The truth, the whole truth: Is it nothing but a fabrication that society now embraces?

I think it’s time for us all to take a hard look at our relationship with truth and admit that we are really just a bunch of liars.

Regardless of how earnestly we may want to adhere to the straight and narrow, we are absolutely reliant on — even enraptured with — lies, diversions, cheats, manipulations and beliefs in things we simply can’t know.

I think about truth a lot. Perhaps it’s the countless sermons and Sunday school lessons from my churchgoing days hammering in the importance of truth and the zero-tolerance level we must hold ourselves to for lying. Even tiny white lies were a sin, and in God’s eyes, all sins were equal.

Declaring I “loved” an ugly sweater I was gifted, meant to spare the feelings of someone who loved me, would render me equally heinous in God’s eyes as, oh, say, Adolph Hitler. Perhaps a question I will ask God, should I ever have the chance, is, “Is that true? Is a white lie really equal to the sin of mass murder? And if not, where do Sunday School lies about lying fall on the sin scale?”

Perhaps the black-and-white perspective of truth is the downfall of truth itself. Like it or not, truth exists on a spectrum, and caveats and exceptions unravel its moral value. Perception, intention, values and fluctuations can all erode a simple fact into something less simple.

For instance, when my son was young, he would accuse me of lying if I was mistaken, or if circumstances changed and something he’d anticipated was no longer in the plans. “You lied to me,” he’d wail in disappointment.

Try as I might to get him to see my innocence, and at least get him to understand that my intention was not to deceive him, he would remain miffed because he was hung up on facts. At about the same time, he was trying out lying for himself, trying out falsehoods for the sake of self-entertainment, coverups of misdeeds, or random, inexplicable lies that served no purpose.

I would learn this stage was developmentally appropriate and healthy, but simultaneously a behavior to disapprove of and nip in the bud. This was one of many muddy and contradictory parenting “truths” to navigate.

But we can all agree that somehow facts are facts, right?

Somehow, no, not anymore, and not to everyone. I’ve been asked to “agree to disagree” despite mountains of evidence all pointing to one truth and no evidence to the contrary. I’ve heard lamentations that “you can’t tell what’s true any more” from people influenced by dubious characters fluent in scare tactics who manage to bypass the burden of proof. And no longer am I trying to hash through truth and intentions with a stubborn toddler who is outraged in the face of accidental misinformation.

Instead, grown adults are joining the misinformation cult in droves, and their evangelism of lies hardly seems like a sign of healthy and appropriate development.

Where did things go off the rails? Did people ever actually care about what was true? Was it always OK to spin the truth to fit one’s outlook? Have people always been perfectly OK with confirmation bias and echo chambers?

As someone who likes to be right, I take great pains to be accurate in what I say. I may offer educated guesses, ideas and the occasional hunch, but I qualify these statements as such because I would hate for someone to take my word at face value when I haven’t fully vetted it as truth. Should I find out that something I have said is false, I will admit my error.

Because knowing when you’re wrong, knowing what you don’t know, understanding what is and what is not up for interpretation, and knowing what you simply can’t know is all part of the spectrum of truth, and without it, we can’t be right. And, as I said, I like to be right.

Emily Parnell lives in Overland Park and can be reached at emily@emilyjparnell.com

This story was originally published November 2, 2022 at 5:30 AM with the headline "The truth, the whole truth: Is it nothing but a fabrication that society now embraces?."