Capitol Times: Seeking truth in a culture of spin
"If we live in a culture of spin, there is a good deal of suspicion about claims of truthfulness, so this is also a culture of suspicion."
The words are from Miroslav Volf, theologian from Yale University talking a group of faculty and campus religious workers over lunch on Friday at Pres House just off the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
He was talking about the "obligation to truthfulness" for academics (if not the expectation for politicians), for people seeking justice in a world where truth too often seems expendable for whatever cause one is pursuing. Volf didn't use the word, but satirist Stephen Colbert's use of the term "truthiness" — let's just pretend what I am saying is true — has come to be seen as a pragmatic substitute for the struggle to be truthful. …
…And yes, Volf acknowledged, because we are limited human beings, our quest for truth is always provisional. We do not see things completely and must be careful about thinking only have a corner on the truth.
But he also argued that healing the divisions in our world includes a commit to truthfulness. As he talked, I thought of the divisions in Israel and Palestine, where people battling over the same land have developed their own incomplete narratives formed by the combatants on each side. There is an unwillingness to hear, much less believe, the narrative of the other side.
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