What is Truth?

by Brian Takuji Ebisuzaki

“Where does the past exist, if at all….We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?” (Orwell, 248). Orwell’s novel, 1984, made me question what I knew, or thought I knew, to be the past. Throughout 1984, I was reminded that the Party and its values of Ingsoc controlled everything from emotions to facts in order to assert complete power over its citizens of Oceania. Not only were the Party’s manipulations clear to me as a reader, but it also was made abundantly clear to the Party citizens as well that their minds were tricked day in and day out. When I look to the present day, governments and tech companies do not seem to be so obvious in their influence over our lives. We are told that various technological advancements would make our lives easier; we are told that our government works in the interest of all American citizens. When watching the news regarding current events, I like to think that I am thinking critically and taking everything with a grain of salt. But at the end of the day, the main body of information that I take in from sources I normally trust takes hold in my perception as truth. Yet, it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility that the news is severely altered and edited before it reaches my eyes. With how far technology has advanced to this day, anything from photos to videos could be falsified to the point where it avoids detection by little else besides a highly trained eye.

I started to consider how malleable the truth and our perceptions of events around us are. If I see a certain number or figure, such as how much money a company made over the span of a year, I’ll often look to see whether multiple sources besides the company itself can confirm the same figure. Not only that, but I also determine whether the sources providing the figures are reputable. But realistically, there is no way that I could 100% confirm the validity of any information that I receive. Sure, I could say that a fact is true because it comes from sources that are reputable, but it would be wrong to assume that a reputable source is always correct. Truth, I think, is almost entirely a matter of choice. History, as we know it, is inherently told with biases. There is no recounting of past events that does not come with the possibility of information being tampered or twisted. I suppose it is even possible to say that nothing holds any truth whatsoever. But how would we be able to decide what choice we should make if we did not make a distinct choice of what values to hold as truth? While O’Brien and the Party claimed that they controlled the past and could manipulate the truth however they saw fit, it was clear that they acted as they did because they followed a certain set of beliefs they chose as their truth: that achieving power was everything, that the world to work towards was one of fear and treachery. Winston, however, did not view that as the truth (until he was broken)—he chose to believe in his truth that a world based on fear and hatred could not survive. I’d like to believe that there is a singular truth out there in the world tangled up in the web of the Internet and our memories, but even if some of us in the world found it, is there a way for us to determine whether it is the truth?