No Concept is True

Concepts invoke a great deal of confusion in the average human being. Even the above average human being.

This is due in large part to the conditioning of society. If everyone around you believes something to be a certain way, and acts according to that belief, it is very difficult to see it differently. Just to question commonly held beliefs tends to ostracize one from society, let alone declaring them as false.

Any serious seeker of truth must be willing to be an outcast.

Society values consensus, and consensus is an enemy of truth. To reach consensus is merely to say that something is or shall be a certain way. It need not be accurate to reach agreement.

What is true is true, regardless of what may be said or thought about it. It is therefore to case that, to discover truth, one must disregard his own conclusions.

To see what is true, one must look to what exists independently of his thoughts. One must see what exists without the presence of concepts. That which exists only as a concept does not truly exist.

We all know this on some level. If I imagine wizards and dragons exist, this does not make it so.

We recognize that imagination does not make something exist when we apply it to the physical. We fail to see that imagination does not make something exist when we apply it to the conceptual.

This is not to say concepts are without use. Even “chair” is a concept. Without it, shopping for something to sit on would be much more tedious. But even such a seemingly solid concept breaks when you begin to play with it.

You have a chair with four legs. You remove one leg. “Is it still a chair?” you ask.

Remove the concept and it becomes clear. “That thing over there” is still “that thing over there,” only a bit changed. The confusion comes from not seeing there is no such thing as a “chair.” It is merely a concept.

It is the same with the classic philosophical question about the Ship of Theseus. There is no “ship.”

One must see concepts for what they are to avoid such confusions.

Some concepts are useful. No concept is true.