Why people believe in truth
By: John D. Erickson
A highly summarized extract from the book We Are Not Very Smart
In order for our early ancestors to help secure their existence, it was necessary for them to be able to live together in groups. On their own, they would have struggled to survive. By living in a (somewhat) coherent group, they would have been able to produce more goods and ideas than a bunch of individuals on their own ever could.
In order for our ancestors to be able to live in groups, they needed an ideology (or a set of rules) for how the group was going to function. After all, if everyone just ran around and did whatever they wanted to, the group would not function very effectively.
In order for them to be able to create an effective ideology, they needed to believe in the concept of truth. They needed to believe that there was “a way things are supposed to be”.
In order for our earliest ancestors to believe that they knew “the way things are supposed to be”, they needed to feel much more knowledgeable than they really were. After all, their concept of reality was quite limited.
In order for our ancestors to feel much more knowledgeable than they really were, the thought process needed to make the world appear to be much simpler than it really is.
In order to make the world appear to be much simpler than it really is, the thought process limits our perceptual ability and thus makes the world appear to be populated by distinct entities; the world appears to be full of distinctly separate “things” which can be known or understood.
The advancements made possible by science have improved our observational abilities to the point where we can now begin to understand just how limited our everyday concept of reality really is. We now have the opportunity to recognize that the world only appears to be full of distinct entities (like books, rocks, people, etc.).
For example, imagine that “you” and “I” are standing in a room together. The only reason that it looks like we are separate entities is because our observational abilities are quite limited. We are not able to see the air as it enters and leaves our apparent “bodies”. We are not able to see that our apparent “bodies” are actually composed of 10 times as many bacterial cells as “human” cells. We are not able to observe radio waves that pass right through our “bodies”. Maybe most importantly, we are not able to see that our “bodies” are actually composed of nothing more than vibrating bits of energy and space.
The lesson to be learned here is that “you” and “I” are more intimately connected than we are capable of comprehending. We only appear to be distinctly separate entities because our mind needs to simplify reality for us in order to make us feel much smarter than we really are. The universe is actually a seamless whole that is beyond our comprehension, but our mind bails us out and makes the universe appear to be much simpler and easier to understand than it really is.
We can see the illusion of intelligence created by the thought process by the simple fact that our ancestors were quite confident in ideas that are now considered to be quite naive (Earth is flat, doctors can heal people by draining their blood, powered flight is impossible, etc.). In fact, if we traveled back in time and conducted a survey where we asked 1,000 people “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your overall understanding of the world you live in?”, we would find that the average answer would be the same for all points in time throughout history.
We can also see the illusion of intelligence created by the thought process in the behavior of our children. If you have children of your own, you have undoubtedly heard the phrase “I should be allowed to make my own decisions!” on more than one occasion. Even though a child usually has a much less sophisticated concept of reality than the average adult, the child still feels as though they understand “the way things are supposed to be”. The child feels intelligent because that is what the mind is built to do. It is built to give us the confidence to move forward with our lives even though we really do not understand very much about the world we live in.
If we could observe reality from an objective perspective, we would be able to see that currently we only understand about 0.000000000000000000000001% of the world we live in, but our mind makes us feel as though we understand a great deal (just as it did for our ancestors!).
The transition to a more integrative, non-violent worldview will be marked by an understanding of, and appreciation for, our ancestors need to believe in the concept of truth. It was necessary for them to believe in the concept of truth so that they could create an ideology that would allow them to live together in groups.
So our concept of truth is much like a giraffe’s neck. A giraffe does not have a long neck because it is “true”. A giraffe has a long neck because it has proven to be useful to the giraffe. Similarly, human beings do not believe in the concept of truth because it is “true”. Human beings believe in the concept of truth because that concept has proven to be useful to our species.
