Opinion: What is truth? Seeking it instead of being slapped by it
It used to be that the first job given to a bank teller was to stack bills: $20, $50, $100 day after day. They do it to get used to what the real thing feels like. Theoretically, that way the moment a counterfeit bill was laid in their hand, they’d know. They could feel it.
We are all bank tellers. We fill our vaults with information that we are given. Our friends, parents, teachers, newspapers, media, and more hand us the currency that is information. When we figure out how we feel about it, we make a decision. We either believe it is true or we believe it is false.
For the real bankers, there was always the possibility that they were wrong: that when they were handed a counterfeit, they believed it was real. Their senses failed them. Lucky for them, now there are special flashlights and machines that can identify bogus bills.
For us, there’s always the possibility that we are wrong when we choose to trust information, and there isn’t really a machine we can use to help find the facts. So how do we keep ourselves from missing the truth if our beliefs are left up to us?
With the current whirlwind of information, the ever demanding question of whether or not we are presented with the truth, and general anxiety over issues in society today, many feel like they’re drowning.
But there are ways to find the truth. According to the popular modern philosophical novel This is Water by David Foster Wallace, we find the truth by first becoming aware of the water we’re drowning in.
He uses a fish as a metaphor. You’re the fish and information is the water. The fish is not aware that it is in water because it is just living its life in the way that it always has; it is not necessarily ignorant but it is definitely complacent.
If the information that surrounds you does not provide you with any challenge or discomfort in your beliefs, that is the water which you (the fish) can’t necessarily see. It keeps you complacent and at ease to not question that environment, which is why news channels and publications tend to project a lean. In efforts to keep a solid reader base, they exhibit a force keeping you complacent in their water of information.
The problem is, we can’t make news organizations more or less objective. We can’t make social media ban or reinstate people. We can’t keep people from saying things that are offensive any more than we can keep people from being offended by them.
But Wallace has a theory that might help. We can train ourselves to think more openly. True freedom lies in awareness, discipline, and effort. You can be aware of your surroundings, rather than feeling lost in the “rat race.”
If the current political climate makes your head hurt, practicing this skill of getting out of the water by watching the news from a site that you may not agree with, reading publications you don’t necessarily lean towards, and taking it all with a grain of salt.
This power of being in control of taking in and processing information may very well save your mental health, but it’s really hard to forgo comfort at the expense of awareness. Not everyone does it.
Still, it could be comforting to note that, aside from the encouragement from This is Water to get out of comfortable or complacent surroundings, people have the capacity to learn and accept the knowledge that they would have been fine with or even preferred, not knowing.
In Meno by Plato, Socrates teaches a slave boy geometry. By doing this, he proves that learning is possible for anyone, and shows how important it is to value knowledge instead of just believing in what you want to believe.
Just how modern-day inventions help the bank teller use knowledge instead of belief to identify counterfeit bills, Wallace’s metaphor of the fish in This is Water helps us by sharing tools to increase awareness through the pursuit of knowledge instead of staying complacent in one’s own beliefs.
We have the capacity to adapt to this way of viewing the world; as a bank teller, as a fish, and as an observer.
Rene Descartes said, “I know that I know nothing,” which is beautiful in a way. It can also be intimidating (the guy was a philosopher and a mathematician so if he knew nothing then there’s no hope for the rest of us), but that’s not what he meant.
He meant that even though he may know a lot, he knows barely anything in the context of all the information in the world. If he wants to expand his knowledge, then he has to practice the skills discussed here.
He has to count the bills like the bank teller, but also rely on the technology given to him to make sure he did the job correctly.
He can’t be complacent in whatever he thinks he knows, like the fish unaware that it is in water.
He must accept his own ignorance, and keep searching. He must have the capacity to learn because everyone has the capacity to learn.
The tricky thing about the truth is you can find it in anything. Even things that aren’t necessarily true. But when we tie in the past, the present, the future; other points of view, other people’s experiences; random habits or philosophy; when we practice taking in information; when we refuse complacency and broaden our horizons; when we learn through adversity; when we are never satisfied.
That is how we find the truth.