First, a list of distinguishing characteristics that seem to me to help distinguish truth from its many facsimiles:
Truth is elusive.
Truth avoids institutional control.
Truth tugs at conventional syntax.
Truth hovers at the edge of the visual field.
Truth is relational.
Truth lives in the library and on the subway and on the internet, if you look carefully.
Truth is not two-sided; it’s many-sided.
Truth burrows in the body.
Truth flickers.
Truth comes on little cat feet and slips down back alleys.
Truth doesn’t always test well.
Truth invites you back for another look.
My hope is that this list will help frame and complicate our discussion of truth-telling with a sense of the challenges it entails and of its multi-dimensionality.
From “Caring for Words In A Culture of Lies” by Marilyn McEntyre
