The Future of Truth

There is a veil between human beings and truth that is quite daunting. Truth, though, has many faces, and perhaps, when we peel back the semi-opaque fabric we will find something unexpected- ugly, stunning, beautiful or perhaps something different each time we look. I listened to a speaker today at a conference, and he spoke of certain things being true for us as individuals and other, perhaps larger truths, that are valid outside of our own limited consciousnesses, true not just for we as individuals. Today we are engaged in truth warfare. Each individual has their version of the truth or perhaps their social or political faction's version of the truth, and there is very little room for or willingness to listen to- or more importantly-truly hear the truth of the other. The speaker claimed we cannot access these larger truths with mere thinking. We have to develop different capacities to recognize and acknowledge truth. This made me think there might be hope, there might be a face behind the veil that we all can recognize and agree it is just the face we were longing to see.

And this brings us to the future- to the future as it is presenting itself to us today, asking us to shift a bit to meet it as it streams toward us from the not-so-distant horizon. Our senses, at least those upon which we currently depend to make judgements, are no longer able to provide valid information for us as observers. Aside from the rare opportunities to gaze out upon a blue and gently frothing sea, or to peer up the damp and caverned wall-like trunk of a tree so tall that the top is unattainable, or to stare blankly at the reddening sandy rock of a desert sunset, the horizon a flat line as far as the periphery of your vision is able to absorb- aside from these opportunities so much of what we hear and see is illusory, partial truth or utterly and intentionally deceiving. Facts are comically yet realistically referred to as alternative. The future is asking that we reach into ourselves in an effort to develop the capacity to grasp truths that do not come through sight or sound, news-bites or tweets, facebook posts or your uncle after a few too many beers. Truth may be embattled, but it is invincible. It just may not be the face you thought you were looking for. You may draw back the veil and see nothing but a windswept landscape, mountain peaks, crashing waves, but you may feel something in the region of your heart, warm, familiar and comforting but still distant and barely discernible. The future may be asking you to follow it into a region of truth and understanding more like a warbling brook or a slowly falling oak leaf and less like right or wrong.