What is the truth?

A Pa and a Jo talking.

Jo - If there are only 100 people in the world and they all think alike, that is, there is only one opinion, does that mean that there is only one truth, that there are more and they don’t know them or that they are wrong and don’t know it? Is truth a matter of being, exernal or the idea of a group of individuals? Is truth what is established, what is said, what is invented, what is created, what exists or what is?

Pa - As far as I know, the number of people does not determine whether something is true or false, what it does determine is the power of that idea in society. Besides, if there is only one idea, there can only be one truth and anything that deviates from it will be considered a lie. Therefore it has a lot of power since it classifies the rest of ideas and is established above all. However, this does not make it true, besides, if there is no debate of ideas, no sharing, they will never leave that state and they will not be able to discover or consider something new, so everything will remain static in that apparent static truth. If there is one thing certain it is that we are all different and that each one perceives the world in his own way, influenced by the rest and by his individuality (body, mind and soul). Everything is changeable, everything is relative and there is nothing immutable, which by self-definition also implies that there can be something stable because the definition itself is changeable and relative. When we speak of truth, we unconsciously deal with several layers of truth, the first of all is the individual layer, the one that belongs to the I am, to the being. From here would come the question of what is being, is it the same as being? It is not the same to be seen from me as from the eyes of another person, am I what I say, what I do, what I contemplate, what I think, what I see, what I desire, what I hate, am I all that, am I much more or am I much less? From the most objective point of view possible, the being is far beyond the body, the clothes, the objects, the being would be the thoughts, what we would call your true essence, that which losing everything you would continue to maintain.

Jo: But how do I know that what you say is true if it is your point of view? Is it only true what everyone thinks? What if you are wrong? What if you think you are right? Is there any truth outside each one of us? If we do not exist, would truth still exist? If I know nothing and I want to learn to understand what is truth and what is lie, how do I do it? Am I born learned or do I remember the knowledge? If truth is relative then what is the use of science, wouldn’t it be easier to create truths in reality and establish them as unique to reach the truth? Do scientists act to understand what is reality or are they influenced / indoctrinated by their studies and what they mark creating realities marked by those who determine what is and what is not to be studied?

Pa: Slow down, young man, you won’t understand everything in one day. We act guided by our feelings rather than by our mind, and based on that we make decisions. With it we establish bonds of trust with other people or groups of people, and these together with many other techniques make us trust and believe in the person. In general, the bonds of trust range from close family relationships, friends, teachers, acquaintances and then the people to whom we assign power for their work. That is to say, every worker who contributes something to society, a judge, a policeman, a doctor, a nurse, each job has a role in society and it is usually specific. By this I mean that if people go to the doctor it is usually because they want a solution to their physical problem and it is because they trust him. If people buy bread from the baker it is because they like it, they need it, and it presents some convenience. If bread were unnecessary, very expensive and tasted bad almost nobody would buy bread because it would be a waste of money, I don’t say nobody because you don’t know for sure how most people will act. In terms of the baker, the taste of bread is a relative thing, it is not a truth, there are people who will like it, others who will not and others who will not get the taste. The same thing happens with the price of bread, for some people it will be cheap and for others it will not, depending on what they are used to pay and the money they have. So here it is quite understandable that it is a relative truth or even that there is truth in these matters. However, there are things that are more important, if a person is allergic to gluten, the baker should know if the bread contains gluten or not. He must know the baking times for the bread to be good, but for that he must assume that the time of the clocks is always the same, that they are not delayed and that they do not spoil. How does he know if the clocks count right if to measure the clocks he needs another clock, if everything is relative how can he be sure. In this case the baker could not give more thought to the matter and simply wait or check that the bread does not burn, but if a machine does it, all these parameters should be stable so that the differences between one loaf and another are minimal. Maybe the issue of the clocks getting out of sync is a little out of whack, but you can’t be sure that this will happen. That’s why you have to adapt to each situation and set a reference system for each one. The issue comes when you establish one idea as unique and the rest as false, when you do that you are imposing an idea. It is turning a relative truth or an invented story into a joint reality. That is why we must leave room for doubt and be open to questioning and questioning things. As long as it works well, go ahead and if you find some mistake, try to correct it.

Jo - But if people are used to this system and think they are living well, they don’t have enough knowledge to ask themselves a very complex, technical and specific question. How do they know that they are not wrong? How do they know that what they are doing is correct or true?

Pa - There comes a point when that will happen, that’s why you have to try to respect and not hurt others, follow the rule of don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. And understand that we can be wrong and that it is better to fix the mistake ahead of time than to hide it or forget about it.

Jo - Any conclusions from all this?

Pa - Well, that we should not impose on the rest, if you want to understand this world, that everyone will have their own process of understanding things. And that everyone who wants to investigate, do it for him and to help others, not because it is so established. We create our reality but we can also grasp it without being influenced by external agents. The truth is usually associated with the objective, but by the fact of being individual beings the objective does not exist, however as a whole if there are common ideas for all what we call more shared ideas or reality.