Weeds That Obscure the Truth

The Wayfarer   

The wayfarer, 

Perceiving the pathway to truth, 

Was struck with astonishment.

It was thickly grown with weeds. 

"Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time."
 

Later he saw that each weed 

Was a singular knife.

"Well," he mumbled at last, 

"Doubtless there are other roads."

By Steven Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) 

We must never end our search for the truth. To do so shatters all hopes and dreams, for in the truth, we find freedom. Many human activities depend upon the concept of truth, where its nature is assumed rather than being a subject of discussion; these include most of all, the sciences, law, and everyday life.

One of the derivatives of the English word truth is Proto-Germanic trewwj meaning "having good faith, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European dru meaning "tree," on the notion of "steadfast as an oak." A modern understanding of truth involves both the qualities of "faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity", and that of "agreement with fact or reality."

(Oxford English Dictionary)

In the context of philosophy, several theories have gone further to assert that there are yet other issues necessary to our analysis of verity, such as interpersonal power struggles, community interactions, and personal biases -- all of which may be factors involved in deciding what we believe is true.

Is truth elusive? Yes, most definitely. Truth is often so difficult for us to determine because objectivity means discovering the state or quality of being true outside of our own individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginings. To judge fairly, without bias, presumes we are capable of understanding the absolute need for neutrality without prejudgment.

Crane's poem "The Wayfarer" uses not a sturdy oak to represent truth but instead something that lay hidden somewhere behind a thickly grown blades of weeds. The speaker in the poem realizes no one in quite a while has even braved the threatening, pernicious barrier to the discovery. And, this path has become overgrown for fear of being sliced by the sharp edge of each individual weed that conceals the truth.

After briefly considering the impediment, the speaker decides, like the vast majority of travelers, to find some other less-dangerous road to certainty. The weedy symbol stresses the difficult, often painful nature of our quest for sincerity. Finding truth, something that should be easily accessed and openly practiced by all as a golden virtue, is very difficult. Like the wayfarer, if the path to exposure seems too injurious, we often feel finding truth can be accomplished on an easier route. 

But, in most of our truthful explorations, no primrose path exists. We soon learn that unless we venture into the weeds, we will never discover truth. We will be content to listen to the interpretations of others and believe in their opinions. And, unfortunately, many times this gullible action leads us to nothing but slanted opinions, half-truths, and well-calculated lies.

Armed with knowledge, logic, integrity, and great curiosity, a seeker of the truth must enter the weeds and cut a path to the reward. The task is daunting, but the effort and labor afforded in getting to the destination are the works that set us all free. Nothing. Nothing is more noble than fighting insurmountable odds to reveal the truth. In doing so, we forge new trails to justice and to equality.

The last several generations have become comfortable with untruths. People use falsehoods at will. From the top of the government down, we find the truth "spun" to fit the needs of biased ears. Lies have permeated our justice system, our law enforcement, our religions, and our schools.

Preferring easy access, we allow others to control our minds and our thoughts. Less and less, we find ourselves not using any critical thinking to discover the truth. We must educate ourselves and our children with skills that promote self-discovery. We need to put ultimate value on truth and be certain our loved ones have the tools needed to make their own "truth treks" as they build valuable personal integrity. Above all, we must understand our obligation to show them there is value in the truth itself.

A pioneer for truth is obligated by his or her love for their fellow human beings. Although finding a private truth may be a personal triumph, such solitary accomplishments pale in light of discoveries that free all of our fellow mortals. We must consider how much easier it would be to blaze a trail to such truths if we did so en masse. Surely as we shared the bleeding, each would suffer fewer injury and potential scars.

Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author, once said, "Truth, like gold, is to obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold." I agree. Finding truth is like seeking gold: it takes hard work to uncover the valuable substance. Those who are willing to "wash away" the many things that obscure the truth mine precious freedom.

"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. 

Take which you please — you can never have both."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your Truth or Mine?

"Truth is, after all, a moving target.
Hairs to split,
And pieces that don't fit.
How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit."

~Neil Peart, "Turn the Page"

The most difficult tasks a person faces is to first discover and then abide by his perception of truth. Just acquiring the necessary experience and knowledge to identify this equivocal quality requires untold years of living. Anyone dealing with reality and facts soon realizes inconsistencies in verity, and he finds the fabrics of absolutes and perfect ideals proposed by human minds riddled with niches of doubt and gashes of inaccuracies.

Humans employ language and word symbols as a means to convey to one another a determination and criterion of truth. Truth is basically a tool of discourse used to express agreement, to stress claims, or to form certain types of general assumptions. Philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas taught that people used this subjective communication to build judgments that are said to be true when they conform to the "external reality." This correspondence theory practically operates on the assumption that truth is a matter of accurately copying an "objective reality"  and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols

However, understanding truth is problematic for many reasons. For example, words of correspondence often fail to accurately capture their full meaning. In addition, some words add additional parameters to any predicate of absolute truth. Other "human" issues thwart the analysis of truth: interpersonal power struggles, community interactions, and personal biases. And, many people often merely refuse to take time to examine truth objectively with any logic, preferring to remain gullible and open to believing anything with a hint of factuality. 

A person seeking truth should beware of  many illusions associated with fidelity and constancy. After all, simple familiarity often breeds liking. As a person is exposed to one message again and again, he becomes so familiar with it that he deems his understanding "truthful." Psychologists call this "cognitive fluency." Why does this repetition work to produce truth? Humans are programmed to accept the "easy." Familiar things require less effort to process and that feeling of ease unconsciously signals truth to the human brain.

Every politician and advertiser knows there is not much difference between actual truth and the illusion of truth. Since illusions are often easier to produce, why bother with the truth?
The exact opposite is also true. If something is hard to comprehend, then people tend to believe it less. Naturally, this is very bad news for people trying to persuade others of complicated ideas in what is a very complicated world.

Studies have even tested how many times a message should be repeated for maximum effect. These suggest that people have the maximum confidence in an idea after it has been repeated between 3 and 5 times (Brinol et al., 2008). After that, repetition ceases to have the same effect and may even reverse

The same psychology is at work again: to the human mind there is little difference between appearances and truth. What appears to be true might as well actually be true, because people tend to process the illusion as though it were the truth.

(Jeremy Dean, "The Illusion of Truth, PsyBlog, December 8 2010)

Time Saving Truth From Falsehood and Envy

 The Nature of Truth: A Personal Perception

Humans seeking certainty, especially the naive, prefer to believe that truth is strong, ordained, simplistic and ideal. Yet, as people mature and find their "black and white" existences and strong belief systems filled with cloudy shades of "grey," they question credence as it pertains to reality and the essential foundations of veracity. They inevitably find constitutions and declarations open to interpretations; they discern myriad facts as half-truths and slanted opinions; and they realize trusted confidants betray pledges of honesty.

At this point in their lives, as they struggle with the absurdity of molding a practical model of genuineness for real-world application, some give up in their quest for truth  And, who can blame these noble seekers of truth for becoming pessimistic unbelievers? Yet, settling to live in what is perceived as a disgraceful sham is unproductive, offering little hope of finding personal satisfaction and joy.

So, as a determined person is nothing but a unique human construct who must find purpose in interacting with a society full of other unique human constructs, he eventually discovers that he must trust that his good and honest intentions have helped formed an acceptable, livable perception of an imperfect, impaired truth. This perception allows him to inhabit a planet fraught with people and things he simply cannot understand -- beings and actualities he considers dishonest and deceitful. And, as he lives amid a confusing menagerie of family, friends, and strangers, he believes his truth is essential to his own sanity and imperfect existence.

The truth a person perceives and accepts is neither good nor bad. This truth is neither right nor wrong. This truth is merely relative to the believer and eternally hopeful in its existence. It is a living thing that changes as a human adapts to his ever-changing position in the food chain. This truth involves sacrifices and inconsistencies that gnaw at the gut. It involves triumphs and failures that test the heart. And, above all, this truth constantly tests the vital understandings of the brain.

To me, a vision of truth as bright as the sun or as dark as the night is problematic. The humans I find "truthful" never stop learning to handle themselves and their imperfections. They do so in so many different ways. I find the most precious and beautiful occasionally washing their "dirty hands" with true regret.

Their common denominator is the ability to perceive the unique human gift in their honest approach to life. They have "learned" the parameters of their own veritable souls, and they have devised methods to walk in truth that allow them personal freedom within the binds and restraints of society. In hopes of better times, they continue to seek greater truths and adapt them to their unfinished lives.

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

                    --Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

The Credible People

In the age of the Web, credibility of electronic messaging and good source material is a search for inspiring belief in factual information, that, at best, is full of objective and subjective components. People have a tendency to believe anything they read that is backed by a source, whether that source is non-biased and accurate or merely speculative. Facebookers comment; bloggers blog; and sources spew out huge a mixture of factual and opinionated information daily.

Failure to recognize and judge opinion is often at fault when people swim in vast oceans of information and aimlessly latch onto something that fits their initial conjecture in an effort to stay afloat. Much more credence is put in rumor that adds to a previous belief than is put into fact that requires a complete 180 degree shift of prior opinion. In fact, one of the hardest things to do is change the belief of people who have already formed an opinionated concept. Of course, some crooks know this and use preconceived half-truths for their advantage.

Doesn't judging credibility always involve some risk? The truth, itself, is often complicated, elusive, and full of irrelevant details that add to the difficulty finding its real nature. Most well-meaning seekers of truth usually use their heads to guide them to matters that the heart also eventually understands. Add to that double nature the fact that telling the truth often involves punishment, so being credible can be most painful. If a suspect confesses a crime, if a child "owns up" to a lie, if an honest citizen reveals facts that expose danger, their honesty will likely produce a punishment. So, credibility isn't always rewarded.

Facing controversy is part of maintaining credibility. I find it necessary to do so at times. The mechanisms used by humans to understanding important problems and solutions are not scientific gauges that accurately measure a degree of success. People who claim to be purely successful should remind themselves that One such person walked the earth. I understand that failure and failing is something that I still repeatedly do. No amount of self regret or self manipulation can change my past. The best option available is to live the life I can live.

I think no one else knows the true struggles of one other person. To relate, to console, and to desire have boundaries when the target is the human soul. Each of us has purpose, unique as it may be, and we all are nothing more than another pitiful wretch in our deeds. Is someone more credible than another in all ways? My answer is "Absolutely Not." The only real degree of credibility we acknowledge in each other is the perception of a person produced by the receptors of our brains. Maybe we could not even face the reality of an actual human truth.

“The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.”  -- Omar Khayyam