Reward Emptiness

openness

friendship

physician

surgeon

surgery

privacy

social media

publicity

introvert

feelings

oversharing

kindness

is so crucial to our self-discovery because we cannot know ourselves by who we think we are, who others take us to be, or what our driver's license may say. We are fields of potential, some now actualized, most not yet.

Just as our fingerprints are one-of-a-kind, so is our identity. Each of us is a once-only articulation of what humans can be. We are rare, unmatched, mysterious. This is why the quality of openness is so crucial to our self-discovery. We cannot know ourselves by who we think we are, who others take us to be, or what our driver's license may say. We are fields of potential, some now actualized, most not yet.

is the best weapon of democracy, just as secrecy is the best weapon of a dictatorship.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

No awareness of things is possible unless we and they stand in an open space of encounter where both reside. Any correctness or incorrectness is possible only on the basis of such an openness. Hence, this openness is what deserves to be called truth in the essential sense. This gives us a preliminary solution to the “essence of truth” described in the title: the essence of truth is openness. Since openness requires freedom, we can also say that the essence of truth is freedom. While freedom is usually regarded as a property belonging to humans, Heidegger holds that the reverse is true: humans are the property of freedom. Without freedom, we would not be Dasein. To be free means to be exposed to the unconcealment of beings. Any logical truth of sentences is shallow in comparison with this deeper revelation of things in human freedom. The essence of truth is letting things be, so that they can appear to us as what they really are, without our violently reducing them to distortions or caricatures. Naturally, such distortion is always partly unavoidable.

openness, n.All

openness