The Truth Doesn’t Matter Anymore

 

The title of this post is not just a philosophical statement. It is a living, breathing admonition of our culture, one that once fundamentally guided our decisions, our relationships, and our belief systems. Truth was the foundation of our education, of governance, and business. We all knew that it was not embraced by everyone—the liars, drama queens show up everywhere—but I believed they were the exceptions rather than the rule.

No more. And let me tell you why I find this fact deeply disheartening.

Just this morning on my walk I listened to the Ricochet podcast, High Noon, with Inez Stepman. I like her interviews because they are thoughtful and intelligent. This time she was interviewing Professor Robbie P. George of Princeton University, and I enjoyed his sharing his early education and understanding of the importance of knowledge for its own sake; he also spoke about his priority in searching for truth. So far, so good. Then he mentioned that one of his best friends was Cornel West, who is a professor on the far Left, a self-described Democratic Socialist. I am quite certain that they have found a way to bridge or overcome their differences; I have seen West interviewed, and he is a thoughtful and reasonable person. But I found that I was annoyed and highly skeptical about George and West’s relationship. Then I realized the reason.

Did they both believe in the importance of truth?

Now I have no way to answer that question and wouldn’t even try, because I expected that my reaction to their friendship, much more visceral than I would anticipate, was not about the two of them. It was about me.

More specifically, it was about a relationship that I occasionally refer to on Ricochet, because I struggle with it. Like George and West, my friend and I are both religious people; I’m the conservative, she’s on the Left. I refuse to talk politics with her primarily, I thought, because she is not well-informed on the topics we would discuss. She doesn’t do her homework, relies on anecdotes, the evening news, and a liberal newspaper. I finally realized today that was not a complete description of my frustration toward her; instead, I’m saddened because ultimately, she is not interested in the truth. For the record, I’m not saying that I have the complete truth and she doesn’t have any. But I’m especially disappointed because in so many ways she is a loving, compassionate and wise—yes, wise—person. She would be appalled to be thought of as lying, but she doesn’t so much lie as for any number of reasons, she chooses to avoid the truth.

Now I must say that I realize that “truth” can seem to be a moving target. This explanation of truth spoke to me:

According to the coherence theory of truth, a thing is more likely to be true if it fits comfortably into a large and coherent system of beliefs. It remains that the system could be a giant fiction, entirely detached from reality, but this becomes increasingly unlikely as we investigate, curate, and add to its components—assuming, and it is quite an assumption, that we are operating in good faith, with truth, rather than self-preservation or -aggrandizement, as our aim. Thus conceived, truth is not a property, or merely a property, but an attitude, a way of being in the world.

I believe that most people on the Left have created a “giant fiction,” and are unwilling to investigate and test their assumptions. In other words, they are living a lie.

We all create our own reality; that is how we make sense of our world. But we only live productive and satisfying lives, if we experience the following:

Truth tends to lead to successful action. In that much, truth has instrumental value. But truth also has intrinsic value. Given the choice between a life of limitless pleasure as a brain in a vat and a genuine human life along with all its pain and suffering, most people opt for the latter.

If we love our lives, with all the suffering and disappointment we may encounter, we are more likely to be living in truth. But when we try to “live lies,” desperately trying to stabilize the fragile and weakened walls of reality, we can’t be truly happy at the most basic level. We may tell ourselves that we are, but that is just one more lie to add to the heap.

*     *     *     *

I’m struggling with this discovery, and wondering if it is reasonable and true. And if it is true, where does that leave me regarding friendship? I anticipate that I will continue my relationship with my friend, knowing that at some level I have relegated it to a more superficial status. But it will be difficult. I love my friend for so many other reasons. And I know that I am not always aware of the facts, of the truth. But I’d like to think that I am a truth-seeker and truth-teller.

At least, that’s what I aspire to be.

[photo courtesy of unsplash.com]

Published in Culture
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 76 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Lawst N. Thawt (View Comment):
    I’m in thinking out loud mode/mood this morning, so no guarantees expressed or implied.

    You should think out loud often!

    • #61
  2. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Spin (View Comment):
    None of that means that I think there aren’t object facts in politics.  Hillary Clinton lied about Benghazi.  That is an objectively true fact.  Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.  Objectively true fact.  I’m just saying that our political opinions are largely based on conceptual truths that are true to us but not everyone.  We use some facts and some opinions as the foundations for those truths.

    This is an issue I deal with constantly in my editorial life. Publishers distinguish between objective and subjective information because of copyright issues.

    The rule most publishers follow is that “common knowledge” does not need a citation or permission. An example would be “Clouds occur in the skies above New England most of the time.”

    Single statistics, in contrast, always need a citation because they represent a tremendous amount of work. An example would be “Clouds occur in the skies above New England 60 percent of the days of the year.”

    The lack of accurate supporting data and citations is why I pay very little attention to the news. Articles can point me in a direction, but that’s about it. Reporters are so sloppy with their citations that what they say is not worth committing to memory and certainly not something I would base a judgment on or include in my own writing. The “news” is always interesting, but it’s not something people can actually work with meaningfully.

    This is why educated and/or well-informed people rely on a writer’s or speaker’s credentials. No one has time to verify the amount of information he or she comes across on any given day. Instead, we decide the Wall Street Journal or Harvard Business Review is careful and accurate so we can expect to be able to verify in other sources whatever they print. And those two publishers are smart. They understand the service they are providing to their readers. It’s a good deal: if I buy something labeled “apple,” I can trust that it will indeed be an apple. :-)

    The media on the left does not operate under the simple rules of business transactions. And that’s why it is so hard for their readers to communicate. I used to love the old adage, “People who read the New York Times think they run the world. People who read the Wall Street Journal actually do.” :-)

    We think of the left and right as representing two different political aspirations, which they do, but they also represent two different biases as to credibility. There’s an unbridgeable canyon between them.

    • #62
  3. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    MarciN (View Comment):
    The media on the left does not operate under the simple rules of business transactions. And that’s why it is so hard for their readers to communicate.

    The changing economics of media has also hurt.  Back in the days when the big papers each had their own “news bureaus” in foreign capitals and a paperboy needed some muscle to handle the deliveries for a single block, there was also a different view of professionalism and standards.

    Now, otherwise unemployable recent grads who generate clickbait for people as vacuous as they are is a big comedown from that golden era of journalism.  

    The purpose of “news” has also changed.  No longer about the world as such but about what I need to know to remain a member of my crowd and to hear what “they” are up to.

    • #63
  4. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    J Climacus (View Comment):
    The way it seems to me is this: There is a universally common basic human understanding of the natural law – among which it is wrong to murder, rape, or steal from people – but the understanding of who counts as “people” varies according to circumstance. For many cultures, it is only the tribal group or “in” group that “counts” as far as the natural law is concerned. For everyone else, it isn’t so much that people decide that it is OK to murder them, but that they don’t consider them as beings rising to moral significance.

    Exactly 

    • #64
  5. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    The media on the left does not operate under the simple rules of business transactions. And that’s why it is so hard for their readers to communicate.

    The changing economics of media has also hurt. Back in the days when the big papers each had their own “news bureaus” in foreign capitals and a paperboy needed some muscle to handle the deliveries for a single block, there was also a different view of professionalism and standards.

    Now, otherwise unemployable recent grads who generate clickbait for people as vacuous as they are is a big comedown from that golden era of journalism.

    The purpose of “news” has also changed. No longer about the world as such but about what I need to know to remain a member of my crowd and to hear what “they” are up to.

    Stephen Shepard’s Deadlines and Disruptions is a fascinating look at the modern history of journalism. Shepard is an old-school editor who nevertheless lives and breathes the left’s beliefs and value system. :-) It’s in my top five favorite books I’ve ever worked on. It is full of old stories about growing up in New York City, and later working and teaching and living in the city.

    Another really wonderful book that covers the same period is Saito-Chung’s Investor’s Business Daily and the Making of Millionaires (2004). It is essentially a biography of Bill O’Neil’s motivation and career in starting up the Investor’s Business Daily newspaper. Bill O’Neil had a lot to say about the news-reporting organizations that were in existence at the time he started up his own.

    Frankly, I miss the old weeklies. Their absence in the news scene has not been filled. When readers follow the news only on a 24-hour basis, they never get to see the end of the story a week or a month later. Most people are walking around with gaping holes in their knowledge of current events.

    That said, I think it may have been in Shepard’s book in which I read that the most popular pages in all newspapers were the opinion pages. That single statistic says a lot about readers. :-)

    • #65
  6. Lawst N. Thawt Inactive
    Lawst N. Thawt
    @LawstNThawt

    MarciN (View Comment):
    The lack of accurate supporting data and citations is why I pay very little attention to the news.

    I just can’t call it news anymore. 

    MarciN (View Comment):
    Instead, we decide the Wall Street Journal or Harvard Business Review is careful and accurate so I can expect to be able to verify in other sources whatever they print.

    This strategy has a better success rate but I’ve noticed in the Journal at least, some things slip through. 

    MarciN (View Comment):
    We think of the left and right as representing two different political aspirations, which they do, but they also represent two different biases as to credibility. There’s an intraversible canyon between them. 

    I think it is a narrow canyon though.  There’s just a sliver of space between a functional mind and a clinical condition. 

    MarciN (View Comment):
    That said, I think it may have been in Shepard’s book in which I read that the most popular pages in all newspapers were the opinion pages. That single statistic says a lot about readers. :-)

    We have always been drawn to the train wrecks and it’s a lot easier to wreck a train with an opinion. 

    Your collective thoughts here on these last few comments could be a good post by itself. 

    • #66
  7. Chuck Coolidge
    Chuck
    @Chuckles

    MarciN (View Comment):
    intraversible

    That’s a new word to me:  Would you give me the definition according to MarciN?  Thanks!

    • #67
  8. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Lawst N. Thawt (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    The lack of accurate supporting data and citations is why I pay very little attention to the news.

    I just can’t call it news anymore.

    MarciN (View Comment):
    Instead, we decide the Wall Street Journal or Harvard Business Review is careful and accurate so I can expect to be able to verify in other sources whatever they print.

    This strategy has a better success rate but I’ve noticed in the Journal at least, some things slip through.

    MarciN (View Comment):
    We think of the left and right as representing two different political aspirations, which they do, but they also represent two different biases as to credibility. There’s an intraversible canyon between them.

    I think it is a narrow canyon though. There’s just a sliver of space between a functional mind and a clinical condition.

    MarciN (View Comment):
    That said, I think it may have been in Shepard’s book in which I read that the most popular pages in all newspapers were the opinion pages. That single statistic says a lot about readers. :-)

    We have always been drawn to the train wrecks and it’s a lot easier to wreck a train with an opinion.

    Your collective thoughts here on these last few comments could be a good post by itself.

    I might do that someday. :-) Thank you for encouragement. :-) 

    • #68
  9. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Chuck (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    intraversible

    That’s a new word to me: Would you give me the definition according to MarciN? Thanks!

    :-) I’m seeing it in many places in a simple Google search but not in Webster’s, but I took it out of my comment. It’s a nonstandard usage.

    I just meant uncrossable. :-)

    • #69
  10. Lawst N. Thawt Inactive
    Lawst N. Thawt
    @LawstNThawt

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Chuck (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    intraversible

    That’s a new word to me: Would you give me the definition according to MarciN? Thanks!

    :-) I’m seeing it in many places in a simple Google search but not in Webster’s, but I took it out of my comment. It’s a nonstandard usage.

    I just meant uncrossable. :-)

    Untraversable would work, though Webster might not know it yet.

    • #70
  11. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Lawst N. Thawt (View Comment):

    Untraversable would work, though Webster might not know it yet.

    And we don’t need Webster to formally approve “non-traversable.”

    • #71
  12. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Thank you both.

    For some reason, it sounded right. :-) Only the Good Lord knows why. :-)

    • #72
  13. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Susan, the graphic I am posting below is heavily censored on Facebook. If an individual posts it, a grey shadow box is positioned over it, and a message box indicates that if you are willing to view it, you must understand this graphic possibly portrays violent and disgusting content that anyone would be better off avoiding.

    Many people have posted it, just to see if maybe the first few thousands of people who posted it and were  censored had been censored by mistake. And they find that their post of this graphic gets slammed as well.

    Here is the graphic:

    • #73
  14. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    This is where it gets difficult in practice. I don’t think that there’s such a thing as “natural law” as the term is intended (though I do agree that it exists as a description of a certain position). I think that the philosophy of natural law is a serious error. So I don’t think natural law is a fact, though I generally agree with the conclusions reached by its proponents.

    So right at the start, the three of us — me, Susan, and Mark — who reasonably closely aligned on many issues of morality and politics, have a significant disagreement about the “facts.” It’s a pickle.

    The fact that (mostly) undamaged people like us instinctively agree on these kinds of things is the only real evidence of natural law. My post a week or so ago was based on this quote from Saul Bellow:

    You read the New Testament and the assumption Jesus makes continually is that people know the difference immediately between good and evil… And that is in part what faith means. It doesn’t even require discussion. It means that there is an implicit knowledge — very ancient if not eternal — which human beings really share and that if they based their relationships on that knowledge existence could be transformed.

    The attempt to formalize that intuition by philosophers usually winds up being foreign to the implicit truth they are trying to capture and define just like a lot of other philosophical and theological adventures wind up being unhelpful.

    I do think that there are some commonalities. Marriage comes to mind, which seems to have been universal among humans, or nearly so, until the 1960s.

    You might think that there’s universal opposition to things like killing, rape, or theft, but I don’t think so. My impression is that most cultures have prohibitions on these things among insiders, but allow them against outsiders. Tribal people seem to have a raiding culture, whether among American Indians or the ancient Israelites and their various enemies. Or between the English and the Spanish in Drake’s day, for that matter.

    I disagree with Bellow’s point. I think that Jesus was able to make this assumption because His ministry was almost entirely among the Jews. They had the Law of Moses, so He could assume that they had a certain base of knowledge regarding good and evil. This would not necessarily apply in other cultures, I think.

    And yet, Jesus got extremely pissed off at his fellow Jews who had gone the route of being Temple money changers.

     

    • #74
  15. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    The media on the left does not operate under the simple rules of business transactions. And that’s why it is so hard for their readers to communicate.

    The changing economics of media has also hurt. Back in the days when the big papers each had their own “news bureaus” in foreign capitals and a paperboy needed some muscle to handle the deliveries for a single block, there was also a different view of professionalism and standards.

    Now, otherwise unemployable recent grads who generate clickbait for people as vacuous as they are is a big comedown from that golden era of journalism.

    The purpose of “news” has also changed. No longer about the world as such but about what I need to know to remain a member of my crowd and to hear what “they” are up to.

    Stephen Shepard’s Deadlines and Disruptions is a fascinating look at the modern history of journalism. Shepard is an old-school editor who nevertheless lives and breathes the left’s beliefs and value system. :-) It’s in my top five favorite books I’ve ever worked on. It is full of old stories about growing up in New York City, and later working and teaching and living in the city.

    Another really wonderful book that covers the same period is Saito-Chung’s Investor’s Business Daily and the Making of Millionaires (2004). It is essentially a biography of Bill O’Neil’s motivation and career in starting up the Investor’s Business Daily newspaper. Bill O’Neil had a lot to say about the news-reporting organizations that were in existence at the time he started up his own.

    Frankly, I miss the old weeklies. Their absence in the news scene has not been filled. When readers follow the news only on a 24-hour basis, they never get to see the end of the story a week or a month later. Most people are walking around with gaping holes in their knowledge of current events.

    That said, I think it may have been in Shepard’s book in which I read that the most popular pages in all newspapers were the opinion pages. That single statistic says a lot about readers. :-)

    I think people used to love the letters to the editor or the opinion page because those pages were at one time the only pages where an individual  could read any opinions that were not of the established narrative.

    Then the opinion page became a page where someone from one of the companies advertising in that newspaper chain got a piece of the opinion page.

    So now at least here in Calif I can read the front page, where Biden is lauded, or the opinion page, where Biden or some “eco-friendly” company’s president  is touted.

     

    • #75
  16. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Thank you both.

    For some reason, it sounded right. :-) Only the Good Lord knows why. :-)

    There’s nothing wrong with untraversable.  My Word spell check doesn’t even recognize unproveable.

    • #76
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.