Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality

Do you think you are thinking independently?

Is what you think is the truth really the truth?

These are some questions I started asking myself after reading a few chapters from Hector Macdonald’s Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality [1].

Living in this world where rumors, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and emotional incitement are replacing factual analysis in this post-truth era, those with ulterior motives only depict one side of truth – a multi-faceted body. So, we must keep our eyes open to see how those with ulterior motives select, process, and shape reality. In this book, MacDonald (2018) analyzed the tactics of information disseminators to deal with the truth one by one to help us know better in this post-truth era. He used vivid stories to show how truth can be dismembered, distorted, and obscured by messengers. Based on numerous examples, he sums up the misguided tactics and shows us how competing truths are used to prove points and unite people.

Question

So, how can the truth mislead us? What tricks do misleaders use? And how can we avoid being misled by competing truths in this post-truth era?

I like to see the operating mechanism of truth from the storytelling perspective. From a storytelling perspective, there are two most common ways to mislead. The misleaders wrap the truth in a story, weaken the story’s background, and sometimes only present parts of the truth.

• Wrapping the truth in a story.

We often see this kind of story in commercials: Emily, who was told she had cancer two years ago, was desperate and had suicidal thoughts. Later, with the encouragement of her lover, she regained confidence and insisted on homemade nutritious meals, exercise, and a daily routine. Two years later, Emily miraculously beat cancer and returned to being healthy. Later, to benefit more cancer patients, she made her “anti-cancer diet” public and became an anti-cancer ambassador and spokesperson for many food brands. Her cancer-fighting successes were also widely shared.

Is Emily’s story inspiring? Yeah! But would you be disappointed if I told you this inspiring story wasn’t true? Emily knew she had cancer in the first place, but she was later told it was misdiagnosed. Therefore, although she has been adhering to the “anti-cancer diet,” she cannot beat the cancer cells. As a businesswoman, Emily did not confess to consumers that she “doesn’t have cancer” but acted as an inspiring anti-cancer influencer. She finally gained both fame and fortune. Most consumers believe in paying for Emily’s “anti-cancer diet” and success. They firmly believe that as long as they follow Emily’s health advice, they can prevent cancer.

• Weakening the story’s background or presenting parts of the truth.

For example, in the pharmaceutical world, the pharmaceutical company will tell investors, “Compared with other drugs of the same type, this drug will not damage liver function even if taken for a long time.” However, the company will ignore the fact that the same drug can cause damage to the kidney. The pharmaceutical company wins sponsorship by weakening the story’s background or hiding other key information. Because we only have part of the truth, we can only blindly judge and respond to the status quo. Some decisions are harmless, but some will hurt us one day.

So, what should we do to avoid drowning in a flood of information? Hector MacDonald gave us three pieces of advice.

1. Don’t jump to conclusions.

In the internet age, opinion always precedes fact, and emotion always trumps everything. When a news event or opinion emerges, we should observe it calmly first, not be persuaded by any opinion the first time, and not be guided by any emotion. Instead, check the message’s source, use the most helpful context as a frame of reference, and change your perception of events and people by changing the context.

1. Listen to different opinions.

Listening to other people’s opinions can give us different perspectives to analyze the nature of events and restore a fact closest to the truth. In the era of fragmented information, multi-dimensional interpretation can help us obtain more comprehensive, detailed, and professional information.

1. Ask a few more questions.

When you come across some success stories and health advice, remember to ask yourself questions. For example, when businesses advertise that eating red dates can nourish the blood. If so, is there a medical theory to support it? If yes, who provided the rationale? Which book? Is this book authoritative? Have all the theories been proven valid? Etc.

In conclusion, we think we have the truth all along, but we often take stories as facts daily and believe unsubstantiated information, especially investment, consumption, and health advice. As information consumers in the post-truth era, being deceived is sometimes inevitable. Only by understanding how truth works can we process information more intelligently and improve how we react to the truth.

Work Cited

MacDonald H. (2018). Truth: How the many sides to every story shape our reality. Bantam Press.

?