Tell the truth. Innovations and transformations are yet-to-be realised potential; potential is chaos; actions are needed to bring chaos into order; course of actions is adjudicated through negotiations; negotiations require truth.
I have been contemplating about the impossibility of education and necessity of making now meaningful. Deep in my gut the two threads felt like one but I didn’t know where, when or how they would converge. I believe I now know - the impossibility of education is resolved in truth and meaning is impossible in the absence of truth.
Truth in meaning
Meaning in life consists of three facets: (i) congruence (ii) purpose and (iii) significance. I have expounded on how losing any one of the three facets may result in catastrophe rather than meaning. Diving deeper, what if truth is missing from the facets?
Truth in congruence
Congruence has perhaps the most unforgiving demand for truth; just as triangles are congruent if and only if they are of the exact same size and shape. If and only if the experience of life and the environment within which it is lived are a good fit for each other, there is congruence. One is able to make sense of things that have happened and are happening and a sense of order prevails. Such an order, in Dr Jordan Peterson’s words, “is explained territory… (where) the actions we deem appropriate produce the results we aim at.” When we achieve the desired results as planned, the environment appears to us as well-structured and predictable, plus relationships and associations seem aligned to our values and beliefs.
However, this order is inevitably fragile because the environment is not in stasis and our knowledge of it and of ourselves are far from complete. Are you still getting the result or not anymore? Is the action taken still appropriate? Are you getting the results but performing the actions just doesn’t feel right? Are relationships fraying and associations disintegrating? Might it be that the result is no longer (or never was) what you really wanted? Worse, you are not getting the results, the actions don’t feel right, and you have forgotten why you aimed for the results to begin with!
When order is disrupted, we experience distress from the ensuing chaos followed by an urge to restore order. In this moment, rationalising that we remain congruent, doubling down on the old practice or lying about reality brings no happy ending.
Try this experiment: the next time you say something, ask yourself if you truly believe it.
Truth in purpose
Purpose is having a direction in life that is aimed at a future goal. This allows for present actions to make sense and have significance. However, in urging us to make now meaningful, I have previously warned against deferring meaning too far into future. For example, a student writes an essay on The Great Gatsby that he believes will please the teacher and get him an A (which then leads to a better GPA and ultimately a brighter future) rather than positing a treatise true to his own thoughts. An archetypal Adlerian life-lie. He forsakes Fitzgerald’s drama about societal dysfunction and its possible appropriation to real life. He got an A but did not learn.
Still, a goal is better than no goal; or is it? What if the goal is built on and around lies, like the student above who lied to get an A thereby missing the opportunity to develop critical insights with which he might transform himself and his reality? What if circumstances change and GPAs matter a lot less in the future? Perhaps GPAs never mattered to begin with? What if the goal is someone else’s goal? Perhaps a parent whom our protagonist is afraid of defying, or a tradition too onerous to turn one’s back on? What if the goal is the result of avoidance because the real goal is too hard to achieve? What if all these is someone else’s fault?
Try this experiment: the next time you do something, ask yourself how engaged and energised you are.
Truth in significance
Significance is eudaimonia, a human good (of virtuous activities rather than character), a life worth living. Virtuous activities play out in the environment and influence relationships and associations. These activities are therefore a service (hopefully with wisdom, courage, and justice) to the people.
Can there be wisdom, courage, and justice in the absence of truth? When presented with the opportunity to be of value and thus significance to others, how do we choose our course of actions? When presented with the opportunity to avert harm for others, how do we choose our course of actions? How would we choose when significance requires sacrificing ourselves? Indeed, how do we even differentiate between goodness and harm?
Try this experiment: the next time you make a decision, ask yourself if you have been wise, courageous, and just.
The impossibility of education and its resolution
Education is impossible for three reasons: (i) it tends to domesticate learners (ii) it is plagued by ludic fallacy and (iii) narrative fallacy.
The resolution for narrative fallacy is more narratives not less. A narrative is an attempt at naming the world, a creative process. Multiple narratives are therefore multiple attempts, a constant re-creation. Whilst a singular narrative falls prey to over-simplification and potentially erroneous connection of the dots (not to mention wrongful omission of some dots), multiple narratives afford a tapestry rather than a single thread. If the learner can then be invited to add her thread to the tapestry, one fallacy get resolved.
Ludic fallacy is the misappropriation of ludus (latin for game) to real-life. Games are well-defined in rules (permissible actions), criteria for success, and possibilities; the rook cannot go rouge on the chessboard, the correct answer is found at the back of the textbook. Real-life is a lot more ambiguous and uncertain; there is no chessboard, no permissible fixed path, and multiple answers to the same question is possible and probable. Hence resolving ludic fallacy requires learners to make mistakes, to break the rules and give wrong answers (well, wrong because it is different from the one found at the back of the textbook). Making mistakes is not deficiency but discovery that is necessary for learning; discovering what works, what does not, and what’s next. This is formative assessment, which is best exemplified by Pixar’s brain-trust.
Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, claims that all Pixar movies suck at the beginning and “… the only way to get a grip on the facts, issues, and nuances we need to solve problems and collaborate effectively is by communicating fully and openly, by not withholding or misleading…” What good would the brain-trust then be if the participants do not tell the truth? Be it out of fear (of offending) or kindness (to avoid hurting feelings), Pixar’s success would not be possible if no one has the courage and integrity to call out the parts of the movies-in-progress that suck. Both withholding and misleading are lying.
Well, telling the truth requires a voice, which is not possible when people are domesticated. Telling the truth is therefore a virtuous activity played out in the environment and influences relationships and associations. Does the organisational culture allow for truth to be freely spoken?
Order out of chaos
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. - Genesis 1:1-3, KJV
There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world. - Paulo Freire
Both the resolution of the impossibility of education and making now meaningful necessitate a creative process that brings order out of chaos; usually through negotiations or dialogue, which is possible only if true words are spoken. Innovations and transformations are yet-to-be realised potential; potential is chaos; actions are needed to bring chaos into order; course of actions is adjudicated through negotiations; negotiations require truth. It is not hard to imagine that actions borne out of falsehoods will bring disasters rather than innovations and transformations.
Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. …dialogue cannot exist without humility. The naming of the world, through which people constantly re-create that world, cannot be an act of arrogance… How can I dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own? - Paulo Freire
Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner, rather than an enemy. - Jordan B. Peterson
Not too long ago I was ridiculed for insisting that a working relationship be based on truth. The diatribe laid on me is that there is no such thing as truth because what I deem to be truth is not necessarily truth for others. I countered if that statement itself is truth. The rejoinder reinstated that there is no such thing as truth. Is insisting on the truth equivalent to proving oneself right? Is truth devoid of humility because it is unyielding? Was I too arrogant? Was I without love for the world and for people? Is speaking the truth a mark of philia sophia or philia nikia?
I walked away from that partnership amidst accusations of not being receptive to challenges to my beliefs.
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