Follow the Evidence. Find the Truth.

LESS-TRAVELED ROADS

How much do I value the truth? And how readily am I my willing to share it? These were the questions I asked myself last year as social media battles raged. Facebook fights and Twitter wars increasingly spilled over into everyday life, driven largely by differing opinions on masks, vaccines, and lockdowns. The result? Strained friendships, broken relationships, and the severing of many bonds that hold society together.

How did we get here? The short answer is that we no longer value the truth. People often speak more of “my” truth and “your” truth, leading us to conflate what is objectively true with personal opinions and beliefs. Such confusion of opinions with truth has led many people to automatically trust the pronouncements of government officials and corporate media without carefully considering the evidence. Combine this tendency to unquestioningly believe state-approved experts and corporate media personalities with the desire to be thought well of by others—to fit in with our friends and family who also believe these experts—and many people begin to accept narratives that offer incomplete or inaccurate explanations for what’s happening in our world. The end result is that people are actually living in two different realities: the Real World and the Narrative World.

In the Narrative World, people often accept as true the positions of government agencies, corporate media outlets, and public health officials without examining the evidence for themselves. I used to live in this world, so I can empathize with those who still do. Many people living in the Narrative World understandably want to give deference to public health officials, as they are often driven by a desire to humbly care for those around them. They faithfully watch the evening news or read their preferred media sites, wanting to be informed and to know what is true. And they trust government agencies because they believe those employed by these entities are working in the interests of the general public. Again, I lived in this world for most of my life, but during my time in law school I began to see that much of what I believed rested on wrong assumptions and faulty premises. 

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