Some Basics about Truth

Truth is one of those things you just cannot escape, no matter how much you might try and deny it. Truth is embedded in reality because reality itself is founded upon and made up of truth. What is is truth. But trying to define and pin down truth in an exact way is rather tricky, difficult–if not, downright impossible. This seems largely due to our own inability to actually capture the truth of reality within our narrow and limited scope of comprehension.

Truth is as ever-present and ever-elusive as the molecules and electrons observed by physicists; it is all at once bold and bashful, standing forth in itself, and then also eluding the most perceptive, being found by the most humble and not the wise or learned. Truth hides and yet discloses, comes forth and yet withdraws. To firmly grasp truth in the hand is a fool’s errand, but to loosely hold onto truth, as a wet bar of soap, then enables one to possibly begin to handle truth, however much that one is able to grasp it–because as soon as truth is clutched tightly, it somehow, someway slips out and away.

Perceptions of Truth

Often, perceptions of truth are depicted as an elephant that is being handled by several blind men, each on claiming that the elephant is as he experiences it. One says that the elephant is long and strong like a snake, as he feels the trunk. Another says it is smooth like polished wood and pointy like a pinprick, feeling the tusk. A third says the elephant is large and round, stout and strong like a mighty Redwood tree, feeling the leg. Still, a fourth says that it is like a rope, feeling the tail. Finally, a fifth and final one says that the elephant is like a parachute, feeling its massive ear.

Which blind man is correct? All of them? None of them? And how do we assess the blind men, having a full perspective as we do on these parabolic persons? For we can stand back and look at each one of them and say, “No, you’re each missing the forest for the trees, looking in too closely to be able to accurately and fully see what is before you.” But then we must ask, what is it that we ourselves are missing in understanding the fullness of truth in reality? Not only that, we must ask as well, who or what is observing us as we observe the blind men with the elephant?

Some are dogmatic in their perception of truth, while others are not. Still others are dogmatic in their not being dogmatic about their perception of truth. And yet it seems that everyone, in one way or another, is dogmatic about their perception of truth; the liberal and the conservative mind both meet here: each proclaiming its own mind as the truth, each perceiving its perception of reality as the perception by which to perceive. So, no matter how you slice it, there is a dogmatism inherent in truth claimants, even if not in the truth claims themselves. This seems to be due to the apparent nature of truth, which many perceive, though perhaps inaccurately, as solid, uniform, unchanging.

Three Kinds of Truth

I will submit that, indeed, while truth is solid, uniform, and unchanging, it is also at the same time, not solid, not uniform, and not unchanging. These are the two sides of truth: the temporal and the eternal, the fixed and the transitory, the being and the becoming. Much like objects we behold as solid but are not so on the molecular level, so truth is not always as it seems.

What is truth and how can we know? While there may be more, I perceive at least three kinds of truth.

Objective Truth

Objective truth is anything that just is, regardless of whether one opines to like it or not: it is born of the state of reality and not some subject. It is what we might call fact or factual, being that which is in terms of some external state, like a ball being round, red, and bouncy, or deflated, flat, and smashed. The truth of the reality of an objective truth lies in the object, which is external to and independent of anyone or anything else. It wouldn’t matter whether you or I or anyone else observed or interacted with the ball, the ball would still be as it is, regardless of any observer or user. In fact, if no one were in the world and nothing else existed but the ball itself, it would be as it is, independent of all else.

This, however, brings up the problem of relations, for a thing is as it is in relation to another; a ball is round in relation to that which is round or not round and is red in relation to the light that is reflected off the surface of the ball to the eye of the observer, etc.

Then, could a ball be such in and of itself, independent of all things? Supposedly, we can imagine such a thing, but to actually have such a thing in reality is beyond all sense or comprehension, let alone experience. For then the ball would be all-consuming and have no relations unto itself, then being without form, color, or distinction, for it would merge into the ever-eternal, infinitely without and within all things, being all that which is, in fact.

Additionally, this state of what is objective truth or what objective truth is turns when one considers God, the Creator of reality, who is a Subjective Being himself: if God is Creator and what he created is what is, then his subjective truth would then actually be objective truth, for whatever he likes is what is and whatever is is objectively so.

It seems only God can get away with a stunt like that, if in fact that’s a trick up his sleeve because the rest of us do not create reality in the same way that God does; for God creates from pure imagination or mind, causing the objects of his thoughts to become the objects of reality, to exist without and outside him, though always subsisting within and inside him. Like the ever-eternal, infinite ball that is all-consuming, so is God, the all-expansive and all-consuming creative Spirit or Force of all that which is. The rest of us create what we create by means to using what has been provided to us, not creating it from mere substance of mind or imagination.

Subjective Truth

While objective truth is that which is outside a person, save for God, subjective truth is that which is inside a person, as one’s internal states or thoughts or feelings on a matter. Opinions are one very obvious and generally promoted subjective truth: I like ice cream, but I hate milk. The Yankees are the best team since sliced bread. And I believe that the person who wins the presidency will be an old white man.

Subjective truths are true insofar as they are true for the individual who makes their claim, stating that such is in fact the case for them. I might state that while I have the biological anatomy of a human male, I am, in fact, an Apache Helicopter. While the objective truth is that I am a human male, the subjective truth is that I am an Apache Helicopter, as long as I truly believe and buy into the belief that I am such.

Subjective truth is not subjective truth simply because I want to piss off my parents or because I want to be controversial: it is internal truth that is true for me so long as I truly believe. By this definition, many beliefs that are purported to be objective are actually only subjective, even though that belief might be shared my many, even millions of subjects.

Ultimate/Universal Truth

Ultimate or universal truth is any truth that is true for all persons and all things across all spectrums of class, culture, customs, time, history, space, etc. This would be something that is true whether I like it or not, whether I opine in accord with it or not. It can be either objective or subjective, too. For instance, an objective ultimate/universal truth is that color is colored or light is light or you are you, etc.; essentially, truisms are objective ultimate/universal truths. The tricky ultimate/universal truths to think of are the subjective ones, as we tend to associate ultimate and universal truth with objective truth, as if the two were one and the same. However, there are also subjective ultimate/universal truths, as the general propensity of humans to have a herd mentality when in a mob or the natural animal instinct toward flight, freeze, or fight when in danger.

Ultimate/universal truth is the category over all truth or truths, from which comes both objective and subjective truths, as well as any others, if there be such. An ultimate/universal truth might be God or Reality or Ultimate Reality or Spirit or Humanity; it is something that, though either objective or subjective, is in someway, somehow overarching, a meta-truth or metanarrative, that holds all truths and things together.

Three Ways of Truth

The ways of truth might well be delineated as participles rather than gerunds, but I have chosen to thus delineate them with gerunds because truth is a process by which we are ever engaging and is not something that is locked up in the past, but is ever being discovered, ever being created, and ever being revealed. Furthermore, truth is ever present, a matter of the imminent moment wherein we all abide: the past is past and, though we live in it in the present and therewith either transform or perpetuate it, it has occurred and is over; whereas the future is yet to be, while it be in the mind or perception as yet to be, and is that which is discovered and created to become, but is not yet now being or, even, becoming, for all that which is is becoming or becomes and is being or is.

The present moment is all that in which we might abide, whereby we might be and do that which we are being. Thus, the truth is and so, though there are truths of history or the past, that is, historical truths, and there are truths of the future, there are but truths of the present, for therein we live and move and have our being, wherein we abide as one: the truth is as much as we are bound up in the present and so thereby abides. The truth is, in fact, the present and the present is the truth, for herein we are and abide. Thus, truth we are discovering, creating, and revealing, presently entering into truth, even as we abide in the present.

Discovering Truth

We are discovering truth by means of exploration and even revelation. This way in which we interact and engage with truth is a process whereby we find out, discover, reveal, uncover, etc. something we did not previously know or experience or have in our possession, whether mental or otherwise, eg, physically in hand. We find this truth by means of science or therapy or introspection or even enlightenment, wherein we perceive or understand anew an object or reality or perception such that it comes to light in a new and possibly fresh way.

Much of this is done, for example, in scientific inquiry, wherein study of objects and persons or realities and facts is explored by penetrating those objects, facts, persons, etc. with mechanisms and tools that promote and progress the body of inquiry and thereby human knowledge. An instance that might be offered for discovering objective truth is the scientific/biological study of the animal kingdom; for discovering subjective truth is the therapeutic penetration of the mind and heart, thoughts and emotions; and for discovering ultimate truth is enlightenment of the objective, as discovering God or the Ultimate, and of the subjective, as Self-Awareness or Self-Understanding.

Creating Truth

In creating truth, we make that which is not yet now present; we create with that which is before us to make that which is not yet before us, so that it becomes that which is now in the present. It takes a bit of futuristic thinking and foreshadowing of thought and planning, and it affords the creative aspects of our being and personality to come forth. Some persist against creating truth, believing that the only ways of truth are discovering and revealing truth, that we discover truth and God reveals truth. This seems to account for but two-thirds of the reality of truth, as this third, namely, creating truth or creativity, is that means by which truth unknown or unperceived is made consummate with reality, wherein it is known and perceived.

Much of this is done via the applied sciences, wherein technology is produced, as well as the creative arts, and finally in Self-Definition, these three here aforementioned being, respectively, objective truth, subjective truth, and ultimate truth. For the creation of truth is not the creation of ultimate/universal truth, but it is the creation of either objective or subjective truth, for these can and are created all the time.

Consider, for instance, the Garden of Eden, wherein were Adam and Eve. What did they not have that you are now possibly holding in your hand? Indeed, namely, a smartphone or device! Whence came that objective reality/truth? Did it not come of applied science, the creation of truth and reality, as it were? Additionally, subjective truth, too, is and can be created, as, for instance, a work of art or philosophical paper or piece of music. Hence, truth can be and is created, whether it be objective or subjective.

Revealing Truth

Now, revealing truth is done by a bit of unveiling, which is also true of discovering truth. The distinction between unveiling truth in revealing it versus discovering it is this: when we unveil truth by discovery, we see what we did not see by means of penetrating reality to unveil what was once hidden from us; when we unveil truth by revelation, we see what we already had in the possession of our minds or souls or somewhere deep within ourselves, as, for instance, the knowledge of mathematics, logic, and reason. For, even though I do not know the terminology for “one and one equals two,” I know that when one object and another are placed side-by-side, I now have two objects. Furthermore, I know that if A=B and B=C, then A=C, whether or not I know what are the terms “A,” “B,” and “C,” let alone “=.” Again, furthermore, the objects or concepts of reason, especially, commonsense, are those things which we know, but which may be hidden from our purview until they are unveiled by reflection or someway or other.

Mixing and Matching Kinds of Truth with Ways of Truth

Below is a grid whereby one might find a summary of the aforementioned. True, there is some overlap between sections and distinctions, but overlap does not thereby indicate disintegration of the distinctions or falsehood, etc. Overlap does, however, indicate a wider and fuller understanding of the realities that we behold, which press in on us and against which we press out on, where by we ebb and flow with the truths of reality, thereby being in the present reality of the moment and creating truth, discovering truth, and revealing or receiving revelations of truth.

TRUTH GRID	Objective	Subjective	Ultimate
Discovering	Science & Exploration	Psychology, Therapies, Mediation, Introspection, Religion	Enlightenment of God or the Ultimate; Self-Awareness or Self-Understanding
Creating	Technology & Applied Science	Creative Arts, Humanities, Religion, & Intellectual Exploration	Mind, Body, & Spirit; Self-Definition
Revealing	Mathematics, Logic, & Reason	Personal Testimonies, Stories, History or Histories, & Eye-Witness Accounts	God, Trinity, & Scripture or Religion; Self-Actualization & Self-Realization

With the grid above, we might surmise that discovering objective truth is found in science and exploration, as exploration of space or the ocean or the wilds of some distant land or forest/jungle, or the scientific inquiry and study of plants, animals, geological formations, and the like. In discovering subjective truth, we find that psychology, therapy, mediation and introspection, even religion, are the means whereby we discover subject truths about the world and even ourselves. In discovering ultimate truth, we find that enlightenment and knowledge of God and the Self are had.

In creating objective truth, we find that technology and applied science are the means by which we obtain this, creating such technologies as smartphones, devices, computers, weapons, tools, etc. We also find that in creating subjective truths, we obtain such by the creative arts and humanities, as religion, philosophy, psychology, etc.: anthropology might well fit in here or in with discovering objective/subjective truth. In creating ultimate truth, we create that which might be deemed as Self-Definition or the exercise of mind, body, or spirit, as, for instance, in biological procreation.

In revealing objective truth, we find that such truths as those of mathematics, logic, reason, and even commonsense are unveiled, showing themselves to us, manifest in our minds, hearts, and being, present to us as objects of reality revealed, apart from while simultaneously a part of us. In revealing subjective truth, we find such truths as those of essentially testimony or history, whereby what is revealed are the accounts of one’s internal state(s) or the accounts of one’s external states. Additionally, the revealing of ultimate truth is that which is found in religion, as pertaining to God and His Testimony, as in Scripture(s), or in Self-Actualization and Self-Realization.

Progressing Forward with the Nature of Truth

Thus equipped with an understanding of the nature of truth we might progress forward, moving on toward a reality wherein truth is not merely understood as objective and subjective or the objective versus the subjective, but also as ultimate; wherein truth is not merely understood as discovered (by man) and as revealed (by God), but as also created, whether by God or man, that is, humanity. We might progress in this sense, for we might henceforth cast off the restraints of ignorance that hold us in bondage and ill-conceived notions of reality, especially lacking force in the realm of creativity and the power thereof, lying therein.