The Truth is There's Very Little of It

 

Politicians seem to have glommed onto the word "truth." We speak the "truth," and they don't! From a political perspective, this is brilliant. It inoculates their constituents against being swayed by their opponents' arguments because "they're lying."

Just as the word "literally" has come to mean "figuratively," which, ironically, is literally the opposite, "truth" has come to mean "in my opinion." 

I've been thinking a lot about "truth" lately. What constitutes "truth?" In an age in which audio and video can be flawlessly faked, and anyone can write anything, making it available to the masses, truth is hard to come by. That's not to say that everything you see and hear secondhand is false. It's to say that you don't really know.

There are some truths in mathematics. For example, we know 2+2=4. This is truth. But even in scientific fields like physics, we mostly just have theories. Any study of the evolution of human understanding of physics will demonstrate that what was once believed to be hard scientific proof turned out to be completely wrong later.

So what is truth, then? You can usually trust what you see. I have a beautiful large maple tree in my front yard. That is as true as anything gets for me. Sadly, for you, dear reader, that is just a belief. Unless you've seen my tree with your own eyes, you don't know if I'm making it up or not.

Ultimately, most of what we know comes down to belief. We choose who to believe, and then we trust that they are telling us the truth. When the people we believe say things that conflict with their opposition's "truth," THEY are lying...or are they?

Figuring out who is telling the truth and who is lying when two sides of a debate disagree can be a lot of work. If the issue concerns past events, substantiating the truth may be impossible.

We prefer the truth to the ambiguities of belief. We like to pretend that our beliefs are the truth. It's much more reassuring to know that our beliefs are built upon "the truth." Unfortunately, our beliefs are mostly built upon more beliefs. We have no choice but to trust our beliefs. When they are challenged, it's much easier to say the others are lying than to do the potentially futile research to determine whether there's any definitive evidence to substantiate one position.

What can we do about it? If there was an easy answer, we'd all be doing it. There isn't one. If we want to approximate "the truth," we must work for it. Put in the time and effort to seek trustworthy evidence. The only alternative is to pick trustworthy sources and hope they are rigorous in seeking substantiating evidence for their claims.

Unfortunately, sources that we once trusted now have agendas. News outlets have largely become mouthpieces for some guiding belief system. When I was younger (many years ago), we could trust the major news outlets to report "the truth." What we didn't know was that there was a lot of important information that simply wasn't reported because the people who controlled the news outlets kept it secret. It's harder to do that now, so mis/dysinformation is used to obscure inconvenient facts.

What does this mean? For me, it means that every idea, no matter how counter to my beliefs, is worthy of consideration. I may ultimately dismiss it based on my analysis of the situation, but I will consider it. I leave you with one example.

Some believe that the lunar landing was faked. I agree that this is possible. We know thousands of people worked for years to build the equipment and infrastructure for the lunar landing. We know astronauts boarded a craft and went into space, heading toward the moon. We know this because many people saw these events with their own eyes. So many people that coordinating a cover-up would be virtually impossible.

We know that the three astronauts who flew the mission returned to Earth. Again, many people saw them with their own eyes. The only part of the mission that many people didn't see was the actual landing. Let's say, hypothetically, that something went wrong during this portion of the mission, and the secret "powers that be" decided to fake the landing. They would need to involve many people in creating a realistic set, along with the film crew and post-production teams. All of these people would need to remain silent. It's a big ask.

The other issue with this theory is which types of things could have gone wrong with the mission that would have left the expected equipment and people intact for the return. Undoubtedly, there are scenarios in which this would be the case, but there are many more in which they would have suffered losses that couldn't be covered up. Since the preparations for the faking would have needed to take place before the mission was launched, one might question the value given only some scenarios would even create the opportunity to utilize it.

Conspiracy theorists may find some evidence to suggest the lunar landing was faked, but they can't explain away the preponderance of solid evidence to the contrary. Did the lunar landing happen? I don't know, but I choose to believe that it did.