At church a few Sundays ago, I was given an important reminder that seems so poignant now, maybe more than ever in modern history. Truth doesn’t come from within us. It comes from the objective reality we are co-inhabiting. Because of relativity we may interpret Truth differently, which we like to call “my truth” and “your truth.” But actually, there are, if enough facts are sufficiently uncovered, only a limited number of things that can be called The Truth. That’s an important thing in medicine and the topics of health.
Furthermore, it’s important to seek the Truth, and to seek multiple outlets (or opinions), to find The Truth. To be responsive to the Truth, we (and I mean myself for sure) have to remain open to the input of the output of the reality around us. To some degree that will include the opinions of others, but not often. More often it will be signs, stimuli, or results of actions that will definitely inform us of the status of our Position, or the truthfullness of a situation or scenario. That is, as opposed to truthiness, which is based wholly upon how something sounds, that is whether or not our limbic system likes it.
Relevance?
The reason I bring this up is that there is a rising tide of factlessness, bias, prejudice, anti-math, anti-egalitarian, and anti-intellectual truthiness in all spheres of life, including medicine. I don’t only mean COVID and the media. I mean all sorts of spheres of medicine, including mental, social, surgical, pharmaceutical, etc. I also mean to say that this tide will invade areas of life that give us stress, such as at work, at home, in schools, online, and in relationships. When this happens, be on the lookout for truthiness (comes from feelings and emotions, the ‘inside’) and strive, if you can, for truthfulness (comes from objective facts, verifiable by debiased or multibiased sources, and is measurable, documented, and has signs and proofs).