'Truth' is often simply our own perspective

As I stood on my porch recently and beheld the view of Roundtop, I began to think about “truth.” Few if any of us in this community would dispute the truth of the assertion that the Idaho Panhandle is absolutely beautiful. It is a belief that we all share. Each of us can find many more beliefs that we share in common if we try a little. But when it comes to values and politics of the day, we are a pluralistic society. That is to say that we do not always agree on how to define the good life, on what we value and how we believe society should be structured, on how resources that can never satisfy all of our desires should be created and distributed, and indeed on what truth itself is. It has always been so and it always will be. The truth that pluralism is inherent in all societies is the challenge for democracy everywhere and right here at home in our community.

This morning I also read a piece in “The Atlantic” about the Covington Catholic boys and a Native American group at the Lincoln Memorial a short while back. It described the unfolding of a media frenzy depicting the Catholic boys as deplorable bigots based on a single YouTube video that later was proved to be highly slanted and misleading as the larger context and actions of various players was proved by many additional videos. This was but one of countless examples, alternately favoring more extreme views of both left and right, of how our media caters to our increasingly insatiable appetite for proof of the “truths” that we hold dear are indeed indisputable “truths,” prove our righteousness and justify our increasing disrespect for others and for our pluralism. If our media cannot sell more neutral accounts of what goes on in the world, what does that say about us? My own belief is that if this trend continues, it may or may not ultimately destroy all of our freedoms, but it will certainly breed increasing hatred that is the enemy of a free and civil society.

It is true that I am a very lucky man, and I have lots of opinions about how our society should pursue the “good life” or at least about how to pursue improvements for our common good. Are my opinions “truth” or are they just the natural result of my own circumstances, education, and good luck? Clearly they are the latter because I know that if I had been born to a coal mining family in mid-nineteenth century Wales, my likely uneducated view of truth would be far different than it is here and now.

If we are to improve our society, we all must fight our intransigence, think more of what we share in common, learn to accept pluralism and respect other points of view, tone down our righteousness, and learn that our perceived “truths”, especially in politics, are merely our own perspectives more than demonstrable truth. Study of history and philosophy through the ages helps a lot, as I am learning in retirement.

CHUCK HULBERT

Sagle