In Search of the Truth

Our contemporary lack of honesty has become a personal obsession.  Everywhere I turn, I see some people lying, while others are totally indifferent to this lack of candor.  Interpersonal trust has eroded because it is more difficult than previously to determine who is telling the truth.  This scares me.

Concurrent with this development is an indifference even to discovering the truth.  One might suppose that if we cannot have confidence in what others say, we would redouble our efforts to uncover the facts.  But this has not happened.

When I teach my students at Kennesaw State University, I am routinely amazed by what they do not know.  Equally amazing is that many don’t seem to care.  They accept the most outlandish deceits as factual because they never drill down to verify them.

Take the proposition that women earn seventy-nine cents on the dollar as compared with men.  This, although it is fundamentally untrue, gets endlessly repeated as if we were in an echo chamber.  In reality, nowadays men and women get paid almost the same—if they do the same jobs.  The differences—and there are some—arise because they often perform dissimilar duties.

The same disjunction between reality and what political partisans say is present in the global warming controversy.  Propaganda machines, such as the United Nations, cherry pick data.  They tell us, for instance, that the Arctic ice pack is decreasing, but leave out the part about how the Antarctic ice is increasing.

We live in a world of sound bites and computer memes.  Little bits of pseudo knowledge circulate with few restrictions.  These are essentially forms of entertainment, rather than serious efforts to determine what is real.  If something sounds as if it might be true—and is consistent with our convictions—we regard it as factual.

Residing, as many of us do, in hermetically sealed political compartments, we do not want our tranquility to be disturbed.  Not only do we not listen to those with whom we disagree, we do not venture forth to sample what might be disquieting.  Heaven forbid we were wrong.  We might have to change our minds.

Of course, we are all confident that we are right.   It is those other guys, the ones who oppose us, who are wrong.  They must be defeated so that our views have an unimpeded road to travel.

Reality, however, is complicated.  It was not constructed with an eye to guaranteeing our serenity.  The more we learn, the more we discover what we do not know.  This is why it is so disturbing that many Americans are not on a quest to increase their knowledge.

They don’t read.  At least, they don’t read anything that is difficult to assimilate.  By the same token, they don’t have civil discussions with those who have differing viewpoints.  Instead they hurl invectives.

As a consequence, we live in a world replete with political turmoil.  Does gun ownership promote school massacres?  Are illegal immigrants more likely to commit crimes?  Will raising the minimum wage improve the living conditions of the poor?  Is global warming a function of atmospheric carbon dioxide or fluctuations in solar output?

If we do not want to know the answers, we will not know.  If we are unprepared to deal with real world complications, we must perforce reside in a fantasy world.  Likewise, if we ignore evidence that demonstrates we sometimes injure others, we will injure others.

My guess is that some readers are saying to themselves that Fein should look in the mirror.  What makes him think he has a better grasp of the truth than me?  It is he who is living in a dream world.

These are reasonable observations.  I too am human and therefore make mistakes.  If I am recommending that we investigate the truth for ourselves, shouldn’t this apply to me?  The answer is obvious.  Of course, it should.

This, unfortunately, is easier said than done.  Mistakes are inevitable, whereas none of us wants to make them.  Because an honest search for the truth might disconfirm our cherished beliefs, we hold back.  As for me, I am aware of this pitfall and try to be alert to my blind spots.

How about you?  Can we agree that we all have limitations—but that the truth matters?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw, State University