The truth, or what we consider to be true, is closely connected to what we believe. What we believe depends on what we are used to, what we already are familiar with and feel comfortable with. Trust plays a major role in what answers we can find in our quest for truth. Usually we go through a development during our life, which also includes the orientation of our trust. Not everyone proceeds this development until the end. There can be reasons to stop at some point, sometimes getting stuck for all of the remaining life.
As a small child we grow our body and learn to use it, learn to coordinate our body, for example to do stuf with our hands or to make proper noises and speak. We achieve this with imitation, and the question of truth is mostly not yet relevant at this age. We accept what happens, what the others do and say, and we do not question it. Even when we already go to school we continue to orientate with the help of parents and teachers. They provide the authority that we need as a child. If we are lucky and grow up in a healthy environment, then our caregivers behave consistent and reasonable enough for us to not feel any need to question the truth of their actions and words. That normally changes when we become teenagers. At this age we develop our own capacity for judgement, which works best when we were allowed to play and be creative as a child while being guided by grown up role models. As teenagers, we begin to see the deficits and weaknesses of the people around us, and we are thrown back on ourselves. It is a difficult, often lonely time, where we need to find orientation with our own strength for the first time. With the beginning of puberty begins our individual search for truth, that ideally continues throughout the rest of our life.
However, the world ist quite a chaotic place, and human development is not always straight forward. Even though we grow our own capacity for judgement as teenagers, we often do not allow our verdict to be in conflict with the statement of an authority. If that happens, we abandon our verdict, try to convince ourselves that we must have made a mistake. That we are missing something we would need to make a good judgement. We loose trust in our capacity for judgement, or never build any trust to begin with. So we remain attached to authorities, and feel comfortable around all those who trust the same authority. Modern governments have made it their task to provide such an authority with universities, media companies and politicians. Experts are appointed to announce truth. This way, for a lot of people, truth is given by an authority, and not by their own reasonable mind, throughout their entire life.
At the same time we are presented with many good reasons why others know the truth better than we do, so that we do not need to be ashamed for accepting the statements of others as our truth without really understanding them. And when we also accepted that we cannot verify most statements on our own, then we have properly surrendered to the custody of authorities. Our trust in individual capacity for judgement, our own search for truth runs dry or is reduced to a narrow field of expertise. We no longer dare to touch the coherency at large. And why should we? Big names in philosophy have concluded that mankind cannot find answers for the big questions. So we get comfortable in our corner, maybe deliver one or two new thoughts in our profession, but otherwise let others inform us about how the world is set up.
We do not do the truth justice this way. And neither do we live up to our own potential. Sure, it is a big world, and there are countless statements out there, which we can impossibly all check for truth. Who did what when with whom and why? Often we do not know. And then a war ignites seemingly provoked on the basis of such statements, and thousands of young men loose their life to it. And who is right now? What is the truth? What shall I do? The truth appears to be impossible to get to if I am not not allowed to trust some authorities. We are confused and distracted from what is essential. We shall pick a side in a conflict that is presented to us as meaningful, but in the end happens beyond our reach. It is not our own conflict. In direct contact with someone I can get an impression, have a closer look, try to understand if I have the patience and experience needed. Then I can make a judgment on how to proceed with the relationship. When I am face to face with a person or a matter, then I can find truth, if I observe carefully and patiently and most of all without prejudice. That in itself is already a big challenge. It takes time, that we often do not have, because we are taken in by information that we cannot verify, coming to us indirectly, filtered and distorted through some kind of media. We should keep this on a distance as much as possible, and turn to all those beings and things that we encounter for real, which are right there in front of us and can be perceived and observed and interacted with.