Truth evades even Angels

Truth is something conventionally defined to be universal, objective and indisputable. The sun rises from the East, Christopher Columbus discovered America, and in 1916 eggs prices in the very same country dropped drastically after a previous increase was met with boycott.

Except they didn't, even though such information was reported in newspapers and broadcasted to the public. The price of eggs remained the exact same despite food retailers and news platforms claiming discounted rates desperately. And what if Christopher Columbus hadn't been the one discovered America, but a fellow crewmate who shortly fell into the ocean and drowned? Would we say the sun rises from the East if the person who labelled East and West had instead labelled them North and South?

Truth is based on relativity. What does our society deem to be true as a whole? What are concepts that have been passed down that we cannot fight against? Big is definitely larger than small, and yellow is bright while black is dark. All these concepts of size and colour are all relative, and we don’t even know sometimes whether they truly appear the same to us. Colour perception for example, is something that is highly debated. Even though we can all agree the colour red is bold and striking; we cannot say with certainty that the red you see definitely has the same physical qualities as the red I see. This is also in part due to our human limitations.

In turn, relativity is determined by three main factors. The first is who lives to tell the story. Survival bias is a tendency to concentrate on people who have passed a sort of selection process and overlook others who have not. In this case, the selection process is their ability to continue living, and thus their ability to continue spreading their version of the truth. This focus includes an increased propensity towards belief, and may possibly lead to worship or role modelling, but in this instance we are simply focusing on the increased concentration on their opinions. Colluding with the inability of the dead to object to whatever they say in spite of its accuracies.

To give an illustration, ten people are invited to participate in a game. Said game involves solving 3 riddles an angel provides and emerging either as a victorious immortal, or ending in defeat and death. Five of the participants manage to pass through all rounds, while the other five unfortunately lost their lives. Suppose most of the emerging five claimed the game to be extraordinarily simple and that there was no way to lose, hence everyone should seize the opportunity and participate. Those who listen to these victors thus fervently spends the rest of their lives trying to claim an elusive spot in the game.

However, considering the statistic of those who were able to get through all rounds of the game, 50% is not even a majority statistic, signifying that while the group of victors are boasting of the simplicity of the game, there is an equal sample size that failed to pass, and are ignored due to their present nonexistence. The victors are biased as they are only accounting for their experience and not others, and the perspective of listeners are also biased towards those who survived because of their limited source of information, and their want to similarly succeed.

However, in the grand scheme of things, the second factor is the one that matters more, and that is who gets to tell the story. A long time ago, monarchies states and religious institutions were the truth tellers, and therefore the spreaders of knowledge and information. If the king says the woman is pretty and someone says she is not, they will not live to spread another word of their truth. Fortunately, we now live in an era where we are relatively liberalised in opinion, and our personal voices are especially enabled by tools like social media platforms and digital means. Our truth can be spread out to any and everyone on the same platform as us if we wish to make our view public, in an instantaneous, international fashion. This has allowed for more general awareness and accountability to take place.

But at the same time, some people still have more power to tell the truth than others. In social circles, influencers with greater numbers of followers have a larger audience to spread their trust too, and also induce trust more easily in those who look up to them. In political fields, ruling parties are the ones who chiefly dictate the legislations and societal structures, thus forming what boundaries we accept as a society. An example of this would be euthanasia, a highly controversial practice that some countries allow, and others completely forbid. This is based on whether euthanasia is seen to be an alleviation, or a cruel act, showing that an objective action like a life being taken can still invoke differing viewpoints due to grey area, differing circumstances and our general differences in thinking.

The third factor also stems from our behaviour as humans, and that is what stories do people want to hear. Even if it may otherwise be proven, some people may not reject erroneous information that aligns with their beliefs, thus molding it into their version of the truth. However, this is a more extreme example of people disregarding external information and thus causing a divergence in truths. Most of the time when we accept erroneous information to be our truth, it may not even occur on a conscious level. Fake news spreads six times faster than real news on Twitter, and the reason behind this is because of its appeal. It may appear concerning, sensationalistic or unique in nature, causing it to stand out and be remembered more deeply too.

Can we really consider anything truth? Going back to the definition of truth, its universal nature connotes a shared understanding and consensus of a statement, for example, the Earth is flat. But we ourselves know this is impossible when there are people out there who do not recognise this for a fact. Most people would not have the intention of manipulating or distorting truth when they pass it on to others, but discrepancies in our understanding, beliefs as well as our sources account for the difference in the truths we believe. Hence, while we all lived in a shared environment and there is a lot of knowledge we have in common to one another, we may find ourselves at odds on a topic once in a while. We are also constantly improving ourselves with different sources of knowledge, and at different points in our lives, may possess contradicting information or beliefs ourselves.

Truth allows us to set a fundamental standard for our society to operate on, a social basis most people abide by. However, it is not always of great consequence if we are equipped with the wrong understanding, so long as we have not deliberately misguided ourselves. After all, we are humans.