WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR LEGENDS...?

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend...!"

The classic movie line reflects the way history often comes down to us. Examples abound. Egypt's Cleopatra... France's Joan of Arc...England's Churchill...America's George Washington and the Cherry tree, the ride of Paul Revere, the Illinois days of Lincoln, MacArthur's & Patton's WWII exploits. And why not? So often we prefer -- need -- the legends.

However, legends are not only the property of the famous. The older we grow, the more little legends accumulate. First in our minds. Later at the family dinner tables. Eventually within the world we walk.

To some this becomes a straight-cut matter of facts vs fictions. These are the empirical, legalistic minds among us who live by "the evidence." An intellectual habit to be admired. At least until someone presents them with the "facts" that their college exploits were really never quite what their resume says, or their baby is actually kinda funny looking. Those are the moments when the efficacy of the legends by which we grow trumps the emptiness of the facts which we have worked to outgrow.

Of course our's is an age in which facts frequently become an obsession. Of the scientist, the reporter, the opposition party, the rival company, the nation. Facts for them are used like weapons to cut down the legends (read: lies) by the others. And yet these weapons can be painfully suspect. More than likely our facts are mostly our perceptions. Each scientist, reporter, party, company or nation sees only what it can or wants to. Until the Singularity, we are after all still human not computer.

Does all this mean we walk in a world of nihilistic relativism? where nothing is what we think it is? No. The earth is still not flat and north is still not south. However, neither is the earth exactly round nor north exactly true north. As Einstein reported, things bend and relativity co-exists with absolutes.

So there it is.

Facts and legend co-inhabit our world and our lives. To know the difference -- when and how to know the difference! -- just may be the most empirical lesson we can learn. Scientist, reporter, party, company, nation, and each of us.