Today's postmodern topic is "the truth". As in: "I'm telling the truth". "Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" "The truth of the matter is water is made up of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen." Here are some more true statements. "It is true that two plus two equals four." "What goes up must come down." "President Obama's first name is Barack." The list of truths is endless. (And that is true also.) There are many "truths".
Social constructionists (those who believe "reality" is socially constructed) agree. They say, and I agree with them, there is no single truth. There certainly is no The Truth. What the social constructionists say is that it is only since the beginning of Western science and philosophy that society has sought to discover something called objective truth. The scientific method "proves" its hypothesis and this becomes "fact" or truth. Science can prove there is such a thing as gravity. Science can prove mathematical formulas based upon other mathematical formulas. Science can prove how plants and animals grow. Science can even prove for a fact that a table is a table. All these are examples of objective truths.
Scientific thinking is modern thinking. That which is reasonable, rational, factual, provable, doable, etc. is a modern phenomena. Postmodernists say the exact opposite. Truth of all kinds is socially decided. Not only is there no so called objective truth, there is a way of looking at reality as "subjective". This is truth socially made. For example, when two people disagree about politics who is right? Which one holds the truth about the Wars? When it comes to abortion which position is right or wrong? Religiously speaking who's truth about God is the truth? Is Allah a different God than Christianity's God. If so whose is The True God? Who says?
In "fact" social constructionists would say that there is no objective reason why a table is a table. In another culture it may be turned upside down, straw put on it, and animals eat from it. We would call that some kind of trough not a table.
And if we call it a table turned upside down and being used improperly we reveal our own society's agreed upon usage.
Truth, all truth, even this truth, is that truth is socially perceived by human beings. We say, "Reality is perception." Truth also is perception. REALITY IS (OUR) PERCEPTION. AND SO IS TRUTH.
It is by means of mutual agreement that we say a thing is what it is. We decide what is right and wrong. What is moral and immoral. Ethical and Unethical. We decide what is the truth of a matter. We the people socially construct what is. And what we say it is, it is.
When we disagree with a fact, or a truth, or what is reasonable, we enter into the world of power.
Power is how we mitigate between opposing and conflicting truths about reality. Not just political power in the formal sense. But power as who gets to have the say about truths. He, She, They, Us...whoever controls the "story" about what is the truth controls "truth". Stories are not novels to postmodernists. Stories are subjective world views. Stories about reality are subjective truths. And how are these stories formulated? Through words.
What does all this mean? Many things. For one thing, postmodernists like myself, look at reality and see both/and sides of issues and opinions and so called truths. Modernists tend to view reality as either/or. Either this is right or that is wrong. Social constructionists say there are many stories about truths being worked out continuously within society. Stories may or may not change (Slavery changed. Pedophilia does not).But they will "storied" in the world's we occupy. Stories tend to be open ended and complex with many possibilities.
Pontius Pilate, of all people asked, "What is truth?" The answer for Pilate was different than Jesus Christ's and his followers. What is truth? Postmodernists say, "It depends. It depends on whose story or perception you accept.''
Jack Nickolson, in the movie "A Few Good Men" said to Tom Cruise, " You can't handle the truth." What Nickolson was revealing was that his own version of the truth was not only "the" truth but Cruise would not be able to handle it.
When I was a boy, we used to play a game called "Button. button. Who's got the button?" The object was to discover who held the button in their closed hand. Today we would say, "Truth. Truth. Who's got the truth? The social constructionist's would say everyone has a "button".
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