To say that truth is objective is to say that the truth doesn't depend upon what we think about it, whether we like it, or how we feel. It's independent of us.
Today, however, we often hear people say things like, "We live in a post-fact world" or "What's true for you isn't true for me," or "Truth is whatever works."
Truth, to paraphrase the late postmodern philosopher Richard Rorty, is nothing more than whatever people will let you get away with saying.
Thus, our politicians don't see themselves as doing something so crude as lying when they tell us that men can be women, or that a child in the womb is not "alive," or that 3.5 trillion dollars in spending will cost nothing. As long as their peer group will let them get away with it - and the media is certainly eager to help them promote the nonsense - then their claims are true.
The New York Times' 1619 Project can be riddled with historical errors but if the errors are your truth, well, then, they're true.
Columnist Dan Henninger wrote about this phenomenon in the Wall Street Journal (paywall) some time ago:
Mr. Biden recently said: “Every time I hear, ‘This (his 3.5 trillion dollar spending bill) is going to cost A, B, C or D,’ the truth is, based on the commitment that I made, it’s going to cost nothing.” .... House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, while repeating it days later, held up her hand to form a zero. Some journalists then wrote elaborate explanations of how Mr. Biden was correct that his trillions in new spending would “cost nothing.”Perhaps it's more accurate to say that we're in a crisis of epistemological perversity. We've adopted the Nietzschean notion that truth is just a matter of one's perspective. Different people look at things differently and thus have different truths, we think, and the advantage of wielding power is that it enables one to impose his or her particular perspective on everyone else.
All the time now, one hears people say, “I don’t know what’s going on anymore.” Or: “Maybe it’s me, but I just don’t get it.” They don’t mean only in Washington. They mean everything. We’re in a crisis of consciousness.
Here are some more examples provided by Henninger:
Washington ... has become a round-the-clock supplier of manufactured realities. Many Americans, for instance, watch scenes on television of thousands of migrants crossing the Rio Grande River into the United States. Nonetheless, Mr. Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, says the border is “closed” and “no less secure than previously.”I wonder how many of the folks who scoff at the idea of objective facts, who believe that reality is whatever feels right to them, would buy a car from, or trust their finances to, someone who shares that epistemological perversity with them.
Mr. Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said in August the evacuation of Kabul couldn’t be called “anything but a success.” Ms. Psaki’s skill at reordering reality for Mr. Biden is mesmerizing, and I say without irony that she will be seen as an important figure in the transformation from believing what is real to believing what we’re told is real.
Reality resets have become commonplace. In Chicago some days ago, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx declined to prosecute any of the gang members who staged a broad-daylight shootout in a residential neighborhood. Among the reasons her office gave for not bringing charges was that the gangs were engaged in consensual “mutual combat,” like in the movie “Fight Club.”
The relevant point here is that in our time more and more people—and not just in politics—think they can say anything. We’re living in a Peter Pan world: “You just think lovely wonderful thoughts and they lift you up in the air.” The credibility cost is zero.
When the masses of people come to believe that truth is whatever feels right to them, whatever fits their own preconceived notions of the way things are or should be, then our society will be ripe for the ascension to power of any totalitarian tyrant who can most effectively appeal to our biases and prejudices.
The conviction that truth is objective is a prophylactic against the virus of tyranny. The erosion of that conviction bodes ill for our future.
