Exploring TRUTH — "But Grandma Always Said!" — How Information Often MIS-Informs

These days, we talk a lot of about things like "Fake News" And we talk about whose information to "trust" within the swirling cloud of data out there. I'll be the first to admit that sometimes it's hard to make sense of it all!

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I've Got Your "Truth" Right Here!

What is the "Truth?" Or, at least, what is the version of information about something that either makes us able to sleep at night, or supports our interpretation of How Things Are? How do we even tell?

Quite often "misinformation" is perpetuated much closer to home than we tend to think.

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Consider "family mythologies" that inform the way a certain group of people do certain things:

"But Grandma/Mom/Aunt Ruth always did THIS particular thing when cooking/canning, and I loved her food!"

Indeed, she may have. But how do you know that she actually knew what she was doing? Moreover, how do you know that she did what she did for the reasons YOU think she did?

One of my favorite stories involves a family cooking their Christmas ham exactly "Like Grat-Grandma always did it!" right down to the last thing to you for a perfect ham is to cut one corner off the ham before putting it in the oven to cook.

Then, one Christmas Eve, the 9-year old daughter asks the others in the kitchen "Why do we cut the corner off the ham?"

"Because that's how Great-Grandma always made her famous hams! You like the ham, don't you?"

Yes, but WHY?

Of course the underlying FACTS behind this time honored family tradition is that Great-Grandma's old oven was too small to accommodate a full sized ham, so she would cut a corner off to make it fit. Meanwhile, that piece of information gets passed along for 75 years without anyone asking a question... and is simply assumed to be an essential part of how you cook an excellent ham.

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Possibilities vs. Truth

The following year — much to some family members' consternation — the ham is cooked without the corner being cut off and turns out to be just as excellent as it has been for 75 years.

Of course, this is a simplistic parable to illustrate what we often face in trying to decipher today's cornucopia of information.

To explore our story further, many people in the world are actually too ego-attached to the fabled "truth" of cutting the corner off the ham making it better... to such a degree that they will insist that the ham that was cooked intact was "not as good." After all, swearing by a process for 75 years, only to discover it makes no difference at all can be a bitter pill to swallow, for many.

Human nature is funny, fickle and often unfathomable and unexplainable.

"Truth" can be similarly funny, fickle and unfathomable, at times.

With Great-Grandma's ham, multiple generations of a family would swear on stacks of Bibles that cutting a corner off a ham before baking it making it better was "THE TRUTH."

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"Global" Truth vs. "Local" Truth

But it was ultimately just their truth, not THE truth. Which — when extrapolated into the broader spectrum of Humanity at Large — begs the question of whether or not "truth" is merely a set of individual perceptions rather than some kind of "global/universal" condition.

The other day, a friend of ours sent me a long "scholarly" article, arguing — in some 30 pages, with lots of maps and charts — that Covid-19 was actually caused by 5G technology. The star "evidence" was that maps showing the depth of 5G coverage were almost perfectly correlated with the number of cases and deaths due to Covid-19.

And there was no denying that. The similarities in the maps definitely represented a form of "truth."

But there was also no denying that both 5G service and Covid-19 cases are directly correlated with population density. More people: More 5G. More people: More Covid.

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What do want the "truth" to be? Somehow, I can't help but think that will always be the "wildcard" in the equation.

I don't think my friend actually is very invested in 5G causing Covid; he's invested in evidence that supports his TRUTH that 5G is "a dangerous mind-control scheme designed to kill everyone." If he had picked a different negative outcome — let's say "5G causes blindness" — he would have used it... because his personal ax to grind is 5G.

That's his truth.

MY truth is that "we're ALL going to die from something, someday. And I'd just as well not die from complications from ulcers caused by excessive anxiety and worry."

Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your day!

How about YOU? Have you ever found yourself working inside a "truth" that turned out NOT to be? What do you think "truth" actually IS? Documentable facts? Perceptions? Interpretations? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20210730 14:10 PDT

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Truth certainly is a funny thing.

I have learned more and more, the older I have gotten, that the truth about many things is sometimes very different than what my perception of them have been. I believed things that were said or done were meant a certain way and later found out very different. It gives me pause occasionally to stop and wonder about what vast percentage of my life has been perceived by me in a way that was not real. Probably a lot !

Sometimes when you ask why too much, it annoys other people. LOL !

Family traditions are fun to have and pull us back to memories of happy times. Grandma's ham was a fun story.

Yes the whole, "Figures don't lie, but liars figure", deal.

Ha! That is absolutely the way those recipes work. :)) I loved the story.

They can make any truth fit, can't they. Just tell me which one you want to hear and I will make it plausible enough for it to fit. The truth is actually pretty sad. The 5G story spooked so many people a while back.

Never stop keeping us walking the straight line. :) Happy Saturday!

Yeah, that's true. Supersticious minds are prevalent in humans. They will fight facts with fangs and nails nonstop if these challenge their beliefs. };)

"There is no such thing as absolutes in the universe" ¡That's LOGIC!