It often baffles me when someone makes such an extravagant claim as, "This is true." In Mormondom, where I spent a great deal of my youth dodging guilt trips and blonde haired/blue eyed Aryan "daughters of zion," the truth is something often defended on the personal level by stating that one knows the "truth" with "every fiber of my (their) being." Seemingly, the truth is something that, at it's very surface, seems to fully exist apart from error. It is unadulterable, perfect, flawless & pure. I'm not going to go into a linguistics lesson but the very word truth is derived from the old English/Proto-Germanic word trēowe which is a direct connotation to ones faith or religious beliefs. So the very essence of the idea of truth is inseparably interconnected with faith & religion. So with that in mind, truth being homogeneous in it's relation to faith & religion, it has created a culture of right vs. wrong and good vs. evil dynamic, or rather a John Wayne-ism.
I'd like to counter the faith-based perspective (I believe in, love & follow Jesus, at a later time we will discuss how this is possible) with a perspective from a former adjunct Rhetoric professor from UC Berkeley. His name is Daniel Coffeen where he unapologetically declares, "Everything is an argument." Bertrand Russell who falls in a similar almost nihilistic school of thought argues that everything, even something simple as a coffee table--which is the example that is used in his book "The Problem of Philosophy," is valued differently by different people with differing "perspectives." Data factors such as light, individual vision & each individuals interperation as to what a coffee table is and what it is used for. A very basic example, but Russell finds a way to build an entire book built around the analyzing of this simple object whose assumed purpose is to furnish a home. Here's the one and only thing I know to be(ironically) "true"--Don't assume anything!
Truth has always been a very bizarre thing to me, especially in the asking of something or someone's integrity, as if we could actually come to know this at all. To merely ask if something is true, is to merely ask the wrong question because what you'll get is not discovery, but you will get a blanket answer and maybe a head nod or a "yeah, dude." But if you're "honest" with yourself, you're not after a yay/nay sort of situation. What you're really after is definition. I'm a journalism student, and the main reason I love journalism is because it really deals the shit life is made of on a very fundamental level. Questions and Answers. Problematically,in some cases you ask the wrong questions and get the right answers that lead you somewhere else. Or sometimes you ask the right questions but you get the wrong answers, or maybe not exactly what you were looking for. To sum up the art of living in a sentence, "It is & it isn't." Life is Yes & No. Life is True & False. Life is ambiguous and fucked up and you can't label everything...or you can. Merely asking if something is true doesn't get down to the root of a problem or intellectual, theological, perspectival dilemma. All it seems to do is give a blanket statement and it doesn't really answer the question. What you're really asking is, "What is it?" It's usually (to apply a blanket statement of my own) about defining things.
This is a particularly epistemologically perplexing idea. Especially on a day like today, when we are essentially celebrating being "right." So what are we right about? Democracy? The right to bear arms? Capitalism? What does "right" mean? What is democracy? It is totally besides the point, but it also is the point. Are we really after truth? Or is it really that we have no tangible idea about the concepts and dogmas and realities that we've latched onto from a very early age? Is it social conditioning? The herd instinct? It's neither and it's all of them. Nothing is certain and everything is ascertained.
I would also say, be careful when you ask these questions. You might not have any idea whose core belief systems you may be in the process of shattering.
Happy Independence Day.
****I understand the paradoxical nature of this argument, even in the discipline of language. Using words such as right, wrong, true & false to make an argument about their lack of existence is dichotomous at best. But try not to interpret dichotomy as being equated with being "false" or an idea that can't be considered.****
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