The Truth about Truth

Having listened to the presentations on objective truth be torn down within a space of sixty seconds, it is impossible to not realize that there are very few, if any real objective truths in this world. Once you really begin to think about it, everything we have ever been told (that we assume is the objective truth) is really very subjective. From the point of view of a history class we are told that this war happened in some such year and this monstrosity was committed by these people, at the same time that we are told that history is always written, which in itself implies that not only is there a bias but so of the horrible things that they did could have been removed. In 1984 this is seen specifically when the people edit and correct what is said in all of the historical documents, "fixing" history so that everything seems perfect. This editing of the truth is important to recognize in everyday life because not only are we told perfected lies, we are also told half truths, however what makes this so scary is that we are told these things and we assume that they are true AND the people that tell them to us as fact also believe that they are the absolute truth.  So at this point our problem with “truth” today is almost parallel to the problem with “truth” in 1984, the only difference is that we do not consciously go back through history and revise it, while we might write out the first facts “incorrectly.”

We also often see the manipulation of truth in debates. This is because to one fact there is almost always a counter fact, in a debate you obviously present the information that best backs your idea, but there is still that other truth, you have just filtered out the information that did not benefit you. This then moves me on to the next point in the discussion of the manipulation of the truth; we use the assumption of truth to benefit ourselves. This is seen in 1984 many times, the most important of which is near the end on the novel when O'Brien tells Winston that 2+2=5. This is an example of the manipulation of truth for one’s own benefit because O'Brien needed to convince Winston that what they told him was the truth and that everything that he had thought was the truth was false.

Reflecting on the presentations of objective truth, it is frightening when you realize that everything we have be taking point blank as truth really isn’t that solid a statement. Many of the “truths” that we found to be more objective than subjected were incredibly specific or basic and refined, however some of the “truths” that we  thought would be really easy to prove were in fact if they were looked at with a little more concentration we found them to be quite flawed.