A bit

One of my very favorite quotations is this: "Magna est veritas et praevalet."

Why not love everything about it? First, it's from a now-obscure version of an obscure book of the Bible. It's from Ezra, often attributed "Esdras," as that's the older name. The verse was added by anonymous fingers translating (or copying) the Bible in ancient times, into (or already in) Latin. This probably happened a lot, little changes and additions. The graffiti of generations. It's just... here's one graffito we know about.

And it's really good. But it still needs editing.

It means: "The truth is great and it prevails."

You can see what that is: God is great. God is everywhere. God shows everyone His Way, etc.

But whatever your beliefs, there's something to it. Take God out of it.

It's still... It's still...

true?

So—so—so—let's acknowledge that people everywhere are busy lying, even right now, and many of the lies are busy being believed. And people get things wrong and go to war over nothing, really, and millions die. Humanity could still end in a zombie-skulled scuffle, an unleashing of nuclear war, a biological miasma, or runaway drones, or what have you.

Even though we—in our little sphere—manage to lie and get things wrong so much and so dishearteningly often, the truth, reality, the solid facts: we must admit these do prevail. They create us and destroy us and give us emotions and voice.

Just not always in our minds. Not always in our wills, either. Hell is angelic if human will isn't mostly about subjective desires and preferences, about selfish or groupish goals. Whatever will is, it does seem to exist, so that also is truth. But it seems to depend on something other than facts, even when it's informed.

We've got subjectivity, then. Let's admit that. Undeniably, it's there. And I think most of us rather like subjectivity. We enjoy existing and having this little bubble, this mini-version of the universe, and pushing this way and that.

Because we know that not everything is solved and finished, that the world, at least of humanity, is a work in progress, and we have myths to dispel and truths to uncover, and sometimes a wrong violently oppresses and destroys, and we can help, and so on—seeing all that, later individuals quoting this sentence have added to all the graffiti and written it this way: "Magna est veritas, et praevalebit."

That means: "The truth is great, and it will prevail."

Will prevail, now. There's tons of work to do, some unknown improver realized. Things are changing, discoveries are happening.

Out there are human factors, errors. There they are, but they won't remove truth in the end.

Well, both versions make sense, don't they? At all times, the universe is objective. It's a pile o' facts. It is however it is. The matter is arranged that way. The energy is arranged accordingly, the information accordingly, and all this develops constantly. It's completely objective. It is.

Then we focus on that second telling. It will prevail, won't it? Because we're coming around. We're seeing the light ourselves.

Splitting the difference, others have quoted good old Esdras ("Esdras") this way: "The truth is great and it prevails, or will."

Or. Maybe now, but if not, then one day. Do we see that it is good? The sentence is working on its own self. Folk wisdom has been getting us somewhere, it seems to me. How much of the Bible and other sacred scriptures evolved like this?

In the case of these words Esdras never wrote, the quotation isn't included in most Bibles, because we now know it was added later, and many people who are not "Esdras" are very particular about Bibles, believing in one historical event or line of telling or another.

Nonetheless, stepping back, we see a tiny example of how wisdom can accumulate in great texts, even potentially improving them over time.

There's also the joke version, punning on the Latin tense shift: "The truth is great, and it will prevail a bit."

Praevalebit means "will prevail." Will prevail a bit. Get it?

What this wisdom ultimately says, to me, is something about the character or quality of truth itself. What's true is true because the universe is arranged that way, because mathematics works like that, etc. You see it more by stepping out of the way and observing and testing your beliefs, putting aside some of your desires and preoccupations, than by trying to prove you've already got this detail perfect and therefore you are wonderful and therefore you should have people bringing you grapes on platters and feeding them to you. Getting a detail perfect, the slow etch of observing, insofar as that's possible, is both giving and receiving.

If you understand that one idea, you can help the truth prevail a bit.