The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Everything Else But The Truth.
Edited by O. Jaeger
On Tuesday, June 6 I headed out of my building in Kew Gardens to go to a local supermarket to pick up some salad items. As I exited the building’s back entrance, I was greeted by a neighbor who recently moved into the building. I already had a few exchanges with the guy, I was involved in the interview process prior to his purchase of his co-op, and considered him to be sociable and friendly.
We chatted for a while, and since he was a building newcomer, I asked him how he liked the building, its residents, and the general neighborhood. He in turn asked me the best way to get deposits back that our co-op requires during the move-in period, so I grabbed his Email address to send him contact info for the people to call at the building’s management company, and promised I would send him the information when I got back.
So far, so good, and this is exactly the type of friendly conversation I have with many of the folks who live in my building.
But then, and for no apparent reason – other than that my neighbor c-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y misread me – my neighbor began to badmouth immigrants (in general) after I mentioned that my Dad was born in Poland and came here in 1923 and he mentioned that his parents also came from Poland right after WWII. And from there he began to badmouth religion (in general) while I explained that I have great respect for devout people (in general) as long as they keep their Godforsaken beliefs and opinions out of politics and the public square. He made his points clear without the slightest bit of anger.
And then he looked at me and said with the same conspiratorial tone that I always suspected fourteenth century non-mainstream Roman Catholics used to confide to other fourteenth century non-mainstream Roman Catholics, “I’m a truther.”
At first, I thought, “Does this guy think I’m also a truther?” Then I thought, “What does HE mean by truther?” I presumed the term meant that he, and others like him, believed in overlapping conspiracy theories that 1. explained everything and 2. were the equivalent of a unifying theory of such great complexity that only those with intellectual capacities far greater than mine could understand, appreciate, and sign on to.
Having lived in New York City most of my life, and having come across nutjobs and crackpots of all shapes and sizes, and going on my initial appraisal that this fellow was both sociable and friendly, I asked him, “What do YOU mean by the term, truther?”
And then he explained that he meant that everything we take for granted is a lie, and that once you understand who’s in control of things, you can’t not see things any other way.
I thought about what he said for less than a second before I said, “By the way, your definition sounds to me like a belief, and one that is no different than the beliefs deeply religious folks hold. You know, ideas that are resistant to investigation.”
And that’s when he said what I thought no one would ever say to me regarding a Matrix-like system of overlapping and interlocking conspiracies whose complexity alone would be hard to imagine, let alone achieve. “These are not beliefs. These are facts.”
Internally I said, “No, they’re not facts. They’re beliefs.”
But I also wanted to play with the guy to determine where his weaknesses were. I then said, “Look, I’ve got a high school degree, one that I washed, dried, and waxed earlier today, and I know the difference between beliefs and facts, and I presume that you do too. Facts are evidence-based and replicable things independent of beliefs. Or no matter how much you squint your eyes to see things just so.”
I reminded myself that long ago I went to see The Matrix in a crowded theater with my younger daughter, who was fifteen at the time. There were times during the movie when Laurence Fishburne explained what the matrix actually meant that I, and two others in the theater, broke out into laughter. Why? Because the explanation, though interesting, was the type of discussion point that might arise in a tenth-grade course in philosophy. Needless to say, my daughter was embarrassed by my laughing out loud. Rightly so.
But instead of getting pissed off, my neighbor retreated into a semi-guru stance perhaps last inhabited by Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid. That made me his caterpillar, of course, and I was then not surprised that instead of being dismissed, I was to be … ahem … enlightened.
I soon regretted that I wasn’t dismissed. As Eef Barzelay once wrote and sang in Jews For Jesus Blues, “Now that I’m found, I miss being lost.”
This enlightenment continued for the next five minutes during which I challenged each of my neighbor’s points with the intellectual rigor of someone who’s heard variations of this BS since I was in John Adams High School in Ozone Park, Queens, an august educational establishment best known for its proximity to Aqueduct Racetrack. My favorite moment took place when Mr. Truther said something to the effect that we shouldn’t allow immigrants into this country to work agriculture when Americans can do the work. In fact, he said, “let them pick blueberries.” I pointed out that there are no blueberries in Kew Gardens. Or strawberries. Or peaches, cabbage, apples, and so on. “So let them starve!” was Mr. Truther’s response.
“No,” I said, “I can’t sign onto that.”
What dawned on me at that moment was that what I had in front of me was a rare blend of pure Ayn Rand self-interest, Libertarianism (which Rand rejected), and L-M-N-O-P-QAnon twenty-first century eye-squinting conspiracy theory. I even asked whether he thought by engaging in this conversation with me, he realized he was proselytizing. “I’m not,” he said, with the utmost of certainty, “these aren’t beliefs. They’re facts.”
In other words, a colossal self-sealing argument, all in the form of Mr. Truther. And an argument that appeared to be unassailable by non-believers … forgive me … fact-deniers.
Seeing that I couldn’t get a rise out of the guy, nor could I get him to define terms that made any sense, I let him go on until he ran out of steam. To his credit, he never got angry. Also to his credit, he soon realized that I positioned him onto a high diving board that would soon require him to take a dangerous leap-of-faith dive or back down a long, long ladder.
“Hey,” he said, “what are good restaurants nearby?” he asked, executing the debate equivalent of a triple lutz into a salchow back into a double axel. And yes, it stood out. But I wanted out, so I pointed Mr. Truther to a great Italian restaurant on 126 Street in Kew Gardens called Paul Michael’s Brick Oven Café, and noted that there’s a not too shabby produce store in the same strip mall.
We exchanged closing salutations, and I headed off to Trade Fair, a local supermarket. Later on I sent Mr. Truther the info I promised I’d send. That’s the type of guy I am.
I still don’t know what to make of the guy, and believe me, I have no desire to talk with him about anything other than neighborhood restaurants and whether he got his deposits back from our co-op’s management company. He referred to Anthony Fauci as a mass murderer, and when I jokingly excused myself to put my ear to my upper arm (where I get vaccinations) because “I was getting a message from Bill Gates,” I don’t think he saw my action as a parody of his beliefs.
And yes, they are beliefs. Not facts. And The Matrix notwithstanding, even a John Adams High School graduate (Class of 1968) can see the difference. The big difference I see between 1968 and 2023 is the social and political effects of the Wild West aspects of the Internet on seers of the Truther stripe, and in two specific areas. One is the ease with which unsophisticated researchers can find support for preconceived and unverifiable notions. The other is the ease with which unsophisticated researchers can find like-minded nutjobs with similar preconceived notions. Two things we could all use is a lot more gatekeeping and a lot less bonding over specious notions.
Mark knows this, so I am writing to the legion of reader of this MoR publication. I was a philosophy major. We investigated the nature of truth and related matters. Unfortunately, we also were young and immature and lacking in common sense and experience, causing the investigation to meander, and to decidedly get off track from time to time.
For nearly a year, I walked around with a silly, red-bulb bicycle horn affixed to my belt. I explained to those who asked that I used it to identify bullshit. Sure, you could do what Mark took pains to do, namely talk patiently to this fellow. But at eighteen, who’s got that kind of time? So instead, I threatened to respond to some nonsense argument with a toot. In that year, I only tooted three times. The threat was enough.
One time, in Professor Portnoy’s Ancient Greek Philosophy, an earnest and not incompetent classmate was arguing factual relativism, that what was true in Aristotle’s time was not necessarily true today but that did not make Aristotle wrong in his time. Now, here’s the thing. There is something to that. It is why epistemology and empiricism can be studied and argued. There is a whole thing about deducing the nature of the world from self-evident truths that need not be sullied by empirical investigation. One might argue our country’s foundation (apologies to the MoR readers outside the United States) shares that basis. It is why, as amusing as the story, when Bishop Berkley or perhaps one of his acolytes was giving a lecture about how there is no real world, only ideas (hence, Idealism), and the famous, then-aged, common sense philosopher G.E Moore tottered up to the stage, lit a match, held it under the lecturer’s nose, and demanded to know, Is it real??No, that is not what we were talking about. We were talking about whether Aristotle was correct when he asserted that women have fewer teeth than men do. Although I was not there to count a statistically significant number of mouths, I have confidence that assertion was as false then as it is today. It remains false even if, in today’s context, Congress prohibits federal funds being used to count teeth, or for federal funds to support any dental school that counts teeth.
But I was eighteen and who had the time to explain all that. So I gave a little toot. The student stopped in mid-sentence, and Professor Portnoy went on with his teaching. Later that day, this student saw me on campus and came up to me to say, “You know, Ken, you were right.” And then he walked away and we never discussed it again.
Regardless, I hope we can agree that Paul Michaels Brick Oven rigatoni bolognese for $15.95 is a very good value.
The line, “we suffer more often in imagination than in reality,” is attributed to Seneca, and while I’m no Stoic, I have been to Seneca in the Finger Lakes area of NY, which reminds me … what IS it with all of the Roman-named cities in upstate NY? Troy, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Cicero, and how about Rome, New York, itself? Nevertheless, I am dumbstruck by folks who know nothing about philosophy, or politics, or history – or even looking shit up – espousing beliefs as organizational structures to simplify their understanding of their world and enable them to have predigested uninformed responses to every new experience. Even Tautalus, the Greek rhetorician to whom we are all indebted to because he defined concepts by using the same idea twice but with different words, could be heard to say, “That’s freaking ridiculous.” If my neighbor were in Wyoming or Montana, I could dismiss him as a nutjob. But as my down-the-hall-from-me neighbor? If only Draco were still around!