An interesting idea

I spent a while browsing around today. It's amazing the sort of stuff you can find out there. It's amazing how often you find yourself becoming engrossed in something completely bizarre, that you would never find interesting if it were presented to you in any other way. So, somehow, I stumbled across this really cool idea - a wiki book! And then, because that post was so fantastical, I started reading, and I found all sorts of interesting things.

So, here's one of those interesting things. What if it were possible to view the world as it is, without trying to weigh things against one another. What do I mean by that? Well, what if you could look at something happening in the world, and take a good effect, and a bad effect, and see them both separately, without judging between them.

Or, as the author himself says, after discussing the relationship between progress and inequality:

For some reason we spend most of our time assessing which of these changes outweighs the other rather than just admitting that both stories have some truth to them. In a technological age, inequality provides one of the driving forces for innovation that generates long-run growth. In a society where basic goods are rationed by price, inequality will put more of those basic goods out of reach of the poorer ranks of society.

This would be a great skill to have, I feel: being able to see many truths at a time rather than looking for just one. I think you can extrapolate and try to apply it elsewhere as well -- why does only one thing have to be right, or better? Why can't both/all be accepted? The most obvious place to use this would be religion. Why does there only have to be one religion? Why can't there be truth in each of the varied ways that humans find to connect to God? I was trying to use an example in a conversation with a friend, and this is what I came up with: asking which religion is the right one (or even assuming that there IS only one right one) is like saying there's only one way to Makkah, and only one correct direction for prayer. But this is patently false; the Ka'aba is in a different direction from each place that you stand. If you made people face in the same direction from each place in the world, you would have some people praying towards Makkah, others towards Brazil. Instead, there is a specific direction for each location on earth. Thus each person has his or her own individual path to find and follow, and there is no single correct answer.

These two arguments seem very similar. Why does humanity always search for the Truth, the eternally applicable One Answer, rather than accepting that there are lots of true things, lots of answers, and that each of them has its own place?

And some entertaining endpoints. First, this article about the new threat to energy efficiency in Japan.

Secondly, a dude living all by himself on an island just declared independence.

Third, the awesomest apartment ever.

Finally, apparently a Pew survey found that one in five Americans who identify themselves as atheist also say they believe in God (via).

.....huh?

UPDATE: Toilets are a big thing everywhere, apparently. Who knew?

UPDATE 2: If you like the idea of what's-his-face in Forvik declaring independence, then check out the history of the six tiniest nations in the world. Apparently this isn't that unusual.

UPDATE 3: Gosh, micronations are everywhere.