Knowing my readship as I do (yes, both of you), I am quite sure that you would have shot soy milk out your nose when you saw Stephen Colbert’s editorial on Wikipedia. He coined the term, wikiality to refer to that which exists when enough people agree with it— it then becomes reality. While quite a funny piece, lots of people have argued as to what his point actually was.

For instance, cypheractive said:

His point isn’t that truth is relative. Clearly, we can verify elephant population numbers. It’s that people are too lazy to take the time to verify things… The point is that uncritical minds believe everything they read.

But in a way, truth is relative. Obviously, since the future hasn’t happened, it can only be predicted, and prediction is highly dependent on the model you use. But the past is highly subjective and since it can never be accurately verified (it’s gone man), it is completely relative. As ivec said:

So is everything that’s related in our history books: nothing but an interpretation of past events that some group of people has agreed on.

Sad to say, but yeah, truth is only truth when it is an accepted truth. It goes against everything we want to believe, for we desperately want to believe in Truth (with a capital T) as something solid and substantial. But what truth is this? Sure, there are a few facts that don’t change… as least not that fast, but this isn’t the same sort of Truth that can calm this groundless feeling.

A few hundred years ago, many people shifted the support for their Truth from the Christian religions of Europe to “Science” as interpreted by a young prophet named Isaac Newton. His calculations and his models could predict canonballs and planets in their orbits.

Well, most of them anyway. Mercury was a little bastard that didn’t quite line up. It was close, mind you, but not exact. But it didn’t discourage anyone from believing in the truth of its calculations. Many years later, Albert Einstein’s new model of gravity actually did predict Mercury’s orbit.

So was Isaac Newton’s formulas and model false? Well, yes. Although since his calculations are easier to work with and accurate enough for most of the canonballs and missiles we need to launch, we still teach these in Physics 101. But we don’t call it false (that’s such a negative word), we call it “not as accurate.”

We could say that for everything— my beliefs of my childhood in the rising and the setting of the sun were not as accurate as my current model of a spinning Earth. Sure, that works, and makes me feel a little more secure.

But you might as well face it. It’s all wrong. Truth is seen through a glass darkly, announced and published, debated and discussed, accepted and dismissed. While Truth is clearly not possessed by the majority, it also isn’t possessed by a crackpot in Montana either.

I know, it’s rough. Get used to it.