The Objective Nature of Truth

There exists a disturbing trend in thinking in recent years. It concerns the nature of claims like “This is my truth,” and “That may be true for you, but it’s not for me.” Sometimes these statement are not meant literally, but just as a variation of “I don’t agree with you.” But more and more, these statements are being said without a sense of irony or exaggeration, as if they were literally true. These statements are particularly troubling, because, while they seem to have originated from a place of truth and almost certainly good intent, they have become twisted to come to mean something that is not only untrue, but insidiously so: the notion that truth is relative, or subjective to each individual. That each individual is empowered with not just the ability to discern the truth, but to decree it. One of the most prominent reasons this is so troubling is because the acceptance of this notion inexorably leads one to the conclusion that discussing ideas with another person or testing your own hypothesis or understanding against the understanding of others is pointless. After all, if their truth is different from yours, then real, genuine consensus is never going to possible (or valuable), and the only rational course once you realize that someone else disagrees with you, is to escape the conversation as quickly as civilly as possible. In fact, it would be better to avoid the conversation altogether if you suspect that initial agreement is unlikely. Practiced on a societal scale, this would lead to civil catastrophe. It would create an entire culture where people are unable or unwilling to discuss things of any import, unless they were assured that they were talking to someone who already agreed with them. This would lead to isolated echo chambers of like-minded communities, where people only heard their own opinions reflected back to them, where no one was ever challenged to stretch their mind and understand another person’s perspective. Where no one would have the opportunity to hear why they might be wrong, to be shown their own blind spots. It would quickly devolve into a culture where only trivial topics like weather and traffic could be discussed with any but your closest confidants, and difficult or nuanced topics like politics or religion would become taboo, never to be discussed between those that might disagree, and especially not in any sort of open forum. Any such discussion that did erupt would become a shouting match of people hurling insults within a primitive “us-vs-them” tribal mentality, and mob rule would hold reign. Any forward progress would be deadlocked for the whole society, even for those who didn’t participate in this delusion. For want of a little clarity, an entire culture could be brought to its knees.

The pure truth here, is that there is only one objective version of the truth for any given statement one could make, and it is our job as humans to use our faculties to discern what those truths are as they come across our path, to the best of our limited ability. In fact, one could argue that this is our very purpose of existence - that we are uniquely qualified, and it could be argued even designed especially for the purposes of contemplating truths and the nature of the universe; that understanding is the reason we exist as a species, and the entire paradigm cannot and could not exist without the existence of pure, objective truth.

However, I suspect that the origin of these subjective-truth notions stems from perhaps a poorly-worded explanation, given in good intent, that while technically true was dangerously easy to misinterpret. I expect that the original statements were acknowledging situations that can exist, where a person’s perception (or imaginings) of their surroundings or context can affect their own behavior, which in turn can and does affect their surroundings and context, and in particularly unique configurations, can actually cause the thing they believed was true to become true, even if it was not true at the moment that they believed it.

I will demonstrate with an example:

Imagine that Dwight is a salesman for a local paper company. Dwight is currently the second best salesman in the office. But one day, someone in accounting mistakenly informs Dwight that he has reached the number one spot. Dwight naturally feels great about this. His feelings of pride and self-confidence soar, and as a result, this confidence comes across to his potential customers, which respond by purchasing more product from him than they might have otherwise. Dwight’s belief that he was a great salesman, through a series of natural cause-and-effect events, brought about the truth that he was a great salesman. Now rewind this scenario back to the point where the accountant informs Dwight of the change in status, and instead, imagine that Dwight chooses not to believe her for whatever reason. The sequence of events that lead him to becoming a better salesman never happen, and we’re subject to an alternate version of events. Dwight’s belief, based on his perception of his surroundings or context, in both cases, brings about whichever statement he chose to believe. This is the inherent truth behind the old quote “Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right.”

Now imagine that you’re a well-intentioned therapist, trying to explain to your patient the power of hope, and convince them to believe in themselves. It would be both tempting and easy to describe this phenomenon as “whatever you believe is true, is true. It doesn’t matter what other people believe. It only matters what you believe. This is your truth.” And in a sense, in that very specific context, that would be a valid statement. But only within that context.

Or, consider another version. Imagine a scenario where Abed and Troy are having a discussion about whether Star Trek or Dr. Who is the better sci-fi television series. This could be another example where it could seem (if you don’t examine it too closely) that there are two versions of the truth, one for Abed’s experience, and one for Troy’s. But therein lies a hint as to the actual nature of the problem - certainly, Abed and Troy, through their differing paths through life’s journey, have experienced different joys, trauma, and learning experiences. They will have different perspectives that can lead to different viewpoints or even biases as to what any given truth is. But more importantly, they will have a different history of experiences, some of which will produce nostalgic feelings, and some of which will be reminiscent of horrible experiences. Some jokes or references will be dependent on the audiences understanding of various topics, and that understanding will be different between our two debaters. But look closer at the nature of the problem, and what you will find is that Abed’s statement about Dr. Who being better, and Troy’s statement about Star Trek being better, are actually two separate statements under the covers, and thus can have two different answers while both being true. When Abed says that Dr. Who is better, he’s not actually making a statement of some objective unit of measurement (at least most people wouldn’t mean that). This is just a shorthand version of a longer statement, that we all understand colloquially. What we all understand him to mean, once it’s fully unpacked, is that Abed’s experience of Dr. Who was a more enjoyable experience than Abed’s experience of Star Trek. And Troy statement is that Troy’s experience of Star Trek was more enjoyable than Troy’s experience of Dr. Who. When spelled out in their long form, you can see that these two statements contain no mutual exclusivity. They can both be true at the same time without any conflict. It’s only when we use the short form of the statements that they seem contradictory. And in that sense, if you are particularly loose with your language, you could kind of say that Abed’s statement is true for him, and Troy’s statement is true for him.

However, you’ll notice that each of these scenarios is extremely specific. These statements are only true within contexts similar to the ones we have described, and it would be logically erroneous to then expand the principle to the larger context of all truths or all statements, which is what seems to have happen once this pithy saying about “my truth” escaped into the wild and was repeated and spread by people who didn’t fully understand the context, subtext, or implied limitations of the original statements.

When you apply this principle to all possible statements, past or future, and start to believe that whatever your personal opinion about a certain thing is “your truth” or “true for you”, you quickly put yourself in trouble. The logical conclusion of following that line of thought is that truth is dependent on humans, and their ability to perceive it, rather than humans being dependent on truth and the impartial fabric of reality, and subject to the harsh rules thereof. And once you accept this “subjective truth” notion, all sorts of problematic behavior follows as a natural consequence. You naturally stop taking responsibility for your actions (after all, it should have been ok for me to be late to that meeting. I thought it was ok, and so that was true for me. It just wasn’t true for my boss, but that’s his truth, and I can’t help that). It leads to an unwillingness to hear when you are wrong, because any disagreement is just someone else expressing “their truth,” which stifles personal growth. Personal growth is just a fancy word for learning, and learning, by its very definition, requires acknowledging that your previous understanding of the situation was errant or at least incomplete (which is still errant). If you believe that whatever you currently believe is “your truth”, then it naturally follows that considering whether you are wrong or not is a waste of time and effort. Subjective truth completely obliterates the need for or utility of history or the accurate recording or reviewing of it on any scale, from understanding world events to a court transcript. If truth is relative, then, revising the history books holds no negative consequence, and if it helps convince (or emotionally manipulate) someone to do what you want them to, then where is the harm? Life and conversation inevitably becomes a game of saying whatever is necessary to achieve the desired result, rather than being held in check by the need to be correct.

Perhaps the most sobering part of this trend of “subjective truth” is to realize that it has progressed despite how easy it is to disprove the base premise. A short bout of critical thinking will obliterate the notion that all truth is subjective or personalized. Water expands when freezing. The earth is round(ish), Opposite electrical charges attract each other. The universe was enforcing these truths and humans were experiencing the effects of them long before humans knew they were true, or even understood enough to ask the right questions. If all truths are dependent on some human perceiving or believing them, then we would never have discovered the atom, because it never would have existed before we discovered it, and thus we would never have existed to discover it, and even considering this question puts the human race in danger of vanishing in a puff of logic. With just a modicum of intellectual exercise, the entire notion becomes preposterous.

It’s important to recognize the nuance here. Like all the best lies, there are elements of truth threaded through it, which are the lure that gets us to swallow the hook. To say that these statements about “my truth” are just false misses the mark. They are true(ish) in specific circumstances, which is why they resonate with people. It’s just also important to recognize the many, many contexts in which they do not and cannot apply.