The Truth – Do any of us actually know what that is anymore?

Over the last few months, weeks and days there has been so a plethora of headline news with so many ‘expert’ opinions and as a result so much polarisation of public views and opinions. For example:

·        How and where did the Coronavirus virus generate from?

·        Were the US Presidential elections actually rigged?

·        The Harry and Meghan interview?

This has led me to consider a further question which I have had to think about whilst preparing for a future presentation and that is concerning the question of critical thinking. For me one of the reasons for critical thinking is to find the truth to a question or headline, such as those posed above.

When you consider what the actual truth is it is very much like a nucleus to a cell or the core of a planet. The truth is at the very heart of the question, the crime, the allegation or the footage viewed.

One element of critical thinking is the requirement to consider all of the available evidence and to find the truth. We also have a personal decision to make and that is how deep we research to find that truth. That may well be dependent on how much we time that we have available to us in order to carry out that all important forensic work. It may also depend on how passionate we actually are with regards to the subject matter in order to find that vital time required to investigate the truth further.

One thing is certain and that is we are not going to find the truth by simply reading the headline.

Let us consider the earth analogy where the core of the planet is ‘the truth’. For a story to have been commenced there must be one grain, one sliver of truth, no matter how small. Something must have happened to have provided that ‘matter’ to have been initially formed. The earth’s crust represents the headline and the visible reporting of the truth, but how far away does that reporting sit from the actual truth?

Do headline writers rely on us not actually looking critically at a headline and not having the desire, the time or motive to look any deeper than the headline itself? Is this what happens during elections and headline grabbing (both negative and positive!) when the potential parties seek to influence the electorate? In other words, to gain power they know the percentage of the electorate who will be swayed to vote for them due to the presence of a headline as that percentage of the populous will not seek to question or interrogate the headline further. And that leads to another question, if those ‘non-forensic’ voters hold the difference between success or failure in an election are those who do spend the time to digest the news and consider the truth behind the headline no longer relevant during an election? With the huge and daunting amount of data and information now thrown at us via every conceivable electronic device possible, how can we be expected to sift through every story to find that all important truth.

I looked at the Sunday paper sitting on the table this weekend and also asked myself another question,

‘How long would it take me to, not just read every article in the paper, but to find out what the actual truth was behind each story?’

Days, weeks, months, years? There must come a point however, for any number of reasons, that you just have to stop and accept that you, yourself, have come to a place where you can accept the picture of the truth which is acceptable to you, our perception. But is that decision then tinged or affected by your own personal biases?

Having listened to so much commentary coming from so called experts, gurus and academics recently what are their particular biases and how self-aware are they? What has assisted them to filter through the ‘noise’ of an event and then to come to a balanced and logical viewpoint which is safe enough to be digested by unassuming members of the public, who in effect, have relied upon these commentators to do their critical thinking for them?

The further and further we move away from the core of the truth the ‘fuzzier’ that truth becomes. People are also more willing to ‘jump on to the bandwagon’ and then claim that where they have stopped in their own critical thinking is where the truth lies. This is usually to take the argument down a certain path or direction that is beneficial to their own cause. In effect they have hijacked the truth to gain leverage for their own personal or group cause. These opinionated voices will then take with them other people who once again have allowed others to conduct their thinking and decision-making on the truth on their behalf.   

Being an advocate of anti-workplace bullying we need to critically think and explore all available evidence in order to seek out the core truth of an allegation. We cannot stop half way along that journey from the core to the crust! To actually understand what has caused the situation to have arisen and what really sat at the very heart of the problem. It is so easy to become embroiled in tit-for-tat allegations and for the problem to become personalised. History, after all, tells us that everyone that finds themselves in an argument thinks that they are in the right!

There is a famous cinematic moment when Jack Nicholson’s character, marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, in ‘A Few Good Men’ faces the young Tom Cruise’s character, Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee ( a naval attorney) in an iconic courtroom scene. The Colonel is drawn into a scene stealing self important rant after he is alleged to have ordered a young soldier to have been given ‘extrajudicial punishment’, something called a ‘Code Red’.

Nicholson eventually barks at Cruise, ‘You can’t handle the truth!’ believing that the particular course of action that he took was the right decision, even if it had led to the death of a young marine!

We are only going to get to finding a solution to these important issues if we start knowing ourselves more deeply, whilst investing the time and energy to look for the core of the issue and ultimately, handle the truth.