Your Truth, My Truth, No Truth?
Philosophy, Power, and the Struggle to Stay Grounded
Let’s start simple.
Truth is the quality of being in accordance with fact or reality. It’s what we say when something actually matches the way the world is — not how we wish it were. It can be objective (like scientific evidence), subjective (like personal experience), or even moral (like our sense of justice).
In day-to-day life, we usually treat truth as something solid, knowable, and shared. But as soon as we zoom out — into politics, media, philosophy, or belief — that solidity begins to wobble.
Truth can be tested. It can also be told, twisted, denied, or ignored. It can build trust — or be used to betray it. And in this era of competing realities and algorithmic influence, truth feels less like a common ground and more like a moving target.
In a world of alternative facts, viral half-truths, and curated realities, what does it mean to say something is true — and does anyone even care anymore?
Truth, once seen as solid ground, now feels like shifting sand. Depending on who you ask, it’s objective, relative, constructed, outdated, weaponised, or just inconvenient. And in this age of spin, spectacle, and social media distortion, truth has never felt more fragile — or more important.
Let’s take a step back.
A Crisis of Truth
The phrase “post-truth” was Oxford’s Word of the Year in 2016. It marked a turning point: a cultural moment where emotions and personal beliefs began to outweigh objective facts in public discourse. In a post-truth era, it doesn’t matter if something is true — it matters how it makes you feel, how it fits your worldview, and how effectively it can be repeated, shared, and monetised.
This isn’t just rhetorical sleight-of-hand. It’s a structural shift.
In post-truth politics, truth becomes negotiable. Politicians don’t correct themselves — they double down. Media outlets don’t always seek accuracy — they seek engagement. And people aren’t necessarily looking to be informed — they’re looking to be affirmed.
But this idea — that belief can outrank fact — isn’t new. It’s ancient. Religion is a prime example.
For centuries, entire societies were built on beliefs that couldn’t be proven but were deeply held: the divine right of kings, the existence of heaven and hell, miracles, sacred commandments. These truths weren’t about data or empirical evidence. They were about meaning, morality, identity, and trust. And they were powerful enough to start wars, build empires, and shape laws.
So what’s changed?
It’s not belief itself. It’s the speed — and the scale. In the past, it took time for a narrative to spread. Stories passed through scribes, sermons, newspapers. Today, a single tweet or headline can be seen by millions in seconds. Algorithms amplify what provokes. Emotion travels faster than fact.
In other words, the difference isn’t just in how truth is manipulated — it’s in how it’s delivered. We’re not just dealing with content anymore. We’re dealing with an entire system that rewards outrage, simplifies complexity, and floods the zone with noise.
Where religion once offered mystery and metaphor, today’s truth claims blur the lines on purpose. They sound like evidence — “people are saying,” “everybody knows” — but they’re rarely backed up. They work because they feel right. They flatter us, scare us, echo what we already think.
And that’s the backdrop to where we are now.
Trump repeating false claims of election fraud until they feel like fact. Putin calling an invasion a “special operation.” Netanyahu justifying collective punishment in terms that shut down nuance or moral debate.
These aren’t slips. They’re strategies — calculated claims designed to reshape how people remember and respond.
As Hannah Arendt warned, truth doesn’t just disappear under tyranny — its destruction is often a precondition for it. Orwell saw this too: if you can erase yesterday and rewrite tomorrow, you control the present.
That’s the real danger.
When the past can be edited, and the future sold as destiny, the present becomes a battleground. What happened yesterday depends on who’s talking. And what’s true today depends on who’s winning. People stop noticing the edits. Or worse — they start accepting them.
Truth doesn’t collapse all at once. It wears away. One compromised word, one blurred fact at a time. Until we’re left with a version of reality tailored to our politics, preferences, and fears.
And in that world, truth isn’t about accuracy anymore. It’s about repetition. Authority isn’t earned — it’s performed.
But the question of truth isn’t new. Philosophers have been wrestling with it for centuries. And maybe now, more than ever, we need to return to those old questions.
Old Thinkers, New Problems
A.J. Ayer — Truth Is What We Can Prove
Ayer (1910–1989) was a British philosopher and leading figure in logical positivism, known for arguing that only statements that could be proved could be considered meaningful. This gave us a clear framework: science, logic, mathematics — yes. Metaphysics, theology, moral values — not so much. Those, he said, were expressions of emotion or personal preference, not truth claims.
That put most religious beliefs outside the boundaries of truth. The existence of God, heaven, miracles, or divine purpose — these weren’t lies, necessarily, but they weren’t truths either. Not in Ayer’s sense. They were unverifiable. Unfalsifiable. Meaningful, perhaps, but not factual.
It was neat and rational, but it excluded huge swathes of human experience. What about justice? Beauty? Grief? Can we really say those things are meaningless just because they can’t be measured?
And in a digital age where deepfakes can be verified visually but still deceive, the limits of Ayer’s framework become more obvious. Verification alone isn’t always enough to capture what’s real or meaningful.
Friedrich Nietzsche — Truth Is an Illusion That Works
Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher who challenged traditional notions of truth, morality, and religion, famously declaring “God is dead.”
He turned the whole concept of truth on its head. He didn’t believe in objective truth. He saw “truths” as human-made constructions, illusions that have been repeated so often they begin to feel solid. He called them a “mobile army of metaphors” — ways of speaking that help us navigate life, but ultimately have no grounding beyond their utility. We adopt truths not because they’re true in any deep sense, but because they help us survive, organise, and make sense of things.
Nietzsche was especially suspicious of religious truth claims. He saw them as tools of control and comfort — ways of justifying suffering or submission. For him, belief in an unquestionable truth was a way of avoiding responsibility, of outsourcing thought to authority.
It’s powerful, but also dangerous. If all truth is constructed, what’s to stop someone from simply inventing a new truth — one that serves their will to power, rather than any shared reality?
Michel Foucault — Truth Is a Product of Power
Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and historian who explored how power shapes knowledge and truth through institutions and discourse.
He deepened the Nietzschean suspicion. He argued that what we call truth is always entangled with power. Institutions don’t just discover truth — they produce it. Schools, hospitals, courts, and the media are not neutral. They are sites where knowledge is shaped, ordered, and enforced.
He introduced the idea of “regimes of truth”: historically specific systems in which some things are considered true, and others false, based on who holds power and how that power is exercised. This includes religious institutions. Foucault was interested in how faith intersects with discipline — how moral codes, purity laws, and divine authority help regulate not just belief, but behaviour. And in today’s politics, we see echoes of this: leaders using religious language to define who belongs and who doesn’t, who is righteous and who is suspect.
Richard Rorty — Truth Is What Works for Us
Rorty (1931–2007) was an American pragmatist who believed truth was less about objective facts and more about what societies agree works for them.
He didn’t want to play the traditional philosophical game of chasing foundations. Truth, for him, was what our peers will let us get away with saying. It was about solidarity, conversation, and usefulness — not correspondence with some objective reality. He thought trying to ground truth in metaphysics or science missed the point. What mattered was whether an idea helped us flourish, connect, and solve problems together.
To many, this felt liberating. But it also raised hard questions: if truth is just a product of consensus, what happens when consensus is manipulated? When power rigs the conversation?
Rorty believed in democracy, openness, and the power of free inquiry. But his critics worried he left us defenceless against lies wrapped in emotional appeal. And while he acknowledged religion as a valid source of personal meaning, he was wary of it as a political force. Once belief is weaponised, truth gets replaced by allegiance.
Why Truth Still Matters — and How to Navigate It
In politics, in the press, in our daily lives — truth is what lets us share a world. Without it, we stop speaking the same language. We talk past each other. We stop disagreeing on ideas and start disagreeing on reality itself.
Democracy can’t function without that shared ground. All that’s left is noise, tribalism, and suspicion.
We don’t need perfect truth. We don’t need to agree on everything. But we need to care. We need people who are willing to look honestly, question their assumptions, and push back when their “side” slips into spin.
Truth doesn’t have to be fixed and final. But it has to be pursued. With effort. With humility. And with the understanding that the alternative is far worse.
In a world where content floods our screens 24/7, it’s no longer enough to ask “Is this true?” We have to ask:
Where did it come from?
Who benefits from me believing it?
And how does it make me feel — calm, angry, scared, smug?
Because that emotional response? That’s often the point.
When someone like Trump — who has lied thousands of times, often publicly and provably — says something is “true,” the real question isn’t what did he say? It’s why is he saying it now? And what’s he trying to achieve?
It’s not just about fact-checking anymore. It’s about learning to recognise manipulation — whether it comes from a politician, a news outlet, a TikTok algorithm, or even our own preferred echo chamber.
We can’t stop the flood. But we can learn to swim smarter:
Pause before reacting
Check the source
Compare headlines
Ask who’s talking — and who’s missing
Talk to each other — across lines, across tribes, across feeds
Because truth isn’t something handed down. It’s something we build — carefully, together — or not at all.