A Complicated Word (E)

A few weeks ago, I rewatched a movie that I had not seen since it was released in 2015, The Big Short. It is about a group of investors in 2006/07 that bet against the United States mortgage market. That is the “short” explanation; it is about so much more, but that is not really relevant here. At 1:01:51 into the movie, the following flashes on the screen: “Truth is like poetry: And people hate fucking poetry.” I know that I saw these words the first time I watched the movie, but for some reason this time around it caught my attention, enough to pause and rewind so I could convey to you the exact time. Before I tried to figure out why I reacted this way this time around, I first thought of other movies that I’ve seen that had memorable mentions of the word “truth.” The first one that came to mind was the 1992 military drama, A Few Good Men, starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, and others. When Nicholson’s character is on the witness stand and being questioned by Cruise, who is trying to get at the truth, Nicholson, who is getting more flustered by the minute, finally blurts out: “The truth? You can’t handle the truth.” The second movie that popped into my head, with a line that is probably more appropriate with where my mind went when I was watching the above, was the 2007 quasi military drama, The Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover, and Ned Beatty, who plays a, shall we say, morally bankrupt U.S. senator…hmm. At a pivotal point towards the end of the movie, Beatty’s character, senator Charles Kittredge (from Montana) utters the following: “The truth is what I say it is!” Indeed.

“Truth” is a word that we are all familiar with, and one that we have been hearing a great deal these days. The word’s origin is Old English: trīewth or trēowth, and its earliest known use as a verb dates back to the Middle English period (1150-1500). It is also recorded as a noun from the Old English period (pre-1150). In the New Testament, John 8:32 (the Gospel of John), it appears as part of a conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” When I read this, I cannot help but ask myself: “Set me free from what?”

The English language, over the years, has given us no end of idioms with the word “truth.” Gems like: (if the) truth be known, ain’t that the truth, moment of truth, the honest truth (suggesting that there is a dishonest truth…LIE), and truth is stranger than fiction (often proving itself to be true), just to name a few. Of course, the one that most people are familiar with, after watching a few too many legal dramas, comes from our judicial system: “Do you solemnly (swear/affirm) that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” Of course, if you can handle it.

There are many variations of this oath adopted by different countries (the one above belongs to the U.S.), but they all amount to the same thing: the inference that the person being sworn in will tell the “truth,” which in most people’s minds means don’t lie, even though the opposite of true is “untrue.” This may seem like I am “splitting hairs” here, but we all know that a “well-crafted lie” has some element of truth, as part of its disguise. However, these are human beings being sworn in, which means the “truths” that are about to be revealed in testimony are most certainly “subjective” truths. And while these truths may be based on “fact” and “reality,” one cannot ignore that facts and reality are both open to interpretation, not to mention “belief.” Like I said: “It’s complicated!”

The concept of truth has been discussedand debated, ad nauseam, in a variety of contexts, including philosophy, art (It was Picasso who once stated: “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”), theology, law, and science. Most commonly, “truth is viewed as the correspondence of language or thought to a mind-independent world.” This is called the “correspondence theory of truth.” Now, the concept of a mind-independent world or reality, a phrase which rears itself from time to time in philosophy and science, is a way of “asserting that reality is not a matter of private whims: there are hard facts ‘out there’ that we cannot wish away.” Moreover, these facts would persist even if no one were ‘out there’ at all. If you are scratching your head after reading this and saying: “Wait, what,” you are not alone?

Correspondence theories “emphasize that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs.” As such, the theory stresses that there exists a relationship between “thoughts or statements” on one hand, and “things and objects” on the other.  This is a traditional model dating back to the Ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. As a particular “class” of theories (in this case “substantive”) it postulates that “the truth to the falsity of a representation is determined, in principle, entirely by how it relates to ‘things’ according to whether it accurately describes those ‘things.’” Or, put another way, and how Thomas Aquinas interpreted this theory, “A judgement is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality.” The “complication” in this theory, as I see it, is that it centers heavily around the assumption that “truth is a matter of accurately copying what is known as ‘object reality’ and then representing in in thoughts, words, and other symbols.” The question that highlights the complication is this: “How can we reconcile “subjective” truths with “objective” reality? The short answer…you can’t!

There are, of course, many other theories of “truth” that are part of the grouping “substantive,” and many of them, in their own unique ways, shed some light on the “complication” I have espoused. Coherence theory (a proper fit of elements within a whole system), pragmatic theory (truth is verified and confirmed by the results of putting one’s concepts into practice), constructivist theory (truth is constructed by social processes, which are historically and culturally specific, and shaped by power struggles within a community), all have elements to them that in some way addresses the “objectivity” “subjectivity” conundrum. However, it is the last one of the “substantive” theories that for me zeroes in on our current dilemma concerning truth, and that is consensus theory. Its premise is that “truth” is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group (emphasis added). Such a group might include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person.”

The current political shit storm (because conundrum just doesn’t quite capture the mood) this country is facing can be, if we want to simplify something that really can’t be simplified, reduced to the following: Two “subset” groups (Republican/Democrat, Conservative/Liberal, Right/Left) who believe their “truth,” which are in a way represented by the “scales of justice” photo above. No amount of verbiage, appearing wherever those on either side inform themselves as to what is going on, is going to alter the “truths” they believe because there is no dialogue between the two. Digging in one’s heels and screaming: “You’re a liar and are full of shit. No, you’re a liar and are full of shit” at each other does not count as a “dialogue.” And, if the “truths” that each side believe tend to be light years apart, as they are right now stumbling towards November, the more difficult it becomes to know what is “true.” While this in and of itself is certainly problematic, what is far more disturbing is that it really doesn’t matter if something is “true” or not. Just last month, Lara Trump (D.T.s daughter-in-law, and co-chair of of the RNC) told a crowd in Texas that “Donald won in 2020; we all know that.” Well, some of us do. And a few days ago, I received an email from the DNC asking for money that said: “Please give us a chance to explain why this request is so important. Here is the truth…” Finally…maybe. Going back to Picasso’s thought that “art is a lie,” the picture that is being painted for us, by whomever we choose to listen to, is always going to be subjected to interpretation. Or, put another way: “The truth is what [whoever is speaking] says it is.” In other words, it’s complicated. And just when I thought that I would never be able to determine what is true, I remembered that we now have “Truth Social.” Please wake me up when it’s over!

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