The American Truth Crisis

To be clear, this is not a political post. Fact and fiction concepts transcend political stances.

Fact (n): A thing that is known or proved to be true

The Oxford Dictionary gives us this important definition. There are some additional key characteristics of a fact:

·       They are verifiable through evidence and/or observation.

·       They are objective; they describe something as it is.

·       They refer to a thing or event that actually exists or happens.

Put another way: facts are TRUE. They are incontrovertible and indisputable. They leave no room for debate.

Stories are a bit different. According to the same dictionary, stories are accounts of imaginary or real people and events, or accounts of past events. The key difference: stories are not necessarily true.

Sometimes it can be pretty tough to tell the difference between truth and fiction. Social media, mis/disinformation, AI and other trends have gotten pretty good at disguising or mimicking reality. And let’s face it – a story often can be more entertaining and interesting than the truth. Or they can align more with our values or life experiences. So sometimes we buy into something false just because we want to. But the more this happens, the more the line between fact and fiction blurs…and before long we can start to lose our sense of what’s real and what’s fake.

In America today, I’m afraid we suffer from a crisis of truth. There seem to be at least two alternate realities playing simultaneously, each based on their own set of “facts” about the news, issues and institutions of the day. Of course, that’s impossible – there’s only one set of facts about our world. But as a society, over a long period of time, we seem to have confused facts with stories. And we seem to place more value on the latter. Hence a basis for all the tribalism and division we see out there.

Now don’t get me wrong – there can be, and usually are, at least two sides to every story. People can interpret facts in different ways and sometimes draw different conclusions or come up with different ideas based on them. This is why democracies that function well are great; they give us a mechanism to share and debate these concepts, with the best and/or most popular winning out.

But that’s all different with stories. The more we deal with situations based on real or imagined falsities, the more noise we put into the world and the harder it becomes to identify the truth – much less rally or coalesce behind it.

As someone who’s built a career and a business as a professional communicator, and as someone who was trained as a journalist, I place an incredibly high value on truth. Stories are important, because they shape how people consume and experience information. But stories that shape our business world and society have to be based on truth.

In all we do, in the corporate world and otherwise, we should strive to unearth, disseminate and foster discussion around truth. We also should place a higher value on facts and collectively invest whatever is necessary to ensure that facts come to light. We can respectfully agree and disagree about what the facts might represent or foreshadow…that’s fine. But we can’t allow stories to rule our lives, organizations or societies. If we allow that to stand, then truth becomes irrelevant, we splinter as people and all bets are off.