This Statement Is False

if it’s false then it’s true, if it’s true then it’s false,
a well-worn ancient Greek philosopher’s paradox.
But our world is neither true nor false, it’s a universe of maybes
or worse
a cosmos of truths proven false.
“This statement is false” vouches for its own veracity,
a dizzying self-reference like a dog chasing its own tail,
a declarative sentence that either stands or falls but can’t lean
somewhere in between.
The sentence subject—statement—doesn’t stand outside the
statement it’s in
and therein lies the paradox.
Another ancient Greek philosopher, Protagoras, coined yet
another old Hellenic saw,
“Man is the measure of all things . . ..”
Yes Man in this sentence is the subject but a subject that doesn’t
self-reference itself,
the dog chases not its own tail but the cat’s.
But in this aphorism Man embodies all women and men,
and each one takes one’s own measure for that is what makes one
human
and not a mere beehive drone or sterile female worker in that
crowded nest.
Thus all measures are the measure of all things,
but when all things are measured by all measures nothing is
measured.
Therein lies yet another putative paradox, “Nothing is the
measure of all things.”
Protagoras was an agnostic and lived not by the certainty of true
or false,
but was for a lifetime haunted by the almighty maybe.
But consider “God is the measure of all things,” then if there’s
only one God
with no subset divinities— behold no paradox.
“God is the measure of all things,” a sophism of monotheistic
belief,
a simple declarative sentence that is either true or false
but truly forms no syntax of false maybes.