Truthiness

In satire, truthiness is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

This definition is from Wickapedia

I love this word. It's relevance to so much of the experience of my life is profound. Not only with respects to the particular brand of fundangelical conservative (but not a cult) religious experience I tangled myself into, but also in so much of my personal relationships and in my own self-examinations of my grasp on "the Truth". Having started out in life with some degree of idealism about being able to find and know "the Truth", (in general, about life, the universe and everything, a notion, perhaps encouraged by the Douglas Adams books) I might have known that the universe, with it's love of irony would sit me smack dab in the heart of truthiness. My experiences with trying to find the Truth in a religion, or in a political ideology, or in the reasons why we are living and rationalizing what we are doing as individuals and as a culture, has led me to this notion of where we are now as a people on earth. The age of reason is past away. We still appeal to it nostalgically, in the way some people appeal to the "good old days" of Leave it to Beaver. Liberals seem particularly hung up on this nostalgia We keep thinking reason is going to win the day. Conservatives have evolved more rapidly with their grasp of the shift from reason to belief, as the dominant force in moving ideas. We are firmly, it seems to me, now in the age of belief. Truth is replaced with truthiness. What matters in this brave new age is not what is true, (how 1950's) but what is believed to be true. This is a much more convenient Truth. It unshackles us completely from the hastles of factual representations of claims, and opens the door to all manner of possibility (four legs baaaad, two legs gooood). As anyone with any sophistication in the new art of argument knows, the idea of a smoking gun, or an irrefutable fact, or an obvious evidence, is an absurdity. Ask a Buddhist if a rock is a rock. Or ask physicist if that table and chair are actually solid. Or ask a string theorist if there are such things as ghosts. You get my drift. Factual evidence for beliefs is too cumbersome for this complex world. To get anything done, we have to realize the issue is not Truth, but belief. and Belief is just a matter of getting someone to choose your proposal over someone else's proposal. Conservatives have been mopping the floor with liberals and progressives with their grasp of this paradigm shift. In this respect, the conservatives are the progressives and the liberals are the ones appealing to a passed age that is no longer relevant. It's hard for us liberals and progressives to give up on the ideas of using reason. We, after all, are so idealistic. But lots changes in this fast spinning ball of gas and matter. I for one plan on watching the show with my eyes wide open and my feet firmly planted in the truthiness. (the truthiness will set you free)

Note: if you find yourself encouraged and emboldened by this rallying cry to embrace the truthiness (you know who you are). might I remind you of the concept of satire.