Prompted: There's No Such Thing as The Truth
The only certainty is a constant journey of discovery and learning.
Good afternoon y’all.
Today we’re jumping into a big topic headfirst. It’s a daunting idea, but it’s freeing once it becomes clear that everyone is just making things up as they go along. Some ideas and organizations might have more merit than others, but at the end of the day, they were all created by people, and people are imperfect, irrational, and misinformed.
Curious to hear your thoughts on this one, so drop a comment below to share what you think below. And as always, thanks for reading!
Kevin
There’s No Such Thing as The Truth
We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
- John F. Kennedy
There is evidence to support almost every claim. Scientists, pollsters, and think tanks are paid billions every year to try and find the Truth.
But the truth is, the Truth doesn’t exist. In a world as complex as ours, things just aren’t that simple. Every problem, solution, person, company, method, book, study, poll, and opinion is messy.
Complexity is the enemy of truth.
We crave simple statements and facts about the most important things in our lives, but the most important things are usually the messiest. It’s big business to take complex and difficult ideas and simplify them into statements or imperatives that everyone can understand.
From the same events or data, everyone draws different conclusions. Two scientists can look at the same raw data and come to entirely different conclusions, and each of their conclusions can be peer-reviewed by other extremely intelligent scientists, and two studies with differing conclusions produced from the same data can be published in credited journals.
The same type of dissonance occurs in simpler (but still extremely complex and variable) everyday life decisions, like buying a house. Some zealots believe buying a house is the only thing that makes sense, and others think renting is the only smart decision. They’re working from the same information but have simplified a complex issue into two different versions of the Truth.
This removes the nuance from everything. There is no room for qualifiers or counter-arguments. Instead, we’re looking for a one-way street we can drive down without having to worry about oncoming traffic or new information merging onto the road in front of us.
Once we find a Truth that makes sense to us and resonates with our life experience, we accept it and run with it. We look down upon those that happen to stumble upon a different road and neglect to go over and check out what things look like for them.
Searching for the Truth is a fruitless venture, but questioning perspectives and beliefs to discover new ideas and expand our horizons of understanding will always serve us well.
We’ll never be able to fully assemble the puzzle that makes up the world because the pieces are always changing, and many of them are missing altogether, but the more pieces we can inspect, the better understanding of everyday complexities we’ll have.
Prompts
What Truth did I believe but later realized was more complex?
How can I avoid getting trapped in my opinions and thoughts no matter the situation or circumstance?
What can I do to continue my journey of discovery and exploration of new ideas?
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin