Over 2,000 years ago, Pilate cynically asked, “What is truth?” That question has become ever more important today in our fast-moving, polarized society with its explosion of anonymous social media posts, virtual reality, conspiracy theories, internet trolls and social influencers working to manipulate our spending, voting and desires. To this toxic brew, add the explosive use of AI technology able to alter image and content! On what are the grounds of truth and belief now based? Healthy societies are built on trust and confidence in wise leaders and those at every level whom we can rely on to be truthful, people of integrity. Once trust is lost it’s very hard to restore. Today, “What is truth?” is an existential question for us all.
I once knew a man who made a very good living lecturing major corporations on business ethics. He told me that it was really a waste of time: If people hadn’t already learned ethics and moral behavior at their mother’s knees, no lectures were going to fill the gap, change attitudes or behavior. I spend a lot of time visiting senior centers and sometimes say to residents who feel that the world has passed them by, and they’re discarded and irrelevant to contemporary society, that they are its “wisdom keepers,” and I tell them to spend as much time with their grandchildren as they can.
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“Whom do you trust and why?” is a question we have to ask ourselves along with, “Why should anyone trust me?” In our most polarized and contentious society, a healthy future depends on the answers. It depends on our society’s ability to express and participate in intergenerational knowledge and experience. It depends on our ability to discern lies and have the courage to say, “The Emperor has no clothes!” At whose knees are our youngest and most vulnerable learning and what are they absorbing? Our future requires that we all wrestle with Pilate’s old question.
Zara Renander (Chaplain to Big Sky Palliative and Hospice Care) is an Episcopalian and can be reached at 406-543-4408 or jacqueline.renander@Bigskyhhh.com.
