One fateful day in the winter of 2009, while reading a forum about meanings of Beatles songs, I encountered a post with a link to www.truthcontest.com and directions to read The Present, a book by Michael Smith. I was captivated, and I read the book from start to finish in one sitting while feeling a resonance I had yet to encounter in this lifespan. Michael's book was powerful for me at that time in my life, and it had quite an effect on my system then and for many years to come.
Michael Smith was the pseudonym for a man who walked the earth, a man who stated that he feared death more than anyone else and channeled this fear into motivation to find and spread the truth about life and death. He had been working on writing The Present here and there throughout his adult life, and the urgency to finish, refine, and publish his books online amplified with his impending death due to a terminal medical condition. Michael had a profound impact on my path in life, and it was quite an experience to share a few years of working together before he passed in 2013.
After that, the captain of the ship was gone, and the website was shut down a few years later due to many factors, but especially stagnancy. Things were not the same without Michael drawing inspiration on a daily basis and directing changes to the website and his books. Much of the magic was in how his books would be changed and updated based on challenges from critical thinkers, new information and evidence encountered, and insights about how to express ideas or organize words more clearly. Michael's books were never meant to be an unchanging, static canon, and that is what they had become after he passed.
Now, after almost a decade, new inspiration has come to guide the rebirth of the Truth Contest, which was reborn on 11/11/22 and opened on 3/2/23. In the past, the emphasis was more to spread The Present due to Michael's influence. Now, the idea of the contest itself will be the emphasis. I was drawn to the idea of a truth contest from the very first time I encountered the website. It is the kind of contest where everyone wins. It is a way to bring together those who care about seeking and finding the truth. It has the potential to unite humans from all parts of the world by way of understanding and curiosity.
The original idea for the contest had a $1 million dollar cash prize, but that was just for show, to get the attention of a wider audience. That idea was scrapped early on, but now it is back, because the goal is to find and inspire others to write, express, and create something better, something more accurate and updated than what Michael wrote. I acknowledge and own that realistically, this website is an aspect of my personal effort and journey to find truth that resonates with me. That said, my intention is for this website to invite collaboration and to evolve into something more and more people want to be a part of. I put forth what I could of my own money to signify what this is worth to me. I hope that someday we will far surpass that amount of tangible support for finding, defining, and spreading the truth about life and death.
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