The Stages of Acceptance

Truth isn't any one thing. My truth is different than my sisters’ truths and even my parents’ truths. For me, I was really able to solidly connect to the idea of “truth” when we learned about colors. However, I felt as though my understanding of truth came in three waves and with each wave came more understanding and helped me hone in my own beliefs. I liked being able to start our unit on truth with the allegory of the cave and the matrix. This helped me delve into the topic and become aware of the idea that the truth can be bent or changed to anyone. At first, being able to demolish my previous assumption that what we see and where we live is complete reality. However, the mix of reading the Allegory of the Cave and watching the Matrix helped me to break out of my previous beliefs so I was able to be more accepting of the controversial ideas we discussed.

The second stepping stone to my understanding was the exercise in class regarding the different ways of knowing. I connected to that with my own ideas of course, but then being able to hear everyones personal views on the matter, was a really good example of our different truths. Furthermore, in the end, we were all able to come to one conclusion regarding the different ways of knowing. In order for someone to become fully enlightened, one must accept all of the ways of knowing.

This brings me to the my last wave of truth. This came to me when we learned about colors from the TED talk. Color is something that almost everyone is able to see in some form and the TED talk sort of brought to me the idea of how color affects different people and in different ways. Specifically, the ways of perception with color or color blindness and color within music. Our perceptions of color can change based on what we see around us. Even more on color perception, it is entirely possible that the colors I am able to visualize might be a completely different color scheme than what someone else might see. If my orange is the equivalent shade of your blue than theres possibly no test that can be done to compare them. 

Another idea relating to color that I have focused on is the relation between color and music. This idea is that some people (potentially everyone) are able to see colors and patterns when listening to music and compositions. This ability is possibly something anyone is able to learn to do, however for some people this connection can be made much more easily to some. In the TED talk when he showed a little boys portrait of a composition, it made me begin to think about how if everyone was able to depict how they heard music, it would become more clear as to how everyone in the world is able to perceive in different ways.

The Two Sides of Truth

In our society, we define true as a substantiated event or occurrence. A fact, a certainty. However, our generalized view of truth is somewhat narrow-minded. Truth can be objective and subjective. Truth can be personal or universal. Truth can be what you know to be certain about yourself, and what you know to be certain about the world. Truth can be personal and universal, however, these two often cloud each other to the point where they are individually indistinguishable. 

Take for example, the media. Many people are caught in the illusion that the media broadcasts only universal truths. Others, more skeptical of the media, believe it to be so influenced by personal bias that it has no value. I believe that when considering the level of “truth” within  the media, there is a mixture of personal truths (of the writers) and universal truths, which are events that many people witnessed and therefore transform from a multitude of personal truths into one universal truth. Taking truth from the media is a dangerous game, one must be able to distinguish personal from universal truths. However, to disregard it as a useless source of truth is an oversight. 

The stress related to the college process is a good example of when personal and universal truths work against each other. A common universal truth is that the college process is very stressful for all seniors. This concept has a very powerful ability to manipulate that personal truths of many students who maybe were never stressed in the first place. Universal truths have such a large scale power, they can manipulate personal truths and therefore affect how people feel. It takes reason and self analysis to distinguish your personal truths from the universal truths that most likely have shaped your behavior for the entirety of your life. 

Many people have their personal truths swayed by universal truths regularly. But what really are universal truths? Colors, for example, we take to be universal truths. However, it is very possible that everyone sees colors in a very different way. While personal truths are more concrete within a person, universal truths can never really be substantiated. Universal truths are complied of overlapping personal truths, however, because everyone perceives things in different ways, universal truths can never be 100% certain. While I may see my water bottle as “blue,” and accept this as a universal truth, I can never really know what “blue” looks like to others. The only universal truth about my water bottle is literally the word “blue,” not the actual color. Using this example, we see that Universal truths have limited value as factual certainties. 

So, if universal truth and personal truths can never truly be substantiated as factual certainties, what is truth? Truths are not certainties but thought-out and reasoned beliefs. They can be beliefs about oneself or widely shared beliefs. Of course, it does take some analysis, logic and mindfulness to distinguish truths from raw beliefs. There is no (substantiated) higher being to tell us what is true and what is not. So all we can do is pick, choose, rethink and analyze our beliefs to form  personal truths.