In a World without Absolute "Truth," Attempts to Find It is Useless Effort

The author is a relativist when it comes to moral values.  The exact same act, done under different circumstances and background, he believes, can be either positive or negative.  Stealing is a prime example.  From time to time, there are news of poor, desperate people stealing out of basic need to support their families, sometimes to finance needs that can very much mean life and death for the benefactors.  While debates with regard to such news have focused on why society has not helped such people (for which the author believes is a government role), it also put forth other thoughts.

The most significant of these have been whether stealing, under such desperation, ought to be considered criminal act.  The logic is in line with killing under self-defense.  If a man can be acquitted of all crimes when he murders to save his own life, why cannot a man be given the same treatment when he commits a much less serious crime like stealing to save his own life?  This is based on the belief that every innocent person has the basic ans sacred right to life, and protection of life is viewed as something not only worthy of empathy.

Thus, based on a simple change in the background of the instigator, what seems to be the most straightforward and institutionalized legal framework of any society (that "stealing is a punishable crime") breaks down.  And that says much about what the very definition of truth is.  If something that is codified into written documentations and enforced by millions of salaried and uniformed professionals across the world, it should be regarded as a truth.  But if something like stealing can be morally right or wrong depending on circumstance, whether absolute "truth" exits becomes a doubt.

The doubt increases even further when one decides to place on a layer of "political motivation" on how the truth is formulated and disseminated.  Going back to the idea of "stealing is a crime," the origin of the idea may very much coincide with establishment of social classes in early human societies.  After all, the earliest human societies are communal hunter-gathering ones, where the idea of communal ownership of all materiel were ingrained as absolute need for the community's (and all its members') very survival.  It is difficult to imagine the concept of stealing in such a place.

But as social classes are established, it is very much conceivable that those with powers to dictate governance and commerce accumulated great wealth that is not immediately needed for the entire community's survival.  The accumulation of the wealth, obviously, was subject of envy for lower classes with no equivalent means of high incomes, and it is not inconceivable for a turn toward violence for redistribution of wealth.  In this context, the truth that "stealing is a crime" may have originated as a selfish effort by the political elite to entrench social classification based on wealth.

Basically, this amounts to "those with the means dictating the terms."  And the "terms," whether it be rules codified into legal codes, or more anecdotal and unwritten behavioral norms, become widely accepted "truths" if they are implemented for an extended period of time without significant opposition or questioning.   This does not prove the merit of the implemented "truth," it just says that they are not sufficiently damaging enough for the self-interests of the majority for the common people to openly oppose the elites on their implementation.

Yet, to create "truths" based on pure balance of power between elite minority and the majority commoners does not say anything about the quality of the "truth."  And often discovering their general falseness takes such a long time that the "truth" has already been too established as the status quo.  As illustrated well by the example of Galileo's futile and ultimately fatal attempt to argue against the Church in favor of a solar-centered universe, the common people will again look on passively when changing the truth does not obviously benefit them.

All in all, the idea of finding the "truth" is in itself a misnomer of kinds.  Having the hope of finding it implies that it is absolute, constant, and concrete.  Yet, given the fact that truths are social and political constructions stemming from self-interests of particular individuals or social groups, a change in social conditions will easily change it to something else in what the common people will call "revolutionary ways."  But even if it remains unchanging, believing in it requires some mental flexibility.  After all, a poor man stealing a loaf of bread to live and an investment banker stealing the life-savings of millions while making millions himself are two totally different concepts for the same crime....