178. Between two “truths"

Between Two “Truths”

 

It strikes me, sitting here in the Republic of Turkey in the middle of Anatolia, that we in the United States see ourselves as divided between two “truths”: Covid 19 is a dangerous epidemical disease—Covid is a hoax; the election was fair—the election was fraudulent; January 6 was an attack on Democracy—January 6 was a legitimate protest; we should defund the police—we should fund more police; Public Television provides accurate news information—Fox News has the truth.

 

I could go on, but the important thing is that our belief systems precede and shape our “truths.” These belief systems are shaped over years with the mentoring of family, community, religion and peers. Facts occur to us as pictures through our eyes—directly or from photos or paintings or screens; words from pages, newscasts, social media, movies, and those spoken directly; sounds—from mouths and screens, tubes and tubas, wind, water, and weather; from touch and smell and taste. But they have to make it through the belief barrio for interpretation. Difficult: a vegetarian will gurgle at meat, cowboys I know hate the smell of sheep, and Bedouins wear layers against the sun that white Westerners meet with sunscreen. 

 

I believe that we grow into our beliefs as we grow into the clothes that we eventually find comfortable. There are many who love to change clothes frequently, or at least experiment with new ones, but all of us to some extent are prisoners to the garb—and the belief systems—that we’ve grown comfortable with.

 

Is it a stretch to think that whole countries behave similarly? Or that at the least the leaders of countries, whether elected, appointed, or having gained purchase by force, wear the countries they lead like garments, shake and hunker in them at new “facts” until they find comfort, looking to neighbors to see and hear and feel approval and disapproval?  

 

When Russia’s tanks rolled into Ukraine and its bombs hit Ukrainian cities, the world stepped up—almost in unison—to condemn Russia and support Ukraine. We—the world—reacted to the first images, the pictures and the sounds of war being waged by one powerful country onto a much smaller neighboring country.

 

But now the world’s nations—more accurately, the leaders of nations—are looking and listening past the initial images, and some number are finding that Russia’s truths are a more soothing fit to their worlds than are those of America and Western Europe and the Ukrainians under Russia’s boot.

 

How can we live together in a country in which belief-clothes are so different, and in a world where countries vary so much? How can we find some common truths?