“You Can’t Handle the Truth”

One of my favorite movies of all times is A Few Good Men, I love the part where Jack Nicholson screams, “You Can’t Handle the Truth” in the courtroom. I just can’t help but draw a correlation to the way that truth has been handled over the past three to four years. I actually believe that society could be accused of being totally obsessed with discovering the truth. This is evidenced by Impeachment hearings, Covid 19 briefings, Election interference hearings, misconduct investigations and most recently, a reemergence of truths surrounding Russian investigations. Everyone posturing to present their version of what they believe to be true.

All of this activity has caused me to really consider what the word truth means to us. It seems like many people have become committed to discovering our truths by reading Twitter, following random posts, listening to edited sound bites and waiting for that Breaking News. Unfortunately, truth is never really presented in these mediums as a complete picture, with all the relevant facts. I’ve come to believe that “The Real Truth” is actually a multidimensional concept comprised of many different interconnected truths and the resulting “perceived” truth rarely provides an either/or solution.

As I further pondered the concept of truth, I can’t help but consider the lessons learned from raising our four children. One thing that’s always been made abundantly clear to them… we want them to be honest and tell the truth. Unintentionally, we’ve literally reinforced truth as an absolute, with a single answer… but after 20 years as a parent, I’ve realized it’s not that easy. Truth is much more malleable than we are comfortable with… and it’s much less absolute than we would all like to admit. In fact, the older we get, the more we become masters of our own truth. Not being able to handle real truth becomes directly linked to things like insecurities, ego, validation and competitiveness. Truth becomes adjustable based on the inability of our  sub-conscious to handle/accept things that do not fit into our personal beliefs. We seek out some degree of fact, some degree of truth… but we also attempt to find people and situations that support our perception of the truth.

The Oxford Dictionary defines truth as: “a belief that is accepted as true or that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality”, but based on how most people create truth, the definition should read more like; A perception of accuracy based solely on how we choose to interprete, organized or present things to our sub-conscious mind”. When we define truth as absolute, we convince ourselves that truth has only one dimension or one clear answer. Truth is much deeper than that… truth, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

One of the biggest truth problems we face in this current age of information and social media, is driven by our individual need for validation. We seek out bullet points, trending topics, quotes, stories and even visuals confirming what we believe to be true. A quick way to get validation is convincing people to agree with our truth. Politicians, for example are the professional athletes of truth manipulation, a virtual self-proclaimed truth GOAT. Unfortunately, their quest for validation is so strong that they regularly employ three of the most egregious manipulations of truth imaginable:  

1.    Truth through omission – we’ve all experienced it… a video with only part of an interview, an ad with an inflammatory comment taken out of context or a news story that fails to provide the whole picture. It’s easy to be tricked into believing something is true when facts are left out.

2.    Truth through manipulation –We migrate towards dialog that supports our beliefs. We listen intently to statements or facts to support our opinions without giving equal, or even any time to opposing ideas beliefs. How many of times have you heard someone say, I don’t watch CNN, MSNBC or Fox News because they always spin the story to support their own version of the truth. 

3.    Truth through data – Numbers don’t lie… right? Numbers are used to support true conclusions, but many times the same numbers presented differently, will support a completely different true conclusion. Consider the Coronavirus epidemic as a perfect example; Whole numbers create one narrative and equations create another. We’re easily convinced that numbers can be increasing and decreasing at the same time.  

4.    Truth through group connections & association – If the majority of people believe something, it must be true, right? In this information age, it’s easy align your truth with the perceived “everyone”. It’s ludicrous to think that millions of “Likes” or “thumbs up” establish truth. In fact, our 2016 election results are a clear example, literally millions of people “associated” with a narrative that the election could only have one outcome, but the reality ended up being a much different.

So, if truth is not an absolute, how do we ever get to the truth? Truths are like pancakes, there’s always two sides. I would add that when you cook one side of the pancake and not the other, the middle of the pancake never “sets up” properly... similar to how some “set up” their truth.  It’s easy to become so resolute and committed to our truths that we forget or refuse to consider the other side. You see… it’s human nature to want our version to be right and It’s also our nature to follow the path that most closely aligns with the picture we’ve created in our subconscious. Being right is also a huge part of self-worth, confidence and efficacy.  A parent for example, is responsible for developing self worth  and confidence in their child, and will vehemently defend and reject truths that tarnished the child efficacy. In society, if we just choose to vehemently defend and reject other truths, it’s easy to use the four tactics above to support only our version of truth.

Ask yourself, what have you allowed yourself to believe is an absolute truth? Do other people have a different version of that truth? Have you even allowed yourself to consider other side? Face it, if we really want to curb the divide that’s occurring in our society, we all need to open our aperture and expand our limited definition of truth.  I would challenge everyone to spend more time looking for commonality in the narrative, consider alternate truths and truly listen to all the facts.  Avoid the tendency to needlessly validate only your own truths… those truths don’t need any further validation. Learn how to accept that your perception of truth is only a truth because of what your subconscious allows you to accept. Don’t be the person that expands the divide… “You CAN handle the truth!”