A little philosophy..

"No matter what the truth is
Hold on to what is yours"

                            Yes, "Hold On", 90125

"Is it possible to know the truth without challenging it first?"

That's my therapy question for the week.  I write a "paper" and drop it on my therapist and we chat about it.  I guess I wasn't expecting a deep philosophical question, but I'm game.

First, what's true?  I think many people go through life not actually knowing the truth.  The simple minded who are swayed by political marketing and propaganda spend quite a bit of time thinking they know what the truth is.  But in reality those machines they believe in are actually working against them.  Managing the economy in a way that the poor remain poor, overseeing the justice system so the criminal remain criminal, fund our school systems so the children are molded to become those who follow the propaganda.  While that's all a bit of an exaggeration, it's not too far from the truth.  And there's the truth again.  We don't even really know when the truth isn't the truth.

Thinking smaller, at the personal level, can we know the truth?  Is my spouse faithful?  Is my employer working to grow my career or just get the most for the least out of me?  The people who sells us things do it so well we may believe in something that's absolutely untruthful in the hope of getting a good deal.  Or even just believing them to get by, live in a house, drive a car, use their products - often because there is no alternative.

Sometimes we believe in things we know are untruthful.  It could be for our own personal benefit, or because believing it will allow us something like a purchase of a home at a price only one company can offer you.  Or needed a car badly enough that you buy something used from someone questionable.  But these are things we need badly enough that we overlook the untruths that accompany them.

The exceptions are those things we can prove.  We can see honestly.  We can understand well enough to believe.  Gravity exists.  Nobody lives forever.  Fire burns.  You are going to get pop up ads on web sites.  Children rarely grow up to be us or the people we imagined we wanted them to be when they were born.  Snow is cold.  When toast falls it lands on the buttered side.  Of course you have to believe in science to believe these things, but even the doubters are pretty much in agreement on gravity and pop-up ads.

In short, knowing the truth comes at us in a few different ways, and can be very difficult.  Things we know are true, things we actually believe are true (but aren't) and things that we know are untrue but we believe in order to live our lives like we want to.  I suppose there are also things we know to be untrue that we don't believe, and in some cases act against.  Fight for the truth past the untruths.  This can be done simply by voting, or more difficultly by pursuing the untruthful and working to bring them down or expose their lies.

So is it possible to know the truth?  I would say for the most part, no.  In few cases can we break something down, research it, understand it well enough to truly know the truth.  That's the tricky part, isn't it?  Those people who believe in politicians who are actually working against them don't and in many cases simply can't know the truth.  Honestly faith is more substantial than belief.  At least with faith you have a confidence that brings you happiness, real or imagined.  And that brings us back to either being ignorant or believing in something blindly.  Not the truth.

I will say that in our closest relationships, our faith is most often correct and associated with the truth.  I know my spouse is faithful.  Many companies are at least transparent enough that you don't imagine they're in business for you, but for themselves.  So you don't imagine they are fully trustworthy.  And are okay with that relationship.  Even in our relationships with ourselves, I think there are many truths that we acknowledge, even if they're not pleasant.  Sure, we ignore enough of them and fool ourselves well enough that we don't see the truth.  My hair isn't thinning.  From this angle I don't look overweight.  Drinking too much is fine, there's no problem there.  

Clearly the truth is complicated.  And often up for debate depending on who's side you're on.

So can we truly challenge it?  And what does it mean to challenge something?

In the case of science, challenging could mean study, research, and experimentation.  In relationships it could come from communication and experience.  In the case of a purchase, it could be reading reviews or test driving something.  Not guaranteed to always reveal a charlatan, but often generates enough confidence for us to believe in that truth.  I really wanted to put believe and truth in quotation marks there, but then I'd have to go back and do it to about a third of all the words I've written so far.

In our hearts, especially when it comes to challenging the truth in ourselves, it takes a special kind of honesty and humility to confront our own truths.  It's difficult to face some of the truths we have inside ourselves when we don't want them to be true.  In those cases it's possible you can't even challenge those truths.  Either from personal unwillingness, or personal disregard.  And the latter could be something we're not even aware we are doing.

For everything in-between we may not be able to challenge those truths.  We don't have access to the group producing them, or we aren't educated enough to understand an issue well enough to challenge it.  Often we don't think we can challenge something because it has such popularity, power, or a long history.  I can't challenge whether or not a college degree is required because I've been raised to believe it is essential.  I personally didn't find out the truth that you can live a happy and successful like without one until I dropped out of college.  Granted, it made life more difficult and less predictable.  We usually find ways to live our lives as well as we can, regardless of the advantages we don't have - or do have.

But to ask if you have to challenge the truth before you can know the truth?  I don't think that's the case.  I've never tried to defeat gravity, and yet I fully believe in it when I fall down.  Once a month I could ask my spouse if they're being unfaithful in order to know that truth.  But in that case the challenge is going to likely cause a problem in our relationship.  That comes from trust and respect.

It might come to faith and truth.  I can't challenge the true political motives of someone I am voting for.  I can research and get opinions, but there is always a layer underneath the public face.  So I need to have faith in the truths my politician of choice shares.  For the most part.  You can always have a lack of confidence in some of the things someone says, yet still believe in the overall picture.  I didn't believe the person I voted for in the last election had all of my best interests at heart.  But I did believe they we working from a position of good intention, or at least the intentions I wanted or thought were good.

So I will say you can know the truth without challenging it.  But you have to understand that knowing is actually more of a belief than a concrete truth.  End of philosophy paper.

But now to speak from a therapeutic angle.  

I think knowing your own truths is important.  I also think you often don't realize your own misguided truths or lies.  It takes someone else to point them out or raise the question of their existence.  A wife telling you it might be time to hit the gym more often.  A therapist probing your relationship with your mother and how that may have shaped some of your beliefs.  Or even a mirror showing you the gray in your hair and the wrinkles by your eyes.  

When it comes to challenging those truths, that's a completely different ballgame.  As I said earlier it requires understanding parts of yourself that you don't know about or don't want to believe are true.  So someone usually has to help you understand things that may be issues or problems, coax the specific belief out of you.  They need to hold it up and show you and make you understand that this is something that is real or true.  And hopefully they will then proceed to help you deal with that truth, understand it more fully and see how it's affecting other parts of your life or personality.

Honestly I think that's why I believe everyone should see a therapist.  You don't have to be broken to need a bit of fixing.  Nobody is so perfect that they couldn't use some introspection with the help of a professional who can see things and help repair or adjust to them.