Is That The Truth?

Are you as suspicious of what you hear from people today as you were 20 years ago? I am. Truth has been replaced with agenda and lies. I wonder why the change has come so fast. In our world, the idea of absolute truth, something that is true at all times in all places and has relevance for our lives, is about as extinct as the dinosaur. In fact, most people everywhere in the world say there is no such thing as ultimate, or absolute, truth. The media lies, politicians lie, friends lie to friends and strangers, religions lie. It's so rare what Mark Twain once said when he uttered, "When in doubt, tell the truth," may be the truth.

Perhaps the way we communicate today makes lying easier for us. It's surely easier to lie on a social media web site or when talking on a cell phone. Maybe that makes it easier to lie still more when we speak face to face. And the death of religion removes sanctions against lying.  Those who believe in religion may or may not lie more or less. But they surely will hesitate more often to lie and feel guilty more often when they do lie.  Our cold, electronic society is one in which  truth is treated like a fairy tale, an outdated idea or even an insult to human intelligence. We have all become politicians! (I hope I am not Hillary Clinton, the world's greatest liar)

It's hard to know if what we are told is the truth. Trying to figure out if we have been lied to or not is complicated because we may have been told some part of the truth but not all of it. Part truth may be worse than a lie because it is more difficult to recognize and much harder to correct.  And "the truth is" that if we were only told the truth in life we would be more miserable than hearing truth only some of the time. I suspect not many of us could survive or live comfortably in a world of only truth.

We are suspicious of those who claim to tell the truth. And those of us who have been lied to more often, more often distrust that there is truth. That's my conclusion, but I am not sure it is the truth...