TRUTH, ELUSIVE TRUTH

If I insist on giving you my truth, and never stop to receive your truth in return, then there can be no truth between us.”

Thomas Merton

American politicians, regardless of whether they practice their calling locally or at the highest federal levels, as paid advisors or as officeholders, argue without acknowledging the other side. They see only the truths they wish to see, seeing only untruths in their opponents. No wonder the state of the Union!

Now Merton, the Trappist monk and mystic who wrote some 70 books, was commenting on theological love when he wrote the above words. Nonetheless, his observation seems to express a universal verity. Could political discourse in the United States of the early 21^st century become more civil and more productive for the country’s citizens if those who would mold public opinion heeded the Merton quotation and avoided its dire conclusion?

On the face of it, Merton is assuming that the protagonist pushes his honestly held argument while refusing to even hear the ideas of the other side, thus barring any chance of agreement. Assuming the validity of that translation of the Mertonian axiom, how the hell are pols gonna get anything done?

If Archimedes were to move the world, he needed a long lever plus a place to stand. The ancient Greek physicist can be a model for a sincere modern observer who should stand back to discern good points made today by those who battle over crucial topics impinging upon the country’s future.

Politicians, pundits, pontificators will not suddenly become classical debaters, marshaling their arguments to garner the approval of judges. No, that is asking too much. The give and take of political discourse has become more intense in the past few decades, while losing the flowery language and vitriol of the early days of the republic. Compromise, the accepted way to accomplishment in divided government, is scorned. Scoring points through derision is the game.

All of these public actors, whether active in the political arena or just chroniclers, are playing to the house, especially to those in the balcony whose perceptive talents are disparaged. They are the so-called low information voters, they who don’t bother to educate themselves about public affairs.

Education is required ­--­­- self-education. Grasping facts and ultimately truth from the flood of information and opinion that spills from the news media becomes a formidable task. Perfecting that task means striving to sift truth from all those words spewed about public problems and their solutions. Even disputed arguments contain some grain of truth, especially if the final goal is the gaining of a good and not an evil. Without proposing solutions, examples of goods are those of helping the poor; or providing for the aged and infirm, or the common defense. In general, those are the issues of our day painted in broad brush strokes. To use that overused cliché, the devil is in the details. Arguments over details so often end in incivility.  

If senators and representatives and reporters and commentators and bureaucrats and lobbyists cannot separate truth from blather, bombast, bunkum, then how can citizen-voters?

So can truth ever be shared in the marketplace of ideas? Can the meaning of truth in a particular situation of condition or problem or incident ever be found?

Truth is defined as conformity with fact, indisputable fact (such as mathematical laws), and actuality.

Common sense solutions can only be realized when innate reason is sincerely exercised by those seeking solutions. Perhaps a starting point would be acceptance that most people really want truth. That’s want when it means, not wish, but require or need. Right now the need is great.