Posts tagged:Truth

six wishes for 2024 (6/6): truth

One of my highlights of 20231 was an open air live concert by Cat Stevens / Yusuf at Stadtpark Hamburg. After the concert, my son and I played many of his songs for a couple of weeks, and one whose lyrics stuck with me was “In the end” where each verse starts with: “You can’t bargain with the truth”2. Of course not, we’ll all say and nod, it’s the truth. But then, being truthful: We all cover small blunders with pretty little lies; we all package unpleasant feedback in ornate narrations; we all push the big inconvenient truths of sickness, old age, death, or climate collapse to the margins of our minds. All these non-truths helps us function in the world, and we rightly call them smart, kind, or practical. But the truth within doesn’t go away – just like in that other famous song fragment: There is a truth in everything, that’s how the light gets in3.

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Four truths about climate action

Last Friday, in many countries around the world, millions were out on the streets to protest for action against climate change. In Germany, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in more than 500 towns[1]. Over the weekend, newspapers and social media buzzed with photos showing large crowds in public places; many of my friends and acquaintances posted their own snapshots from the protest marches.

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How Facts Can Change

For the last couple of days, everybody has been talking about #alternativefacts. In this medial uproar, many (at least in my own echo chambers and filter bubbles) talk and write as if there were “facts” on the one hand, and “lies” on the other, with (of course) the “other side” being cast as the intentional producers of lies. As all simplified generalisations, this one, too, is problematic – to say the least.

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(Almost) Fifty Shades of Truth

The truth is struggling. Ever since The Economist, in one of its September issues, discovered and described the “post-truth world” we’re living in[1], it has become fashionable to complain about the disintegration of truth. More recently, this complaint has been further intensified by a broad debate about the nature and role of “fake news”[2]. If only, common sense and common opinions seem to say, we could get rid of all misperceptions, errors, lies, and outright deceit once and for all – then, we could live in a peaceful world made of truths, happily ever after.

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Arising from a star: Becoming a person in social media

It started with a tweet[1]. On May 10th, 2015, @raue tweeted: “I should maybe blog again, so someone can praise it enthusiastically, so I can retweet, and you can then fav that”; I replied: “What about the reverse? I fav your tweet so you can retweet it, and then I blog about it?” – and retweet he did[2]. So here I am, stuck with a casual commitment made online. Now I have to deliver – or else: The whole online universe will feel let down, and it’ll be my fault.

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Why there cannot be any truth(s) about sustainability

The current edition of Harvard Business Review features an article with the heavy title “The truth about CSR”. I disagree with many arguments in this article. I’m also generally skeptical about any claim to “the truth”, no matter about what. More importantly, however, I think that sustainability – and, by consequence, it’s organisational manifestation as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) – is an area in which it is particularly unlikely that any truth(s) can be asserted for good.

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