence – even those who deny essence as having any meaning still cling to it! So there it is – narrative and essence – the ways we make sense of a world that otherwise makes no sense outside the fact of our own individual existence.

The narrative and the essence take many twists and turns when trying to make sense of the world – just like my brother’s subterranean and interstellar real estate. But that, for me, is a worthy pursuit of philosophy – how do we make sense of the senseless? How do we put

signposts on our maps of the world? How, we might even ask, do we pick out features with the same loving care as the maker’s of those beautiful physical maps?

I wish there were a simple answer to this

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