For weeks I have been working on the farmland of ‘Political Correctness,’ and one thing that is evident is the Orwellian newspeak (Oceania language and party ethos), whose purpose is to delimit thought and make certain expressions of ideas inconceivable. There is also doublespeak, whose purpose is to confuse. An example is the shift from “illegal immigrant” (old) to “undocumented immigrant” (new). What is the difference?
Thesis
While we battle with the issue of political power trying to control language to delimit thoughts, as well as create confusing language to disorganize thought, my thesis is that there are already acceptable words that in fact need reconstruction or “clearspeak” (my forged word meaning a word that extends clarity of thought).
One of these words is ‘Reality.’ Reality, to me, is a confused word. That is to say, rarely do we have two people who share a similar reality. Even husband and wife more often than not have different realities. The reality of the poor is different from that of the rich. The reality of the slave is different from that of the master. The reality of the citizen is different from that of the rulers.
For instance, Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason opines that the nature of the British government is such that it puts the king in a room with no door or window, yet expects him to see everything happening outside. The people have given the government many privileges to enjoy and yet complain that the government doesn’t understand the reality of its people, forgetting that it is the nature of privilege to blindfold—as Adichie notes.
The problem, to me, is not in what people see, but rather in the word they have used to describe the evidence of their eyes. The word is “reality.” Since reality is a double-edged sword pointing differently to different people, don’t you think we need clearspeak—a word that can truthfully communicate and doesn’t bifurcate?
So, to follow the line of Jonathan Swift, here I offer a modest proposal. Let the word “reality” be superimposed with “Truth.” Truth and reality seem to wear similar pants, but they have different genitalia. While reality is difficult to present because it is diverse and largely dictated by privilege or privileges (or as many “s”s that can be added to yours either by nature or nurture, chance or luck, etc.), we are most likely going to understand each other better when we use the word “truth.”
However, before that can be given serious attention, let us ask ourselves: what is truth, and how can we hold it for what it is so that it doesn’t mean different things to different people at the same time, as well as mean different things to the same person at different times?
Truth itself is a nebula. However, thanks to science, which has given us the ability to have unity of observation—generally acceptable with no variations, contours, or dimensions—truth is often divided into two categories: objective and subjective truth. Objective truth is what science gave us; subjective truth is what is individually dependent. For instance, H₂O is always water, regardless of person, time, geography, or ideology.
But if a man says he has a headache, others cannot know that to be true. It is only the man who can feel the pain. Hence, others are lost to his headache. They can only believe him if they want to, which makes truth at this level take the coloration of the word “reality”—something that cannot be felt by others. A better example is given thus: If it accords with the facts, the statement “Your dress is made of silk” is true. However, the statement “I like your dress” may also be true, if the speaker is not lying. The first statement embodies an objective truth; it concerns an external phenomenon (an “object”) and can be shown to be true or false. The second statement embodies a subjective truth, characterizing as it does the feelings, opinion, or perception of an individual (a “subject”). It cannot be shown to be either true or false.
Moreover, there is another kind of truth known as intersubjective truth, pushed forward by Yuval Noah Harari. That is the kind of truth that exists between a unified group. For instance, the Christian truth is that Jesus died for the sins of the world and anyone who believes in him will have everlasting life in the hereafter. To Hindus, this is nothing but nonsense. Lord Krishna holds more truth, and to them, Jesus is not the truth.
Antithesis
Truth seems to have its own troubles, too. For instance, how much of an observable truth can we come in contact with in a social contract society? What happens with the vision of the president that is not observable? And sometimes, the steps he must take to achieve this vision, even if they are congruent with empiricism, do not always align with what the people think is needed or what they should be getting. Thomas Sowell calls this “the vision of the anointed.”
Again, do you believe something because it is true, or because you know it? How do we connect or disconnect knowledge from truth?
The ancient Greeks inquired into the differences between knowledge, truth, and belief. For Plato, knowledge is concerned with the Forms—the ultimate, unchanging reality only apprehensible through the exercise of reason. In contrast, according to Plato, the ever-changing world grasped by the senses is the subject of belief rather than knowledge.
Going by Plato’s logic, even what you see with your eyes can be deceiving. For example, when you buy a fake iPhone, you saw it, tested it, and paid for it, only to realize it was fake. Another example is the story of fake virgin blood that some women apply to the surface of their vagina to deceive their spouse, boyfriend, or whomever that they are virgins.
In such a situation, the man will be convinced by the truth of his eyes that he had deflowered his woman, while the eyes of the woman see nothing but extended chicanery. This becomes an antithesis to the thesis of adopting truth to superimpose reality.
Synthesis
The idea of using the word “truth” to repurpose the word “reality” is not to say it is a perfect substitute, but rather a clearer expression of mind in many social analytical discourses. The subjective and intersubjective arenas of truth cannot be deactivated from society; in fact, they hold a large portion of what we call society together. Harari has pointed out that it is the fictional world of stories that has glued nations together. The fiction of land, nation, state, government, even God, is why people can go to war and spill blood. Regardless, through empiricism, we can reduce noise in the echo chambers of our minds. The truth of a poor society is observable in its GDP, while the reality of some people in that poor GDP is affluence and others’ is penury. To this end, we can achieve clearspeak on certain issues.