Truth Beyond Facts

What is truth beyond facts? Aren’t truth and facts one and the same?

Facts are facts. We do not argue over them. Facts can be checked and verified.

When many of us concur to a fact, we find the truth. Truth requires facts to substantiate.

Imagine we have two groups of people arriving at some truth from some facts. Both have truths substantiated by facts. But, what if one group’s truth is in conflict with the other? Whose truth is the better truth?! We have a disagreement. The easiest example is those who believe in God and those who do not.

In the movie Twenty:20, there is a court sequence with Mohanlal as the murder accused, Suresh Gopi as the policeman and Mammootty as the lawyer. The court was presented with the fact that the policeman saw the accused with a knife in one hand and the victim on the other hand. The fact was not disputed. But the lawyer asked the policeman, whether the accused was seen stabbing the victim or pulling the knife out? The truth was under conflict and the accused was let go.

So, what is truth, when we do not have universal acceptance of it?

We are surrounded by this conflict. We have an abundance of facts but no truth shared by all of us.

We have a leading actor under trial for abducting another actor. What is the truth?

Our leading politicians are under trial for various allegations of corruption and even pogroms. What is the truth?

COVID-19 surrounded us with a lot of facts - the number of deaths, survivors, beds, vaccines, etc. What is the lasting truth? What will this be pandemic be remembered for? Doctors at Elmhurst Hospital, New York are yet to recover from the trauma a year back. Young patients they speak to on the first day, do not speak the next day and dies the third day. A new patient is replaced. The story repeats. While at it they lose their parents, siblings and colleagues. The vaccine is not the truth, probably the resilience of humanity is!

Immediately after the panchayat elections, there were few cases of elected representatives suiciding or attempting suicide. Why do they do it, soon after the public showing confidence in them? What is the truth?

The truth remains elusive to us in many ways. Till very recently, traditional balanced media was able to ensure a shared truth held by the public. Good or bad, that has gone now. With pervasive social media, we now have multiple truths held by smaller and smaller groups that are in conflict with each other.

Our decisions are a manifestation of the truth that we hold on to. Such decisions are very important when we are about to elect our representatives. To make matters worse, we have around us, professional campaigners. We will be surrounded by facts and narratives packaged in a convenient format with anecdotes. We will be led to a truth shared by a larger community. Before we know it, we would have made the wrong choice. Beware!

Comments

Post a Comment

You are requested to comment your thoughts and join the discussion.

Popular posts from this blog

Varkeys Supermarket: Is end nearby?

Varkeys Bakery and Supermarket went out of stock for more than two weeks. Customers were returned saying there are some supplier issues which have been sorted out. According to media reports , Varkeys is facing liquidity crunch. Varkeys is reported to have 59 stores across Kerala in different formats generating Rs.180 crore in turnover. Varkeys is now looking for PE funds , which would be slightly difficult to come by as they have failed in an earlier attempt and there are cases of Subhiksha and Vishal Retail winding up or looking for fund infusion. Varkeys is the pioneer in organised retail in Kerala and is known for quality of products they sell but utmost professionalism was always missing. It is widely believed that rapid expansion has brought Varkeys in to this soup. Competition also is hardening with new organised players coming every now and then which includes Margin Free, Reliance and Big Bazaar. There are also neighbourhood stores morphing in to supermarket, as they are adap
Read more

Apple A Day Properties and Malayalam Dailies

'Apple A Day' properties is one of the real estate developers in Kerala who uses all mass media for their marketing activities. Today Hindu and Express  reported about a police raid at their offices. Reports indicate that there are many buyers who are waiting for their projects to be handed over for more than two years. Complete picture of the issue is not known. The company website seems to be down and a Google search indicates that there are many people with complaints about the builder. What should make buyers and public worry is not the incident, whose exact picture is yet to be known, but the attitude of mainstream media towards it. Leading Malayalam dailies, Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi have avoided this information in their dailies and found space for everything parochial and frivolous. Who are they serving, reader's interest or advertiser's interest?
Read more

Are you a girl?

That’s my 4-year-old daughter asking me one morning. It was not a silly question. It provoked me to think deep. I was sweeping my front yard that day. It is usually my wife or mother who does this, while I would be reading the newspaper. It is not that I don’t know sweeping. I just choose not to do it. If I remember right, the last time I swept the front yard was when I was a kid playfully helping my grandmother. It was her daily routine then. My mother started doing and now my wife does it. My wife fell sick and I was forced to share the workload of my ageing mother. There I started sweeping and the little one got up in the morning seeing me on the job instead of her grandma or mother. “Are you a girl?”, she asked and started smiling. I have not seen my father or grandfather sweeping the front yard. I think I know only one person who has been sweeping for years, not letting her wife do it. Who should sweep, that is not the subject here. We should know that we all have grown up with su
Read more