What do you believe? What you hear? What you read? What you observe? Your gut (like Gibbs on NCIS)?
Getting to the truth used to be reached via the traditional journalistic 5 w’s: who, what, when, where, and why. But who are your sources? Are they trustworthy?
It was 1970-ish and Christian pop-singer-songwriter, Gary S Paxton recorded a song titled, Evidence. I had the recording on an 8-track tape. It’s the kind of song that sticks in your mind like Cher’s “Do you believe in Love after Love” hit. Am I right? You’re welcome.
Anyway, the Paxton song goes something like this: Evidence. Evidence. Does your life show enough evidence…? Evidence. Evidence. What does your life say…? The word, evidence, is based on evident, videre (Latin), for video; or to see. And, if “seeing is believing,” holds water, then evidence is what’s needed to support belief.
But, is “seeing is believing,” waterproof? As it turns out, not so much.
The whole quote, never shared in its entirety, of Thomas Fuller, 17th century English clergyman, is “Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth.” And, if “doubting Thomas,” the Apostle who wouldn’t believe Jesus was resurrected from the tomb until he saw the nail scars in his hands, for himself, testifies to anything, is it “seeing is believing?”
If “feeling is the truth,” then there appears to be something beyond sight that leads to belief; something beyond evidence. At the dawn of the new millennium we were led to believe, by the hugely popular CSI television franchise, which saturated the airwaves and has yet to completely fizzle and burn out, that DNA evidence and forensic science would solve all contemporary crime. Again, not so much.
Fast forward to the election of 2016 when we sloshed around in the throes of “fake news,” and a flood of already published misinformation circulated like a virus through social media. We stood as midwife at the birth of an ever-increasingly sophisticated fact-checking industry that eclipses the DNA-evidence phenomenon (Snopes was birthed in 1994 but in 2020 is considered a bit of a rag in the fact-checking business). Now, it’s factcheck.org.
We find ourselves in a relatively new crisis of exaggeration if not misinformation which eclipses government /politics and involves a life and death virus, virtually spreading like wildfire through social media. Fact-checking businesses have proliferated into the hundreds and have shoved their way past the forensic scientists of the global media machine to suck the fun right out of willy-nilly posting of “information,” on the Internet.
But, are today’s fact-checkers, known as “neutral cool,” just another form of CSI-crime busting popular kids, if not elite bullies? Who’s checking the integrity of the fact-checkers and their “facts?” Believe it or not, there is now such a watchdog, The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) conceived in the prestigious journalism school, the Poynter Institute, who’s Pulitzer prize winning fact-checker is Politifact.com.
However, no matter what the facts are, if we don’t feel it, according to Fuller, they matter not, to our belief. If evidence is what we see, then what’s with the rest of the massive iceberg that lies below the surface?
It used to be the role of journalists and psychiatrists to dig below the surface to unearth the mass well-hidden beneath the obvious (what’s seen). Are we any closer to the truth in 2020 than we were before the millennium?
Are more people seeing psychological professionals, for answers? “How does this make you feel?” Can we trust journalists with the information they disseminate? “I’m not feelin’ it!”
“Faith is the conviction of things not seen” Hebrews 11:1. Seeing doesn’t get to the truth. There has to be conviction to convince some of us to buy that horse. I’m not sure there is ever sufficient evidence to convict if faith is not involved. There is some sort of mystical proof that supplies this conviction and it’s not sight. If it can be identified at all, perhaps it could be called, if not faith, then empathic knowing.
Maybe we could ALL use some metaphorical cataract surgery. The blinders that keep us bound to one perspective, the one in front of our nose, might be best removed. “If you wish to know the truth then hold no opinions” – Zen saying
Let me close with a few lines from I Can See Clearly Now (1972, Johnny Nash, songwriter):
I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright) sunshiny day.
Hope so.