Why Hammer of Truth?

Why Hammer of Truth? That’s one of the first questions I suspect many people will have as I produce works for this project, and so it is one of the first I shall address. When I use Hammer in the context and title of this project, I mean both the hammer as a weapon of war and the hammer as a tool for construction. In the current age, people have developed a sort of ‘intellectual armor’ which they have built over the course of their lives as a means to protect their closely held or cherished ideas. Most people do this subconsciously to avoid cognitive dissonance or to gain approval from their peers. As the amount of available information exploded with the advent of modern technology, the need arose for even stronger suits of this intellectual armor. Now, people have become so entrenched in their belief systems and so surrounded by the results of their confirmation bias that penetrating their defenses with any information which is contradictory to what they already believe, is nigh impossible.

In medieval times, when man began to get better at forging steel and began to craft more sophisticated suits of armor to protect combatants during the heat of battle, it became apparent that the long favored battle axes and longswords had begun to lose their efficacy, as they could be turned aside by the angular steel plating or sharp metal spikes which likely adorned his foes armor. Enter the war hammer; this new weapon could succeed where the finesse of the sword and the might of the axe had failed. To strike an armored foe’s metal helm with a glancing blow from a sword or an axe could set his ears ringing, but he had a good chance of keeping his wits about him and continuing the fight. Impact that same helmet with even a glancing blow from a war hammer, however, and not only would his ears be ringing, they’d likely be bleeding, along with every other orifice on his face and quite possibly his brain hemorrhaging as well from a concussion. With as densely protected as most people are from new ideas, especially those which contradict the lies they have been taught to regard as truth their entire lives, the war hammer seems to me to be the best choice for sending shock-waves through their world and forcing them to see things from a new perspective.

Let us also regard the use of the hammer as a tool for construction and how it relates to our analysis. When people actually sit down and are willing to engage in debate with one another, the intellectual hammer is a vital tool for driving points home. One participant in a debate may relentlessly pound his opponents mind with fact after fact which supports his claim or position and discredit or disproves that of his opponent. He is using the proverbial hammer of truth to build a new understanding for his opponent, by driving home the points (nails) thereby making bridges in their understanding (framework) so that a correct understanding (complete structure) can be reached and his opponent may align his views with the truth.

Now that you understand the hammer, understand the Truth. Almost everyone would agree with the statement “the world is filled with lies.” It’s self-evident. Everyone has the capacity to lie and in many cases it could be beneficial to the individual to lie, so naturally, in a society with no true virtue, dishonesty runs rampant. Even entire groups of people, in some cases huge swaths of an entire population, can be deceived into believing diametrically opposing yet equally false belief systems. Republicans vs. Democrats, being a prime example, can easily be demonstrated to be nothing more than two wings on the same lying bird. However, when you point this out to people who’ve a vested interest in one wing or the other, their ability to see the bigger and more accurate picture diminishes, if not vanishes outright.

The truth is belligerent. It exists in a state of perpetual warfare against all things which are false. However, the truth does not have its own voice. We, as moral human beings who understand truth and virtue, must be the voice for truth. We must allow the truth to work through us to do its work of destroying lies and opposing deception. That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be. And so I shall, and shall encourage anyone reading this, to do their best to use their capacity for reason and understanding to bring themselves and others in line with objective reality.