Lisa just learns that Akeem the lowly goat herder who works at her father’s restaurant is actually Prince Akeen of Zamunda. She hit the jackpot, but she feels like she’s been lied to, deceived, because she had been. Akeem couldn’t tell her; he wanted her to know who he was outside of his title. Once the veil was lifted and the truth revealed, she wasn’t quite sure who this man actually was.

“I’m the man you fell in love with.”

A forewarning this one is going to be all over the place, but you read my stuff you know how it goes.

By definition, using the second definition according to Bing the first is simply a clothing piece, but the meaning I’ll be using is

a thing that serves to cover, conceal, or disguise

Akeem was seeking a bride, not one who would obey his every wish, but one who would be his equal. He wanted a woman who sought his heart and shared hers with him. An arranged marriage placed by his father’s dealings was to land him a very beautiful woman whose sole purpose was to serve the prince. Akeem did not want a beautiful fool, so off he went to America to find his bride.

Reality is our perception of the physical world and all its possibilities. What we perceive as reality is, however, there’s a veil. There’s a veil hiding the reality of things that we do not know, and not until we lift the veil to reveal the truth it remains hidden to us. Once lifted we see what we could not before.

Plato would argue that there is a world of forms. The things that are present in the world are imitations of the ideal things in the world of forms. There’s a veil between the physical world and the ideal world. Truth exists in the ideal world and can only be discovered in the physical world, not found but revealed. Truth resides in the ideal realm; you won’t find truth in the physical world it does not exist there. Much like other divine concepts, justice, love, and beauty are ideal concepts that are concrete in the ideal realm and are instantiated in their essence into the physical world, their imitations can be revealed but not obtained. You cannot go to the fountain of beauty in the physical universe and fill your bucket up with all you can take, no it comes from the world of forms and is revealed to you.

Thomas Jefferson was elected the third president of the United States on February 17th, 1801. Educated in Paris, Jefferson was an enlightened individual who put reason before truth. The former can reach the latter, we find truth with our ability to reason. He advocated to construct a veil (I believe his papers use the term hedge) between the church and the state. They need to be separate; we cannot govern by putting the church into the role of government, we must keep them separate to govern by rational thinking (not suggesting that religion is irrational). He knew of the barrier between the ideal world and the physical reality and suggested that we keep them separate.

Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 5:17

” For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

Christianity also indicates that there is a world of forms, it aligns with Platonic thought. Discussed before are four (probably a couple more) different paradigms of metaphysics.

Naturalism in which the world is and that’s it. Phenomenology where being and experience “make” the world, this notion is not a closed set but a vast set of infinite possibilities. Jung’s collective subconscious and mixture of naturalism with subtle Platonic notions. Finally, there’s Plato, a reality of two “worlds”.

It’s rhetorical to say which is truth, you must lift the veil.