What You Need To Know About Truth

There’s no such thing as a Truth.

What is The Truth? What is The Truth of the universe? What is The Truth of ourselves? What is The Truth of odd socks? What is The Truth of Hollywood? What is The Truth of aliens? What is The Truth about the cure of cancer? What’s The Truth of world peace? Can it exist?

We, as humans, spend our lives chasing after answers. We exist in a perpetual state of seeking. Yet, the more we seek, the more questions we uncover. We have drastically mistaken the very definition of Truth, in the same way we have mistaken the definition of Happiness and Love. No doubt this misinterpretation was born of a Capitalistic and Colonial mindset, where everything is a commodity that can be bought, stolen or owned. There is no such thing as a Truth in the form of “The answers we are all searching for”. There are no answers, there is no right and wrong. What we are left with is an ability to understand (Truth), and discernment (intention behind choice). And the ability to understand is not a commodity, it is a way of living. It is a choice.

Okay, so before I drive both of us insane, lets break things down and start with having a look at the current definition of “Truth”.

Google spits out the following definition (I’ll preface this with the fact that Google’s definition sucks):

• that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality

Then we must ask – well what’s the definition of ‘true’. Type that into the search bar and it retrieves the following:

• In accordance with fact or reality.

But if that is so, and if Truth really is based on fact or reality, then Truth must also be dynamic (ever changing). For example, up until the 1980’s it was a fact that babies under the age of two didn’t have fully developed nervous systems and were therefore unable to feel pain to the same extent as adults. As a result, children under the age of two weren’t given anaesthesia during surgery, only muscle relaxants for paralysis. The statement “It’s okay to operate on babies without pain relief because they don’t feel pain” was a “truth” based on fact. But we know now that fact is false. What does that mean for the truth based on that fact, now disproven, and, not to mention, disgustingly morally questionable. Has the Truth now become a Lie? Was it ever a Truth if, after a few years of research, it became a Lie? Do we accept that the Truth changes? Or do we go looking for another understanding as to what True really is at its core?

Personally, I don’t like doing what I’m told, so I’ll be doing the latter.

Definition of Truth

Multiple individual perspectives translated into one coherent view that can be understood by all parties.

To me, the definition of the word “Truth” is as follows: multiple or a singular individual perspective translated into one coherent view that can be understood by all parties. Truth doesn’t have to be accepted by all parties, but it must be communicated and understood by all parties. Truth, in part, is clarity.

Truth does not decide what is right, and what is wrong.

Truth does not decide who is bad and who is good.

Truth is, quite simply, understanding, translating and communicating views in a way that all parties understand.

There is a scene in the book “Babel”, written by R. F. Kuang, that’s an excellent expansion on this idea. The protagonist, Robin, can speak both Chinese and English. He sees an exchange between a worker and captain. The worker speaks only Chinese, and the captain, only English. The worker is trying to get onto a boat. He has all the necessary documentation to board, has paid for his ticket, yet the captain denies the worker entry. Due to the language barrier, the worker cannot decern the truth as to why he is being denied entry.

The protagonist is the only one who speaks both their languages; therefore, is the only one able to understand all parties, and subsequently is the only one able to communicate the truth to both parties. Robin understood that the captain was refusing the labourer passage because he believed the Chinese to be disease ridden and dirty. He believed that by letting the labourer on board, he’d be putting the rest of his passengers at risk of illness.

Language was the barrier to understanding, and once that barrier was lifted, then understanding could be reached, and The Truth, therefore, revealed. But The Truth does not decide if the captain is racist and wrong, or if the labourer does have the right documentation. Truth is simply understanding all views and communicating them in a way everyone can comprehend. What we do with that knowledge afterwards has nothing to do with Truth, only with morality, personal values and intention.

Truth: the tool of mass destruction

Is God real? Who is the true God? If there is no God, then where did we come from? These are questions potentially as old as humanity itself, yet we have failed reached a unanimous agreement (~200,000 years of searching). Instead, in pursuit of this truth, we fought wars, pillaged, stole lands and committed atrocious acts of genocide (and still are). This was all because humanity believes that there is a fundamental answer to prove all other viewpoints redundant. We only have to fight hard enough, or scream loud enough, or kill enough people, and eventually one viewpoint will dominate. But even if one viewpoint is more accepted than the other, we technically still haven’t proven the Truth to be fact. We still have no answers, only a domineering over saturation of one perspective.

Truth is a tool that has caused impossible amounts of division, but, by this definition, is also the tool to mutual understanding, whilst simultaneously celebrating difference.

Our pursuit of a universal truth has altered from the pursuit of seeking understanding, to silencing any other voice that doesn’t speak the same language (metaphorically and literally). Why? Because we have tied our viewpoints with our sense of who we are (identity). Our ego’s will defend our ideas on our identity to the death. So, if another culture were to contradict another’s view, they are also contracting that culture’s identity, and so, the ego driven fight to the death commences.

But Truth, as we know, is understanding. We already have the answers, because we already have our views. The pursuit of Truth should therefore be a pursuit of understanding, an understanding of other’s views so that they can be translated in a way that everyone is able to comprehend. That is Truth. Truth is a tool that has caused impossible amounts of division, but, by this definition, is also the tool to mutual understanding, whilst simultaneously celebrating difference.

Truth is the act of seeking understanding of another’s view. Hence, there will never be one Truth. There will never be one group, or culture, or person who is “right”. A group or individual who appears to be “right” have only found a way to communicate their viewpoint in a way others understand.

Humans have never fought over land, or possessions – well not fundamentally at least. We’ve only ever been fighting over viewpoints. Hoping that ours will be deemed “True” if enough people are able to understand it and therefore can indoctrinate these views globally (globalization of views).

There’s no such thing as universal truths:

What are universal truths? I’ve listed a few below:

• The sky is blue
• Damaging to our body will result in pain
• If I drop something it will land on the floor

WRONG!

I’m joking, well kind of, but hear me out.

Let’s take ‘the sky is blue’ for example. When I wake up in the morning, and I step outside with my cuppa, I can expect to see (on a non-cloudy day) that the sky is blue. We all accept that to be a universal truth, yes? That when we look up, we will see a sky that is not purple, not pink, not yellow, but blue.

But, if we venture up past the atmosphere, or if we just google search “space” (which is what we are looking at when we see the sky), its not blue, its violet. The sky only appears blue because when the light reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, it refracts and scatters. Blue is the colour our eyes find easiest to interpret due to the colour’s shorter wavelength. Hence, “the sky is blue” is not a universal truth, only an interpretation, or a view. If we continue to believe truth is decerned by fact, then we must have the facts all wrong, because, according to fact, the sky isn’t blue, its violet, so that specific “Universal Truth” is must also be a Lie.  

Okay let’s keep going. So, what about the universal truth that ‘Damaging our skin or flesh will result in pain’. This ‘universal truth’ states that, if I hurt myself physically, it’ll result in tissue damage and pain. I mean, we’ve all done it. Be it broken bones, or a paper cut, they all hurt, right? And we know that if we do it again, it’ll be painful. Factual evidence based on lived experience. We have all accepted ‘damage to our bodies is painful’ as a universal truth.

But, there are no nerves in the body that detect “pain”. They don’t exist. It is the brain that determines whether or not what we are doing is a threat to the physical body. This is entirely based on our memory, our conditioning (what we’ve been taught), beliefs, current emotional state, the quantity and frequency of neural signals travelling from the damaged area, and past experiences. If the activity is deemed a threat by the above factors, then there will be an output of pain. Pain, in its most basic form, is a signal telling us there is a potential or current threat to the physical body.

Once, when I was a young warthog, I fell over. I didn’t think anything of it. A couple of minutes later, my mum wondered over, looking concerned. She pointed to a large pool of blood on the floor and asked who was bleeding? I shook my head, no, not me. I wasn’t in pain, and I hadn’t hurt myself. And that was the truth. But then I had another look, and noticed I had an enormous cut on my little finger. It looked bad, and it looked scary, and there was a lot of blood. I started freaking out, and the more I stressed, the more pain I experienced. Had I lied to my mother telling her I wasn’t injured when I was, in fact, injured? Or was it just that I hadn’t understood I was injured, and, once I did understand I was injured, it became a truth? Did the truth have nothing to do with the injury itself, but more to do with my understanding of the injury and the threat it posed? Up until the moment I perceived my injury, I experienced no pain, even though my body was physically damaged.

Truth is not fact. Truth is understanding.

Based on this reasoning, we can also argue that truth is entirely based on the individual experience of reality. I.e. Truth is entirely subjective. Truth is only called The Truth if a viewpoint or perspective can be communicated in a way that is understood and accepted by the collective/individuals involved. Whether or not the views are based on fact is irrelevant in terms of determining whether or not it is ‘true’.  

To wrap it up

• Truth is not fact
• Truth is not based on fact
• Truth is based on understanding
• Truth is an action – the act of seeking understanding
• Truth does not decern wrong from right. It is the act of “reading one another’s pages”, or to “put yourself in their shoes” so as to understand their perspective.
• Truth can be a truth even if others do not agree. It is a Truth because it is understood.
• Truth doesn’t decern wrong from right, nor bad from good
• Truth can be a tool of mass domination and destruction, or the foundation of world peace