Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

‘white’ here, in ‘the white horse’ – are universals. They are handy descriptions – in this case, for things that are more or less white. Things that could not, at least, be described as cream or grey or yellow. So universals are useful at

grouping together similar things under one description. And, generally speaking, there’s no problem.

Unless, of course, we stopped to ask what exactly does white mean? This is similar to the superficial reading of Kung-Sun’s saying. For instance, is white just the absence of colour? Is black just the absence of light? Or are there more specific ways of describing things? No

horse is ever absolutely white – even if we could describe exactly what the word ‘white’ means – so no universal is truly accurate. Universals are just handy approximations.

If only we could have stopped there, in the West! But no. Universals took on a ghostly life of their own. In fact, not just a ghostly life. Universals became THE TRUE WORLD and it was our own familiar everyday world that became the ghost. So then, there are perfect forms of things – white things, horses – and then there are the shoddy earthly representations of these – horses that aren’t quite white! And there is our PERFECT SOUL and our shoddy and confused REAL SELVES! And there is a PERFECT HEAVEN and the unfortunate, messy and distasteful real world that we are forced to inhabit. This was the upshot of taking a ‘WHITE HORSE’ to mean more than it is really saying. That’s what Kung-Sun was really warning us against – perhaps centuries before it had even started to become a problem in the West.

We even do something similar with the concept of truth. To see what I mean, think of the

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