There are certain truths that most of us hold to be absolutes, whether they are truths about the way in which the world works, truths about morality, or even truths that have been handed down to us.
Everything that we hold as truth, we should question.
This is not to say that our truths are untrue, but rather that a truth that has not been questioned, reasoned, and investigated is not a truth but an assumption.
Additionally, there are certain things that our world claims to be true that we should question.
For most of us, we were taught to accept truth without questioning it, because we did not have the authority to question it.
This has led to a political and social reality in which norms and the status quo are accepted as unequivocally foundational to social order when, in fact, they aren’t.
Politics is especially ripe with basing foundational truths on assumptions rather than skeptical investigation, and we are paying the price with a narrow-minded, polarizing social order based on privilege and presumed power.
Ideologues (people who hold unswervingly to their ideology) would have you believe there is an ultimate truth around freedom, capitalism, gun control, poverty, social issues, what have you, even though they can only see through their own, limited perspective.
We need to question these perspectives because they are inherently limited and incomplete.
Based on our own personal perspectives, we all have our own so-called truths that we take for granted though we have never taken the time to challenge them.
Some of those truths are political, social, economic, or even religious.
We should be questioning all of it to test what is true, what is false, and what is perspective.
And, above all, we need to remember that a shift in perspective can change an entire outlook on the way the world works.
In my next post, I will discuss specifically how we can question and challenge existing power structures.