Why it's impossible to find the truth

Every now and then I write something outside of my usual movie reviews. I've recently been reading the book European Intellectual History Since 1789 and my mind has been blown.

Of one of the many different concepts that fill this book I came across the concept of the truth. The concept was brought up during the birth of modernism of the 1900s. A new movement of irrationalists started to pop up, many who you are pretty familiar with like Nietzsche and Freud.

The reason why the truth was so interesting to me is because we hear it in society all the time. People speaking their truth or even searching for the truth. My whole concept of the truth has been flip turned upside down after reading the early modernist thought about the truth.

From what I read of this book, the truth is actually a moment. The moment when a specific event happens. It's something that can't truly be explained. Therefore no one can truly know the truth. I had to wrap my head around this many times but I think I understand what they're talking about now.

I'll take a simple situation like an argument between party A and party B. The truth happens at the moment when the two are having an argument. It's the whole experience of the situation. No one can describe a situation where you can actually know what the truth is.

You see each person that tries to explain the situation between party A and party B is interpreting the truth. Each of these interpretations has some sort of bias because we cannot be all seeing and all hearing at once. Obviously party A will describe their personal point of view and party B will do the same.

Each of those descriptions can be wildly different or quite similar but there will always be some differences because they aren't ultimately different people. Now you might think party C, as an observer, would be able to know the truth. That's what I thought as well.

Unfortunately, party C is merely an observer. They don't know any backstory and only have one specific perspective of the situation. There could be another party D observing from a different perspective with a totally different view.

So nobody can truly understand the truth. Even us as readers will only be fed one perspective. This perspective is one of many possible interpretations of the truth. That's probably why you want to get as much perspectives to give yourself the closest understanding of the truth from everyone.

This notion of the truth makes sense in a way. Why else do we go travel rather than reading books or watching videos of the places that we want to go to? The truth is being in the moment of the experience. You can read as many books and watch as many videos as you want. This will only give you a perspective of the truth but you have to go and be in the moment to have your own interpretation of the truth.

It makes sense to me now why going to a live concert, party or sporting event is much richer than viewing things second hand. We all search out the truth and we don't even know it. Those specific events in life are mere moments that will disappear forever.

Now looking at today we see that everyone is online watching social media posts and reading articles. These are not truths they are merely interpretations of the truth. We are able to manipulate the truth so that people believe in what we say we experienced. It's truly unfortunate but it's really opened my mind to how we think.

There's so much concepts out there that I've never heard of. This concept is over a century old and I'm surprised that I'm only discovering this now. The 18th to 20th century was a huge time for change in human thought process. It's astounding to see how we've advanced in thought concepts.

I unfortunately don't have too many people to talk to about these concepts so every now and then I'm glad I have this as an outlet to post some major discoveries so I can read them later.