Truth

November 22, 2008

Among historians, a thought often is found: "numbers lie." The supposition behind the thought is of the inherent weakness of statistics. By tracking two quantities that are contemporary to each other and placing their numerical representatives next to each other, the mind often jumps to causal relations. However, correlations do not necessitate (nor do they rule out) causal relations. Statistics can be used to manipulate. They can be disingenuous tools of argumentation. Orwell's 1984 captures the nature of statistics well. The government that pervades the novel is always quick to publish the quantity of something unimportant (like shoelaces) and how production of them has increased. Taken on its own, the increase brings with it a higher estimation of the society. "It is good for production to increase. The more things, the better." However, the statistics wantonly skew the real environment. The a few, scant unimportant items are made in greater frequency, while the essential conditions for human flourishing languish. Shoelaces are up; love is down.

Historians rarely make a related observation that seems to me to be even more fundamental: "words lie." Indeed, words lie more than numbers. Numbers are only tools for the lies delivered by words. "1.2 million more shoelaces were produced this quarter from last quarter," is more of a lie for the words it leaves out than for the numbers it leaves out. '1.2 million' is a relatively unimportant part of the sentence. (It's not even the subject, of course.)

One of the most frightening and, simultanesously, most comforting properties of truth is that it obtains without our assent (or denial). Saying, "Jack is a boy," does not make the real Jack a boy. It is an obvious truth, a blatant observation, I know. Yet it is so often forgotten. We want to believe that the truth is not so isolated from us. When I say, for instance, "I didn't mean any harm," I assume that somehow my assertion will prevent the listening from being harmed by my action. I want the truth to bend to my will.

At times, the truth does so 'bend.' I have said something like, "I'll see you tomorrow at 2:45." The following day I saw the person at 2:45. But did my will necessitate the truth? No, it only aligned with it. For, what if I had every intention of seeing the person the next day, took all the necessary steps, and then, on the walk up to her apartment, tripped, fell, and went momentarily blind from the trauma? The point is here that the will is only contingently related to the truth.

Since all of our words are products of our wills, the all our words share the same relation to the truth. Speaking geometrically, at times language and truth overlap. At times they run parallel, at times they are perpendicular, and at times they are not even on the same plane. Further, we lack the capacity to always assess with certainty exactly what way our language is relating to the truth. Speaking psychologically, I may confess, "I am not angry with you," and yet deep in my subconscious there may be great reservoirs of anger directed at the listener. The psychoanalyst says after a number of therapy sessions that you are unaware of your deepest sentiments, but that they are present nonetheless. Truth at large, if it could speak, could easily speak to us as the psychoanalyst does about his patients: "Although you think and talk one way, the truth is really another."

What are we to do in this situation? How are we to approach truth if we lack any necessary ways of relating to it in language? We have far more hope in relating to truth by nonverbal means, by actions. Art moves us so to such a degree because there is of the supra-linguistic vastness of its accuracy. Truth is more than truth is said. Art is experienced better than art is written of. Being and consciousness of being (the state of presence) are less estranged from each other than being and description of being (either by numbers or words). Our best approach to life is one of truthful living, which places a person's bet of time (the greatest asset a person has) on a proposition that, after rigorous examination, is judged to overlap truth. Then, words presumed true are transformed into actions which, if true, are far more truthful than their representatives can ever be.