Sorry for the grotesque mixing of Latin and German, but the proper translate for “Truth Over All” is “Die Wahrheit über alle” and I am pretty sure nobody who reads me would have understood that without going to Google Translate and I don’t want to end up getting weird tweets from Nazi organizations or some scheiße.

Truth. We pay a lot of lip service to the ideal of truth. We want it from our journalists, our lovers, even our politicians. We applaud heroes both fictional and real who fight for it and we all, to a person, claim to want it. Famous movie quotes talk about whether or not Tom Cruise can handle it. It even makes the list of ideals for that ultimate ideal hero Superman. And it doesn’t just make the list, it’s number one. Justice and the American Way (whatever that is) have to content themselves with silver and bronze, because in Superman’s mind, truth took the gold.

But like all ideals, the reality of life is more complex than can be summed up in a phrase or a motto. We all believe that what we think is true is The Truth, because nothing else is possible. It’s not possible to believe a lie. It’s not ego, it’s logic, or at least, the logic of a meat brain. You might pretend to believe a lie, or even fool yourself into thinking you believe something you do not, but you cannot believe a lie.

But for most people, the drive for truth is but one of many equally strong drives that wrestle for influence over our minds, our actions, and our lives every moment of every day. There is the desire for truth, yes, and a powerful drive it is, far more powerful than cynics and idealists would have us believe. Part of the powerful sentient human mind is an incredibly strong desire to understand the world and construct an accurate predictive model of it in our minds. But we also have drives to protect our fragile egos, protect ourselves from negative emotions, and keep our worldviews small enough to function in our conscious minds. And these drives, in most people, act as balancing and restraining elements to the drive for truth, so that for most people, the end result is a complex and three dimensional mind comprised of many diverse elements.

Now enter the philosopher. See, they are the unkempt and unworldly person over there who is staring off into space like they’re either in a trance or watching the most riveting movie ever on a screen three thousand feet behind the nearest wall. They are ill groomed, inattentive, and often somewhat unhealthy looking, and can shift from apparent catatonia to sudden impassioned animation with mercurial swiftness, often based on some inner process that only they themselves understand. They speak with great force about their latest treasure brought back from Plato’s cave, note the general indifference with which it is received, and lapse back into their impenetrable brooding, sure the NEXT insight will be the one.

That is what it is like to be a philosopher by nature. The definition is simple : a philosopher is someone for whom the desire for truth has become an all-consuming passion, and who pursues the truth without thought or hesitation as to the emotional or even practical consequences to themselves. We are a strange breed, and our love of the truth takes many different forms, from the crusading journalist to the research scientist to the implacable prosecutor to the keenly accurate accountant. But we all share the same impassioned desire to find, expose, and promulgate the truth.

The classic ponderer of the more traditional definition of a philosopher is merely the most extreme version of this basic truth driven personality. We philosophers are defined by the kinds of truth we seek, and for the traditional philosopher, nothing but the eternal truths underlying reality will do.

Yes, I consider myself one of this strange and often unloved population. Like a lot of your traditional philosopher types, I’m an odd duck, an edge of the flock kind of duck who tends to observe life from the outside and who spends a lot of time just…. thinking about things.

Often, we are dreamy and unworldly head-in-the-clouds types. This is the sort of personality that is attracted to philosophy, because this sort of pondering appeals to people who already spend a great deal of time in their own inner worlds and enjoy having something to work on in there.

But it’s a dangerous game, because by disengaging (or never having) the usual safety mechanisms in order to pursue the truth unfettered and unleashed, we blind ourselves to our own emotional and psychological well-being, taking untold damage as the baying hounds of the hunt drag us through the swamps in the feverish pursuit of their pray.

So we tend to be a messed up bunch of people. Arguably, you have to be somewhat messed up to end up a philosopher in the first place. IF we were normal people, we would be too busy having normal socially-engaged lives to spend time pondering the eternal verities. But like a lot of high-risk addictions, the pathology of this hardcore addiction to the sensation of insight makes the problem worse while treating its most superficial symptoms.

I cannot begin to calculate what damage I have done myself in my own pursuit of the objective truth of life. At times, it has even overridden my inborn pragmatism and my deep desire not to hurt others. The truth is a very jealous lover, and if you are not prepared for it, can push all other ideals into the dirt in its zealous desire to know.

It’s not something I could change about myself. You cannot back away from the truth once you have caught its scent, just like you can’t believe a lie. The genie simply cannot go back in the bottle.

But as I grow older, and the passions become more attenuated and refined, I look back at my life and ask the fundamental question : what has all this pondering and wondering done for me?

I could give a glib answer like “knowledge is its own reward” or “I understand more than most people”, but I am not sure. It could be nothing more than elaborate mental masturbation and I would have been a lot better off spending all that downtime learning a trade.

I guess that’s one question I’ll never answer, huh?