Truth du Jour

“What you say may be true for you, but it is not for me.”

Car crash, whiplash! That “my truth” is separate, distinct, and disparate from “your truth” crashed into me with such force my head popped back and forth at the whip/tip end of my flailing body. In that swirling blur, I had something like a chicken’s last thought, that final, squawking half idea as grandma gave a last twisting flip, popping the head off the body, sending it into beak-open, surprise-eyed oblivion, “Squaaaaak doooo yooooou meean?” >pop< But my head remained on my body. I found myself something short of a miraculous, but bodiless, coming-to-consciousness on the compost heap. I was traumatized, but ambulatory, with a perpetual pain in my neck.

Truth is . . . well . . . truth. I may be wrong about what I believe to be truth; you may be wrong about what you believe to be truth, but our errors do not make or unmake truth. Just because you believe something is right or wrong, does not make it so. To call truth false is a lie. To call a lie truth is a lie. I can call some truth “absolute,” some “eternal,” and other truths “conditional” or “ephemeral,” but those labels are merely tests, filters to separate lies from truth, for if I know a thing and know it to be neither absolute nor eternal I know it is not truth.

It would certainly be useful to me to believe truth is relative. If there is no absolute truth, then there are no moral absolutes and I can easily justify all kinds of bad behavior. Any choice to fulfill my personal desires can be justified as true for me regardless of who else I harm, and I can shrug off the pain of those hurt by my choices. I can say they deserve their pain because they cannot find it in their little hearts to be happy for me. I can declare them narrow, judgmental, and intolerant. I can assert their joy-killing beliefs will lead them inevitably to sadness and despair. I can even elevate relativism to the level of virtue and drape myself in a flag emblazoned with the slogans, “Tolerance” and “Pluralism,” and assert a claim for the moral high ground. I can call truth false and lies truth. I can lie, but it is not an enduring or believable lie. It will out eventually.

When I assert there is no such thing as absolute truth, my words simply “don’t mean,” as Gertrude Stein phrased it. What is it that I am saying? “The absolute truth about absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth.” The statement is tautologous, prima facie nonsense at best. Pick at the prim, white, shallow facade of the assertion and fingernails scrape into a greasy black layer of justification. The slightest pressure more and a finger plunges into the rotting filth of selfishness long covered over and hidden from view. The stench assaults the nostrils and I rush off to cleanse hands with hot water and soap.

As long as that lie is at the core of my values, there will always be a hint of the stench of moral decay about me. In my presence people’s nostrils will flare, they will glance around furtively trying to locate the source of the stench. If the visits are short enough, their friendship more shallow than the facade, and the facade remains intact, they may never know source of their discomfort, but the length of their visits will abbreviate and the time between visits will grow.

The false banners of “Tolerance” and “Pluralism” draped about me do not hide the stench either. The verity in tolerance is found in respect for others' beliefs. I embrace this truth when I respect individuals and seek to understand them as they express and live out their beliefs. I do not respect any belief if I think one is just as good as another, or just as bad as another, that no belief accurately represents reality in any meaningful way. What I call “my truth” is actually a truth du jour with pragmatic utility rather than eternal value. If my truth’s only value is that it is mine, then no other truth can have value because it is not mine. As the stench grows thicker, it ripples the light and the words on the banners shift in and out of vision, we see the word “Tolerance” really reads, “Indifference” and “Pluralism” reads “Particularism.”