While doing some research on Virginia Governor Northam’s alleged racism for another thread (in Current Events), and wanting to establish some facts about my contention that Southern history is a sham deliberately designed to cover up its racist, pro-slavery agenda with a veneer of historic and traditional respectability, Google turned up a website for for me that beautifully corroborated my assertions: portside.org.
This is your basic Left-wing portal, proudly,
shamelessly partisan for the Left. It gave me plenty of ammunition for my point. On the other hand, while I was there, I skimmed through several other articles, including one that describes the Leftist takeover of Venezuela as a noble proletarian act, and the current problems of the Maduro regime as solely the result of capitalist US meddling in Venezuelan political and economic affairs. Needless to say, this is a viewpoint I certainly do not agree with. The Chavez-Maduro gang is too reminiscent to me of the Castros in Cuba, another murderous and incompetent Socialist regime that has somehow managed to attract to itself the uncritical adulation of too many American Progressives.

There is no doubt that US and capitalist imperialism exists, but you can’t blame every volcano, hurricane and dictator on los yanquis.

Beware of purely partisan perspectives; even those you may happen to agree with. Each situation must be examined individually, not through the filter of a particular ideology or philosophy. Sometimes our side is just plain wrong, and sometimes their side may actually be right. And sometimes, the truth just lies somewhere in between.

You called your post “Juno”, after the NASA probe that took the pictures, which I had forgotten all about. So I assumed that the word “Juno” referred to something in the image. Perhaps the Roman goddess Juno (Jupiter’s wife)was represented by some shape in the clouds. I stared at that image, identifying two figures in the clouds, looking like goddesses: tall, willowy figures, “dressed” in what looked like flowing robes. Both were lying on their sides, and I could see details, even facial features.

There was, of course, nothing of the kind there. There were only purely random cloud swirls. I know, of course, that no Roman goddess, or any other kind for that matter, was actually there, but I figured maybe some chance arrangement of color and shape appeared that coincidentally resembled Juno, and that someone had noticed it and pointed it out. You know, like the images of Jesus that are occasionally reported on potato chips and breakfast pastries. For our own survival, we have been programmed by Evolution to seek out patterns, connections and anomalies in our surroundings; and sometimes we are so sensitive to them we make them up from random sensory data.

Well, since I was looking for goddesses, I saw them! I talked myself into it. Another example of the mind being able to see patterns where none exist, once it convinces itself that they’re really there, or should be there.

What is real and what is not? What evidence can we trust, what facts should we believe? Is Trump/Putin collusion purely in the eye of the beholder? Is the evidence for or against Global warming truly convincing? And what about Hillary’s Benghazi crimes, her missing emails, her Pizza Parlor Pedophilia, her Great Right-Wing Conspiracy? And just what is the true security situation at the southern US border? Where was Socialist, Muslim Obama actually born? There may very well be one simple undeniable truth out there, but how can we ever learn what it is when we are so capable, even eager, to fool ourselves to see what we want to see? Sometimes a controversial truth is truly a compromise between two opposing viewpoints, but other times, it IS a binary choice, one which we can so easily be deluded into getting wrong.

In this case, its easy. Once I remembered the name of the NASA probe was “Juno”, why RL named his post that was perfectly clear and all my fanciful searches for imaginary Roman goddesses collapsed–just like the wave function. But lots of times, its not so easy, even when you are perfectly aware of your own limitations and prejudices and doing your best to make allowances for them.

And when you actually make an honest effort to do so, is that evidence of sincere, careful, sound judgement; or does it merely reveal moral weakness, intellectual cowardice, or hand-wringing indecision and Liberal relativism?

Yes, truth is relative, and it is subjective. And it is not because there is no “real”, objective Universe
out there. It is because the Universe we choose to live in is the result of consensus, controversy and debate. The physical universe may be real, but our psychological universe is the one we actually perceive, and the one we must socially deal with is only negotiated with everybody else.

And once you truly understand this, you come to see how totally helpless and alone we really are.