The best piece of philosophical advice that I've ever been given is that the truth is most powerful and effective when it is presented in it's simplest form. This is actually an original concept of mine, but it is based in the wisdom of people who are masters of weeding out the excess of words, conditional statements, and attempts to load too much importance and comprehension into something that should be broken down into it's most basic and simply stated forms.

When highly educated people have to communicate with those who have far less formal education, we are sometimes astounded at the richness and brilliance of the simplest statement: "Well, quit making it hard for yourself and just do it!" Psychologists have spent their lifetimes and have been writing millions of words about that one goal in life.

Sadly, highly educated people have more difficulty than success when concepts are stated simply, and include just the facts. The immediate desire is to pile on with coverage of dissenting opinion, introduction of higher level linguistic entities, supporting quantitative analysis and support, speculation, and dazzling new theoretical implications.

Even more sadly, the student has to spend far more time than necessary in breaking all of that excess down into concepts that can be absorbed and used, or, into the truth in it's simplest form.

The truth is more powerful when expressed in it's simplest form. Doctors and nurses in the hospital often use the term "pee" to describe the patient's urine. The patient has died, not expired or passed on. But doctors and nurses have to learn some of the most complex and detailed linguistic representations for the most complex and difficult concepts. They do not learn these concepts, however, with an excess of unnecessary or new verbiage that has been created for it's own sake. So truth, in the medical setting can be far too complicated for the lay person to understand, but very easy for any doctor from any part of the world to immediately grasp. At the same time, medical personnel must be able to communicate clearly with the average, far less knowledgeable person.

In the social sciences, business, and the law, the overwhelming excess of "new and improved" words used to advance a simple concept, language that attempts to cover every possible angle and condition of a subject, and constant attempts to create new language to describe simple new concepts, makes for a very confusing and time consuming path to the truth.

In the military, writing and communication are mostly broken down into the simplest and most mentally digestible form. While there might be specific technical terminology and some archaic forms of speech in formal documents and ceremonies, there is usually no time or use for rhetorical and linguistic tools to fancy up or to play games with military instructions and orders.

The classic tools of Rhetoric: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, are used by the masters, whether highly educated or with very poor formal education, to make the truth of a matter very difficult to obtain.

But the truth, in it's most powerful and effective form, is simple. And that is the best philosophical advice that I've ever, in bits and pieces and from many wise sources, ever been given.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth M. Young.
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