confounded by personal experi-ences,
it most likely will not be an
objectively accurate recollection of
the original event. In the words of
Marcel Proust:
“Remembrance of things past is
not necessarily the remembrance
of things as they were.”
Harold Pinter alludes to the
same idea:
“There are some things one
remembers even though they may
have never happened.”
Think of incidences in your own
life where you took part in an
event, and the way you remember
it is very different from the memo-ries
of others who took part in the
same event. Have you and another
family member ever had diversely
different recollections of the same
incidents in your family history?
Or considerably different percep-tions
of the same relative? What
do you believe lead to such con-tradictory
ways of remembering?
Such discrepancies, which seem
common, may cause incredulity:
How can another person’s recol-lection
be so different? These days,
when I am asked for my “objective
opinion” on things, I hesitate.
“Objective opinion” is an oxymoron.
Opinions are subjective by their very
nature. They are based on personal
perspective – a biased lens through
which we filter reality – and thus
cannot be completely objective.
Life does have some objectivity to
it. Objective truth is factual. It cor-responds
with reality, independent
of anybody’s opinion. Things either
happened or they did not happen,
you either were present during a
certain event or you were not, it
was either daytime or nighttime,
summer or winter. However, our
narrative is based on our subjec-tive
experiences of these objective
facts. What we later remember is an
accumulation of what we observed,
what we noticed, how we perceived
what happened, how we respond-ed,
what we felt when things hap-pened,
and eventually our mental
representation of the data. We each
encode different details. Memory
retrieval also differs from one per-son
to another. So, if another fam-ily
member or friend tells you: “I
remember it differently,” he or she
may just share a different version of
the experience as stored in his or
her mind. Sometimes we just need
to learn to embrace the ambiguity...
I like the way novelist Anaïs Nin
put it: “We don’t see things as they
are, we see them as we are.”
The malleable nature of both
memory and visual perception
makes eyewitness identification
testimony one of the least reliable
forms of evidence, despite the
fact that witnesses often feel very
sure that their memory is correct
when identifying a suspect. Post-conviction
DNA analyses demon-strate
that eyewitnesses sometimes
identify the wrong person. When it
comes to human witnesses report-ing
on what they saw, what one sees
is affected by personal partialities.
So, is “truth” most often relative?
Would you agree with Friedrich
Nietzsche that, when we have to
rely on witnesses: “There are no
facts, only interpretations”?
Actually, there are, of course,
unchangeable, objective facts too.
Absolute truth, rare as it may be,
defines something that is true all
the time and in all places, always
valid – regardless of parame-ters,
context, or circumstances.
Absolute truth is a fact that cannot
be changed. For example, there are
no round squares. There are also no
square circles. And of course, there
are many more absolute truths, but
that is topic for another article...
Even scientific knowledge,
which aims to be as objective as
possible, is not absolute. It is pro-visional
and incomplete by nature.
Science arrives at what is called
functional truth, i.e., knowledge
which represents the consensus
of a scientific community, based
on testing of hypotheses, and con-firmed
by data. Functional truth
focuses on what things do rather
than what things are. Fortunately,
for all practical purposes – flying
airplanes or spaceships, relying on
gravity, or determining the efficacy
of vaccines – functional truths are
sufficient...
From a personal perspective,
even though I accept that my
observations, as well as my deeply
held beliefs, are not necessarily the
absolute “truth,” I cherish the idea
of seeking the “truth” – coming as
close to it as I possibly can. I val-ue
critical thinking, and I respect
evidence. I try not to mistake an
opinion for a fact, pay attention
to my own internal biases, remain
open to other perspectives, and
allow my “truth” to evolve as new
evidence becomes available.
We can’t stop seeking the
“truth,” even though it has many
faces, may be elusive, and is often
subjective. But we do need to
think more critically about our
own certitudes, and understand
that the observations and memo-ries
which support them may be
incomplete or imperfect. As Kahlil
Gibran said in The Prophet:
“Say not, ‘I have found the
truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found
a truth.’”
December 2021 ¢ NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER 25