For instance, there is "fact" and there is "truth". Clearly, these two cannot be exactly the same. Now, I won't bother breaking out a dictionary or anything, because as I say I don't really think that's particular helpful ... different dictionaries, I've found, will even define words slightly different. No, I will instead go with reason.

Y'see, it rather seems to me that "fact" is a facet or result of reason. Due to this, quite often (or at least hopefully) facts actually can be true. You know, it's a fact that humans need to breathe, that sort of thing. Whoever and where ever you are, you can reason that one out for yourself. And yeah, obviously we'd have to say that's fact and truth.

But are all facts true? How many scientific facts have been altered or outright disproven within, say, the last fifty years or so? Or perhaps more to the point: If it is a statistical fact that -- I dunno, ten percent of the population is gay -- does this really reflect the truth? Even if surveys reveal this time and again? Because, in order that it be actual truth, it must not be true some of the time, but all of the time. And I would tend to bet that any random sampling of people would be unlikely to reflect such a statistical truth.

Facts are facts, but they are distinct from truth. So ... let us ask, is truth always factual?

That one's a bit more slippery, I'd think. For now perspective must come into play. Or in the least, so it would seem. A particularly nationalist person, for instance, might argue for the absolute need to preserve national heritage, and with every fiber of his being feel that he only speaks the truth. Likewise, an earnest young socialist may argue an altogether different truth.

Now realistically, if we have conflicting truths, clearly neither of them can actually be completely true. And if we accept this perspective, nothing actually is ever true.

But can that be, really? Why even have the concept, if there can be no such thing?

I would argue that there is indeed truth. The trick of it is that we must seperate opinion from truth. And of course the question there is, how is that possible? After all, we are all stuck within our own perspective, yes? What's more, if we result to reason to reach a truth we might all agree on then we fall back into the realm of the factual, which unfortunately can be flawed.

Well, a wise man once said, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius." Now, I don't think he was speaking of Einstein-ish genius there. We mean genius of a more philosophical pitch. The sort of genius, we might say, that might allow us to recognize a universal truth when it strikes us.

Realistically speaking -- have we all not experienced some things, some feelings or reveries, that we could all say with a certainty that any human being who might accurately be called so has also felt, at some time or another? How about the particular and unique pain of loneliness? That loneliness is part and parcel of the human experience must seem true to me ... not to say, obviously, that everyone is lonely all the time. Only that everyone experiences loneliness at some point, at some time.

What's more? Loneliness sucks for everybody. Oh certainly, people can learn to thrive on just about anything, including pain. But that loneliness could ever occur to the human animal in a natural sense as pleasurable? Tomfoolery, I say.