We live in a sea of stories, to paraphrase from the title of an interesting novel from a rather tired novelist. Yet the stories we invent and invest in to explain our selves, perceptions and world are really investments in our way of being ourselves. They are the creations and justifications of ego.

In this post-modern age we are confronted by the stark reality that although everything may be true to somebody, real truth, universal truth, is lost. A truth universily acknowledged is not neccessarily a universal truth. Your feelings may be real and true to you yet they are not absolute truth.

Some would say there is no such thing as absolute truth, that “everything is relative”. It is true that everything can be viewed from a relative position. It is also true that absolute truth can be viewed, that everything can be viewed in its absolute light - if only the viewer can remove all the stories and just confront themselves with the bare facts of reality.

Take “God” for example, in its monotheistic creator god sense. “God” either exists, is real and true absolutely, or does not exist. There is no inbetween here. “God” as creator, did it, or didn’t. He cannot be true and real for some people and not for others.

If we deconstruct “God” we find a lot of human fear and hope behind the stories. If we deconstruct all the stories within ourselves can we find out the absolute truth? The Buddha said yes, and that, no, he didn’t do it. I’ll let you know when I meet him. Or not.

“postmodernism is usually held to be concerned with how the authority of those would-be-ideals, sometimes called metanarratives, are subverted through fragmentation, consumerism, and deconstruction.” From Wikipedia - Post-Modernism