Our complicated relationship with the truth
Most of would like to believe that our understanding of the world is to a degree objective and grounded in a semblance of reality. To exist in the world is to be of the world, unless somehow you find yourself on an island of one. Our relationship to the world at large is framed through the interactions we have with others, the information we consume, and our ability to parse through that tangled web of relationships. There is no one definitive way of seeing or understanding the world precisely because each of us has our own unique positionality we bring to the world. This complicates our relationship with the truth precisely because we must rely on our own understanding to sift and parse truth from the entanglements surrounding us.
This philosophical conundrum has likely been mulled over from the moment we first became aware of the world. Some might see truth in religion, others philosophy, yet others science. For most of us it is a synthesis of all three and much more besides. Empirical scientific truth is still limited by our perception of the world and the tools we use to probe the universe, the vast “reality” is distilled so we can understand it. This is not to undermine science, quite the opposite; the scientific method is perpetually moving forward, allowing us to expand into the gaps, making sense of it all in a semblance of a truth. Religion purports to answers…
