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? 

Exploring words to explore the way we think about the world

Humanity hasn't been able to agree about truth, despite millennia pondering its nature, contemporary debates about what is true and what is false, and all the fact-checking of political and alternative reality claims. 

The emergence of the word post-truth says a lot about how we generally think about truth, even if we might struggle to explain it or define it. 

And that's what I want to explore: the mental images and metaphors we use to think about humanity's ongoing quest for truth. 

Don't laugh, but let's start at the dictionary...

Okay, so I'm not going to find THE answer to this timeless question in the dictionary, but I want to focus on how we commonly use the word. 

Leaving aside the religious sense (for now), the dictionary defines truth:

♦️ the body of real things, events, and facts
♦️ the state of being the case
♦️ a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true
♦️ the property of being in accord with fact or reality.

So, our contemporary idea of truth is the condition of a belief or idea being in accord with fact or reality.

According to this definition, truth is a principle that humans apply to what we experience of the world. We sort the myriad of information, data and ideas into types: that information is truth because it accords with reality, but that is not truth, while that is sometimes truth. 

The word truth comes from Middle English trewthe, based on the word trewe (true), from Old English trēowe (meaning faithful). It is akin to Old High German gitriuwi (faithful), Old Irish derb (sure) and from Sanskrit dāruṇa (meaning hard) related to dāru for wood (meaning hardwood). 

I love that: etymologically the word truth was less about being in accord with facts and correct, and more about being faithful, sure, reliable, certain, and as tangibly THERE as a hardwood tree. That etymology encompasses an important connection between truth and that ubiquitous theme in human behaviour - the need to feel safe.  

Knowing the truth is extremely important to humans

For humans, knowing the truth is part of creating predictability and certainty. 

Knowing the truth is core to making sense of the world - be that our own backyard or international politics. Humans need to believe they are right; that they know how things really are.

We also need a place to belong, which includes holding shared ideas of truth with other people. 

Accepting suggestions that you might be wrong, misguided or deluded generates very distressing feelings. 

Arguments about truth are usually very heated. When someone challenges our sense of understanding the world, of knowing the right things, of holding truth, we humans commonly react with fear or aggression. We grip 'our truth' pretty damn hard, because it is effectively our lifebuoy.

The suggestion there is no objective truth at all is also very deeply unsettling - this idea can leave us uncertain and lost. It doesn't seem to make sense - of course the truth exists! How else do we make decisions and how do we live?!

When something destroys our sense of truth, we humans often turn to the first alternative that restores it: a cult, a rabid ideology, a charismatic (often bullshitting) politician. Anything that will give us back some of that certainty which comes from knowing the truth.

Because we must know the truth. It is central to feeling safe. 

What mental images and metaphors do we use for truth? 

For the longest time, humans got truth - and our sense of certainty and safety - from our god/s. Religion told us how the world worked, what was truth, why things were the way they were, and also where we were heading.

The human need to know truth was thought of as finding the path to god. Many religions refer to this journey: Christianity - 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' and Islam - 'Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it.' 

This image for truth uses the metaphor of humans on a long, and sometimes treacherous journey, stumbling blocks along the way, and the closer we get to god, the closer we get to truth.

In contrast, contemporary western societies² now claim to get truth from science. 

Science is our predominant method to determine the facts; an approach to knowing what is real. Our dictionary definition (above) equates truth with determining what is in accord with the facts about reality. (Scientists reading this will say they don't peddle in truth at all. I accept that, but my focus is how 'we', i.e. society broadly, thinks about science³ and truth, a la the dictionary). 

Despite a new source of truth, we have kept the old metaphor of a journey.

Contemporary secular western society looks back on human history as a long journey from ignorance to knowledge; from false, simplistic and comforting ideas about reality; followed by travelling ever closer to the destination of truth. 

 Along the journey, we have discarded numerous false ideas - like gods causing thunder when they fight, or the once-dominant idea the sun orbits the earth. We laugh at the silly ideas people used to hold about the world, about reality, about truth. 

It has been a challenging journey: it involves not just accepting what is easy or convenient and rooting out errors we can easily make in our urgency to know truth. Along with scientific discoveries about reality, we have learned how human thinking biases lead us to distort or mis-perceive facts and reality, and now categorise our experiences of the world into true (actual, real) and false (distortions, biases, false memory). On the truth journey, science has taken numerous detours and wrong turns due to these biases, existing power structures in society, and personal failings like greed and pride. But we continue to refine science, and remain hopeful we might one day arrive at the glorious destination of truth. 

Thus, the most common Western metaphor for truth pictures humanity on a long, and sometimes treacherous journey, stumbling blocks along the way, and the closer we get to knowing all the facts about reality, the closer we get to truth.

Same, same.

While this metaphor doesn't illuminate the meaning of life or provide the comfort of an afterlife, as religion does, it does provide the comfort of 'certainty'. And that's really what we humans⁴ seem to want most of all.

So... where is post-truth on this treacherous journey toward truth? 

Is our long quest finally over (and what will we do with all our spare time)? Did humanity arrive at the long-awaited destination, but it wasn't so great after all? Are we lost, on the wrong path, or did something else happen to truth?  

The truth is out there - an attribute of 'real things'

There's a second important part of the metaphor of the journey to truth.

With science as our source of truth, we've lost touch with the idea that humanity's desire to know the truth is the tied to our need for certainty and safety.

The scientific journey metaphor sees truth as existing 'out there', whether humans like it or not. 

We consider truth as an inherent attribute of 'real things' in the world to be discovered or determined. We accumulate facts, we amass knowledge, we're accumulating more and more truth. 

Therefore, truth is viewed as something objective to be found on our journey to the destination where we will have all and only objective facts and know everything. You can't argue with facts (and you can't choose your own!), although we can each do better or worse at determining them. Yes, we all sometimes prefer to accept our personal feelings or biases rather than harsh reality, but truth still exists.

We think we know truth because it accords with the objective facts about the world. 

I reject your facts, your reality

But some reject these same objective facts, which sounds at first a lot like the disturbing loss of a grip on reality experienced in psychosis.  

Okay, we might think, some people just don't seem to want to accept truth, but they are just wrong. Right? Some people believe false or wrong things. We think they have been tricked or they are just dumb. 

What if, though, some people no do not equate facts about reality with truth. Perhaps they no longer agree that truth is objective and 'out there'. Perhaps they are seeking a truth that makes them feel certain and safe.

Some time on Friday, in the year 175

Some blame the rejection of  the 'reality' of facts on those crazy post-modernists in the 1960s (who were really just the most recent thinkers in this long line of pondering truth). The PoMos declared truth doesn't exist and everything we know is relative and culturally dependent. Relativism questioned the objectiveness of facts, evidence and truth. It questioned that humans can know anything for sure. 

It seemed to imply that we each make our own truth. Post-modernism  was interpreted by some to endorse going on a 'chose our own adventure' reality journey. Why not make your own truth, if it feels a lot better there?  

The post-modernists were misinterpreted by many and rejected outright by a majority. The counter- arguments centred on the need to 'enforce' objective facts again; those facts about reality that are independent of anyone’s willingness to accept them. Some claim that postmodernism and relativism are the bad parents of the political strategy of denying or questioning facts, and disdain for the 'reality-based community. Post-truth statements that dismiss objective facts in contemporary politics are constantly challenged: fact-checking sites are busy day and night countering wild political claims. 

But strangely, they fail to influence those who seem to have had already decided that facts are irrelevant. 

Trying to place post-truth on the journey toward truth

It's a terrible thought, but could we be wrong about truth? The incredible amount of writing about truth and the irreconcilable ideas about what constitutes truth, what does that mean? What is post-truth and where does it fit in our journey?

How disturbing to contemplate the idea the destination we have been journeying toward for millennia doesn't exist and humanity might have been wrong all along. If truth is not really 'out there' in factual reality, where is it? 

But our journey metaphor continues to strongly influence our thinking. We seem to have assimilated post-truth into the journey metaphor as an image of damaging the path we were on, or of humanity being pushed on to a dead-end side-tracks and detours through strange lands where floating clouds replace facts about the world. 

Many believe we need to get back onto the right journey and we need to value objective facts again. This will be the answer to both relativism and post-truth. 

It is a problem with facts and reality, or could it be related to how we picture truth?

The term post-truth: 'new speak' for something awful 

Post-truth implies a point along our journey that comes AFTER truth (the prefix post- meaning 'after or subsequent'). It seems to imply we had a pretty good grasp on truth (despite our ongoing quest).

The word post-truth was coined by playwright Steve Tesich in 1992 writing about the public complacency about the lies, corruption and deceit rampant in seedy episodes of American politics from 1970s onward. 'We, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world'.   

For Tesich, post-truth described the population's apparent lack of concern about lies and corruption, but its meaning has now shifted. It now purports to refer to the nature of reality - nothing is objective, therefore nothing is real. You can have your 'facts' and I can have 'alternative facts'. It was Oxford Languages word of the year in 2016, and means 'the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth'.  

The word post-truth seems to represent a stage in humanity's truth journey when facts and reality no longer provide the direction and destination.

In fact, I think post-truth is a cover to hide another word we find most distasteful: propaganda. 

Propaganda is

♦️ the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.

The key part of defining this word is the purpose - to influence public opinion.

Well, I would say more than influence public opinion; I would say control the public's idea of truth. Or destroy the public's previous idea of truth so you can supplant your own.

The propagandist has a set of goals, and aims to control what is considered truth to achieve those goals. This involves selecting facts and arguments, omitting or distorting other facts, diverting attention from everything but the version of truth preferred by the propagandist.

Like all successful propaganda, like Orwell's Newspeak, the word post-truth slipped into our language without too much attention or scrutiny. To me, post-truth is signaling loudly that someone wants to control and manipulate the truth for their own benefit. 

And our effort to counteract propaganda is fact-checking? Propaganda isn't a debate about 'facts'; it's a grab for power and control.

I think we are blinded to what is happening in many western countries currently because of our long-standing journey metaphor for truth and our poorly thought out ideas about objective truth.

What if truth as a destination after a long journey is just not a good metaphor? 

Let's look at this metaphor.

Most of us¹-² seem to casually accept truth is out there somewhere and humanity is on a journey, making slow but steady progress toward a destination where we will know everything. With scientific thinking, society equates establishing facts with establishing reality, and from there equates establishing reality with establishing truth.

In this post-truth era, we seem to be bombarded with outright lies and a concocted alternative reality. 'Alternative facts' are presented as just another truth. Nothing is true and everything is true. What?! How can we live when nothing is knowable, nothing is real? If there is no objective truth, how can we make sense of the world, how can we know what is right? How can we be safe?

Truth seems to be in trouble, that's for sure. 

But what if the real problem is that a journey toward the destination of objective knowledge is not a good metaphor for truth. 

What if truth is not a destination to arrive at via the 'right' path? What if truth is not an inherent attribute of things 'out there' in the world? What if truth is not merely the outcome of determining of objective facts and knowledge? What if truth is not something that we find, something we struggle to uncover?

The journey has been the metaphor for seeking knowledge and truth for recorded history, but it's only a metaphor.

However, I think it is a false metaphor for truth.

We've had several hints about the substantial problems with this metaphor, with the word post-truth only the latest. Other hints have come from the research into the nature of the physical world and into human perception; sociological thinking on how humans organise knowledge; cross-cultural studies; and the massive kerfuffle that relativism and post-modernism provoked within the academic community. (I will talk more about these 'hints' in future posts.)

Our own insistent personal need to know truth should have given us some kind of pause about the journey metaphor too. We don't have an objective relationship with truth; we feel strongly about it. 

And now, we've reached a dangerous point. Our journey metaphor for truth has allowed the idea of post-truth to be laughed off as a problem of some 'stupid', misinformed or misguided individuals, or criticised as the actions of a few narcissistic or sociopathic political figures to say in power. They have just taken the wrong fork in the journey, we think.

I think, however, that post-truth is a misnaming of a well-orchestrated propaganda to control truth. 

But our ideas that truth equals objective facts 'out there' combined with our false metaphor of a journey to truth mean we fail to see this.

Time to stop the journey and go home

In summary, truth is not sufficiently enough like a journey for that to be a useful metaphor. Truth is not 'out there' or something we 'find' in the world. It's not a destination. Truth was never at the end of a path of determining objective facts. I think what we call truth is a 'product' of humanity's need to feel safe. 

And now, this false metaphor is hiding the dangerous reality represented by post-truth.

Is there another way to picture and think about truth? 

The endless journey metaphors have to stop!

We need another metaphor that could represent how humans know what they know, a metaphor that includes the contested concepts of reality, facts, evidence, objectivity, perspective, relativism, ways of knowing, the idea of post-truth and propaganda. A metaphor that also highlights the importance of truth to humans feeling safe.

Truth has always been about the human need to make the world appear coherent and predictable, to be certain. Truth needs to be anchored sufficiently in the reality of the physical and social world so we are safe, but it is also always a shared social project of meaning making.

I've got a new metaphor for truth: the home as a place of safety, a building project in which each individual and their society participates, which needs to adhere to certain construction rules, and which can always be besieged from those outside. 

It takes a bit of explaining, which I start in part 2 of this series.

There's a nice picture too!

Footnotes

1. By 'us' and 'we' I'm referring to my assumptions and perceptions of what the broad public thinks. Hopefully it accords with how you think too!
2. I can only ever talk about those of us in Western society; my understanding of non-Western cultures is too limited to comment.
3. Most challenges to the claims of science are based on this everyday understanding of truth rather than an understanding of the limits and boundaries of the scientific method. In scientific disciplines, even the most well established and tested hypothesis will not be considered as truth, but as a theory. The scientific approach assumes that all beliefs are falsifiable and subject to be proven wrong by changing times or new evidence. If only more non-scientists understood that!
4. I'm limited to my own experience to be able to say what all humans want, so I am happy to be corrected.

Images, used under Creative Commons Licence

• Truth quotes from Socrates, Lowell, Buddha, X-files, Aurelius: snipped from social media along with hundreds of others!
• Hardwood tree: Andrew Massyn https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Khaya_anthotheca.jpg [Public domain]
• Religious and scientific paths to truth: the author
• Mountain image https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/03/28/14/19/destination-1285851_960_720.png [Free image]
• Truth signpost: Nick Youngson, Alpha Stock Images https://www.picpedia.org/highway-signs/t/truth.html [CC BY-SA]
• Path in the clouds: snipped from social media
• Post-truth sign: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHxsq3qswxN1Rmi5mkT17bhoYh1cePp7HcqY5nrwG0cict4q5srOswlrWn9PEwoy4NZzVykboCamUWku-ECNTobrh34jBo8g8n1k4JRK2DIoojjwtiLpC7U_TzjBkLjx2f4ncToXrfyNOi/s1600/bigstock--162042059.jpg [CC BY-ND]
• Quote from Hannah Arendt: image from Brain Pickings on social media; original source: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/20/hannah-arendt-origins-of-totalitarianism-loneliness-isolation/ 
• Kellyanne Conway's Alternative Facts: snipped from social media
• Fork in the road: John Keane https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnkeane/3923477035/ [CC BY-SA]
• Journey: Ninjatic https://www.deviantart.com/ninjatic/art/Journey-416541131 [CC BY-NC-ND]