Abstract
Truth is a living process playing out in each human mind/brain. That is, your truth is the sum of your own knowledge and experiences. One person's “truth” can be regarded as just another perspective in others' eyes. Absolute truths are difficult to define, especially in the social aspects of human interactions. This chapter provides a foundational understanding of truth as a changing target relative to self. The role of the Mediasphere is explored in terms of its influence on creating a collective societal reality, a collective consciousness. Specific attention is given to the importance of symbolic interactionism – consistent with the knowledge capacity explored in terms of neuroscience findings on how memories are stored in the mind/brain. To better understand what is happening in today's environment, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and brainwashing are explored in terms of their relationship with truth, and the attack on the American mind is addressed. An addendum includes three tools for breaking the pattern of untruths: truth searching, rhythm disruptor, and humility.
TopIntroduction
Humans have always been truth seekers. Understanding knowledge and the energetic nature of the human is foundational to this discussion. Knowledge – whether defined as justified true belief or as the capacity to take effective action – is all about truth seeking. That is, what types of decisions and behaviors bring about what kind of results. People – as embodied energetic beings with some 50 trillion cells – are never in stasis. They are in a state of turbulent flux and flow, always shifting and changing. We literally pulse with change: dividing cells, absorbing food, processing air, making and pushing out secretions, continuously transmitting electrical signals and creating patterns of activity linked with energy from our environment. In systems language we describe people as complex adaptive systems, but in simpler language, throwing aside what you learned in grammar at school, people are quite literally verbs, not nouns. We become the accumulation of what we intellectually digest and how we act on that (Shelley, 2021).
The Intelligent Social Change Journey,1 is a developmental journey of which we are all a part. It is through this journey that our individuated perception of truth first emerges and then evolves, through our observations and reflections of cause-and-effect relationships (Bennet et al., 2018b). If I study hard, I get a good grade. If I break the law, there are consequences. This, of course, means that our decisions in the NOW are driven by an understanding of what has happened in the past – or, as our understanding expands and we begin to make individuated choices, what CAN happen. Eventually, through repetition and observation, we begin to recognize patterns. That is, moving beyond just logic to the higher-order of conceptual thinking and recognizing the influences of social, spiritual, emotional and ethical aspects of interacting with other people. While logical thinking links cause and effect, conceptual thinking enables the larger context of complexity, taking into account the invisible influences that are part of the human conscious and unconscious experiences. With this conceptual capability we are no longer relegated to relying on the past, but are able to engage the full spectrum of time, making decisions in a co-evolving NOW, while learning from the past and looking toward the future. This continuous search for higher truths is essential to co-creating the future. “The more truth you know, the more truth you are, the more of the past you can understand and the more of the future you can comprehend” (Urantia, 1955, p 1297). And in that larger context, our truth shifts. Only, this shift isn’t easy! We can struggle to adopt new truths or depart from previously held truths, despite overwhelming evidence to support the shift.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Misinformation: Information that misinforms. All knowledge is imperfect and/or incomplete, continuously shifting and changing in concert with the environment, the demands of life, responses to that environment, and new discoveries (Bennet et al., 2020b). Thus, systems filled with data and information are also filled with misinformation, distorting the search for truth.
Disinformation: Information released/distributed/shared which includes the intent of deception. Since people’s motives are impossible to test, there is an element of uncertainty to the term regarding the level of truth. Three considerations come into play in this regard. First, honest errors also occur, with some errors simply mistakes, misquotes or misattributions. Second, information may be partial, confusing or ignore details and context such that what is provided cannot be properly understood. Third, there is the element of official spin, which is selective partial information released by “someone in charge” that favorably situates an occurrence or event.
Truth: Tied to what is perceived or believed as “fact” or “reality”, truth, as knowledge, is not only context-sensitive and situation dependent, but also largely subjective. What is true in one situation is not necessarily true in another situation. Where a concept that was previously considered as truth does not fit a new situation, a larger concept exists that encompasses the concept. In their natural state of learning and expansion, humans have always been truth seekers, searching for a larger understanding of how things work and how things fit together. Knowledge itself—whether defined as justified true belief or the capacity to take effective action—is all about truth seeking. Note that truth is a changing target relative to ourselves.
Associative Patterning: The intermixing/associating/complexing of incoming information with internal patterns in the mind/brain that represent (to varying degrees of fidelity) corresponding association in the external world (Bennet & Bennet, 2014). Also referred to as semantic mixing (Stonier, 1997). This creates new neural patterns that represent understanding, meaning, and the anticipation of the consequences of actions (knowledge). From the viewpoint of the mind/brain, knowledge (and truth as knowledge) is being “created” or “re-created” for the moment at hand. Thus, knowledge (truth) is an emergent phenomenon.
Brainwashing: The use of various techniques engaging the senses to change the thoughts and beliefs of others against their will, bringing about mind control. In brainwashing, senses diminish such that the structure of thinking becomes discontinuous and there is the loss of sense-making capability. When the senses are not unified or balanced, working together, there is a reduction in the ability to discern truth and untruth. Thus, brainwashing most often includes some nature of sensory deprivation or overload. Brainwashing can occur through the media.
Intelligent Social Change Journey (ISCJ): A developmental journey of the body, mind, and heart. Grounded on our mental development, there are three phase changes, each building on and expanding previous learning in our movement toward intelligent activity. The journey begins with the heaviness of cause-and-effect linear extrapolations based on logic. When patterns are recognized, the higher mental thought of conceptual thinking enables the use of past learning in the “now” to extrapolate future outcomes which in turn sets the stage for engaging all three parts of time as the individual co-evolves with the environment. The third stage of expansion engages the power of thought and feelings in the quantum field (Bennet, et al., 2018b).