Post-truth (part 1) - revealing a false metaphor for truth

Truth is a word that captures the human mind and then blows that mind into little bits. 

Despite thousands of years of writing by philosophers, religious thinkers and scientists we really don't have firm grounding for the concept of truth. What do we mean by the word truth? How do we know what we know? Can we really know anything? What is reality; what is an hallucination? What is a fact; what is evidence? Who decides what is true? When it is okay to lie or should we never? All big questions. 

History, psychology and politics are full of argument about what we know - is what we think we know true, is it a selective and shared delusion, is it even a lie? Most of us have had conversations where agreement on the truth was impossible. 

We all hold a sense that what we know is true, until someone asks us how we can be so sure. It's a pretty difficult concept.

Despite this, most of us¹ seem to almost casually accept that truth exists… 

But maybe not for much longer. According to some, we are now in a post-truth era.  

Does this mean that we live in a time after truth? Has truth finished (and where are all those answers?) Or has it been discredited as a big joke? Do we each get to have our own truth now?  

More interestingly to me, how can we understand the word post-truth if we have such a shaky grasp on what the word truth means? 

From Thom Gunn

Wordly Inspiration from Thomas Gunn, from an autobiographical essay, a sentiment shared by most of us who write:

"I must count my writing as an essential part of the way in which I deal with life."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

A prelude to post-truth

Well, this post has been harder than usual to wrangle into shape.

The word I am currently exploring is post-truth and what it tells us about how we think about the word and concept truth. 

By 'we' I mean you and I (not so much philosophers or religious writers or scientists who write a lot about it!) So, I'm making some assumptions about how you think about truth. It may be wrong, but I have to.

As a prelude to the series, perhaps you could ponder how you think about this difficult concept. Then you will be ready to check and challenge my assumptions. 

Do you think of truth as a set of objective facts, a principle, a collection of slippery contestable ideas, one interpretation among many? Who decides what the truth is? Why do you think humanity needs to know the truth? How have you felt when what you had believed to be true is shown to actually be false? How do you think about some of the strange and discredited ideas that people believed to be true in the past?  Despite the recent flurry around relativism and the current palaver about post-truth, do you nevertheless continue to think - or feel - that truth exists? 

What does the word truth mean to you? And given that, how does the word post-truth relate to that idea. If you had to think of an image or picture for humanity's relationship to truth, what might that image be? 

So many questions.

That's what I've been exploring and drawing, among too many other things to get this finished. I've changed direction several times, as the concept of truth seems to resist close scrutiny.  

Essentially, I have no answers to the many questions, but I have got a nice picture. And a new, improved, and more useful metaphor for truth.

Hopefully I can share it soon, if the world will permit.

TATKOP 128

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who see the world as 'us and them' and those with their eyes open.

  

See more in the TATKOP series.