SUBJECTIVE TRUTHS?

A: Speak YOUR truth.

B: No, speak THE truth. Speak YOUR opinion.

Essentially, there are no subjective truths?

Let scribble a story that might seem familiar:

10 year old Mary and her mother went to the nearby grocery store to pick up some supplies. Her mother is going through her list but Mary really wants some banana ice cream and she's demanding it from her mum in that annoying sing-song voice that kids use. However, unable to take the noise anymore, her mother tells her to go get one cup from the frozen food aisle.

Mary happily skips away, her purple dress with frills bouncing up and dance as she and the dress disappears around a corner. Mary takes her time picking one of the many white containers with yellow labels, lifting the cups one after the other to weigh them. Finally, she decides on one that seems to be the heaviest and thus, containing the most ice cream, turns and starts skipping back toward the aisle where she had left her mom.

Almost there, she stops in her tracks, the cup of ice cream she had been endearingly admiring falls from her hand to the floor where the cover flew off and some of the ice cream spilled. Mary didn't notice that her precious ice cream was ruined, her attention was caught by a shocking sight.

Her mother was on the floor, lying on her back. She looked like she was sleeping; her eyes closed peacefully, her body relaxed; except that she obviously couldn't be sleeping on the floor of the store. A red liquid was spreading on the floor around her, contrasting with the shiny white surface of the marbled floor.

And then, there was the man straddling her, his hands bloodied and on her stomach.

Mary screamed and said, 'He's killing her!'

Now, stop and think about what you just read. While you are at it, you might want to know that the man isn't killing Mary's mum, he's trying to save her.

He is the cashier who had watched in horror as a thief entered the store with a Swiss knife, cleaned out the cash register and when Mary's mother had turned in her valuables too slowly for his liking, stabbed her twice before hopping through the electronic door.

Now, there's obviously the man's truth, then there's Mary's truth. Whilst her truth might not be the general occurrence of events, it's still her truth. The man's truth might seem to be the truth, but what if it lacked other facts that through perception, sensation and memory had been sifted by his brain?

Yes, there are still general absolute truths like the boiling point of water and the distance of earth from the sun. But it would seem that subjective truths are also absolute, too.

And you might argue that the truth is still there even in cases when it's experience had been subjective but the point of this post is to suggest that this doesn't mean that people still don't hold subjective truths.

I might be quite wrong, though.

Uziel
Image source: google