Post truth (part 7) - revealing our relationship to truth

In the previous six posts in this series, I have described humanity's relationship to truth through the house construction metaphor. (The series starts here.)

Now, we can begin to explore the various contests of truth. These arise partly from our poor understanding of the human construction and relationship to truth, and our prevailing but misleading journey metaphor for truth.

In this post, I am exploring the motivations of those involved in the social agreement for truth, including those who would like to influence that agreement for their own benefit. 

Average - typical, conforming and invisible

It seems a lot of us suffer from FOBA: the fear of being average. This being Wordly Explorations, I wondered if the word average itself was part of the problem.

In part 1 of Average, I explored how people use and misuse the concept of average from statistics. I started with the statistics meanings of average - a single number (score) to represent a group, and normal - a particular pattern of the spread of different numbers/scores of a population. Two useful concepts for specific uses.

However, while the word average retains the 'authority of maths' in everyday use, it slides to mean normal (as in not abnormal), mediocre, and moral. It is mis-used to mean normal as in 'how we should all be'. This can cause considerable grief. 

That explains some of the sloppy word use that sits behind FOBA.  

In this post, I am exploring how the word average, used to mean normal, ends up meaning boring… and there's more grief as well.