On Truth and Power

Recently on Dangerous Intersection, an article was posted about the problem of Power in relation to truth. I wrote a response and decided to post it here, at more length, as a short essay on the (occasionally etymological) problem of Truth. When people start talking about what is true or not, they tend to use the word like a Swiss Army knife. It means what they want it to mean when they point at something. Truth is a slippery term and has many facets. Usually, in casual conversation, when people say something is true, they're usually talking something being factual. Truth and fact are conjoined in many, possibly most, instances, but are not the same things. The "truth" of a "fact" can often be a matter of interpretation, making conversation occasionally problematic. The problem is in the variability of the term "truth"---like many such words, we stretch it to include things which are related but not the same. There is Truth and then there is Fact. 2 + 2 = 4 is a fact. It may, if analyzed sufficiently, yield a fundamental "truth" about the universe, but in an of itself it is only a fact. When someone comes along and insists, through power (an assertion of will), that 2 + 2 = 5, the "truth" being challenged is not in the addition but in the relation of the assertion to reality and the intent of the power in question. The arithmetic becomes irrelevant. Truth then is in the relationship being asserted and the response to it. The one doing the asserting and the one who must respond to the assertion. Similarly, in examples of law, we get into difficulty in discussions over morality. Take for instance civil rights era court decisions, where there is a conflation of ethics and morality. They are connected, certainly, but they are not the same thing. Ethics deal with the proper channels of response within a stated system---in which case, Plessy vs Fergusson could be seen as ethical given the criteria upon which it was based. But not moral, given a larger criteria based on valuations of human worth. To establish that larger criterion, overturning one system in favor of another, would require a redefintion of "ethical" into "unethical", changing the norm, for instance in Brown vs The Board of Education. The "truth" of either decision is a moving target, albeit one based on a priori concepts of human value as applied through ethical systems that adapt.

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That strange relationship between power and truth

I have a question for readers and a request for guidance. My gut feeling is that political power has nothing to do with truth. It doesn’t matter that someone is encouraging me or threatening me to believe that 2 + 2 =5. The truth is that 2 +2 is always 4. Even if someone enacts tax incentives for me to say otherwise. Even if police officers put guns to my head. Even if every other person in my country ostracizes me and calls me immoral. It seems, though, that there are what seem to be (to many people) strange but unrelenting version of truth that are guided by the exercise of power. This occurs most often in closed systems. For instance, one would be scolded if one stood up and announced that Mary wasn’t a virgin while in a Christian church. If you take a megaphone at a Fourth of July picnic in middle-America, you’d better damn well say that the United States is the world’s greatest democracy, even though our voting rates are pathetically law and even though our political system is thoroughly corrupted thanks to legalized bribes termed “campaign contributions” (see this telling comment, which SHOULD shock us into starting a massive revolution). Within a closed social system, then, it seems as though political or social power can be used to make many people mouth many blatant untruths. After mouthing them for long periods, many of these people start believing these untruths. For instance, did we invade Iraq to confiscate known weapons of mass destruction? That idea served as truth to many people during the run up to the invasion (some people still cling to that falsehood). Now, with a new power order in place in Washington DC, the prevailing truth is that the Bush Administration intentionally conjured up fake evidence regarding WMD. This inter-relationship between truth and power reminds me of Thomas Kuhn’s suggestion that scientific fields undergo periodic revolutions ("paradigm shifts"), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. I’m also somewhat acquainted with various “post-modernist” writings that seem to address this general issue. For instance, consider this definition of postmodernism by Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, which I pulled from Wikipedia:

A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”… Truth is “created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures.

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NYT says “It’s Torture!”

The NYT today published an obituary for a deceased American fighter pilot who was captured by the Chinese:

Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83... From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air. [...] Under duress, Captain Fischer had falsely confessed to participating in germ warfare.
So - when the Chinese do it it's torture. When the US do it it's "harsh interrogation". We expect more consistency of our major news organizations. We expect more of our own government. It's time to call for a special prosecutor, Mr. Attorney General. [via Glenn Greenwald, and Andrew Sullivan]

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Ann Coulter Free? – sadly not!

I was browsing the interwebs when I saw an ad that said "Ann Coulter Free". thought - that's good - this must be an idiot free zone! Then I saw it was an ad for her blog, which is free! They should pay you to read it - the resultant therapy bills must be quite high. Although I'm certain that reading Ann Coulter would free your mind - more than few paragraphs and I'm certain mine would be running for the hills.

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