untruthiness & his friends

(pic by Robin Danar via Julee Cruise via Don Stitt via Brian Clements on Fb)

"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." --Francis Bacon

As in so many things, considering the Lojban expression of this reveals a hidden nuance. JETNU contains two arguments: 'x1 is true according to x2' is the whole of its meaning. Usually we think in terms of so-called "objective" (JETNU RODA, or 'true according to everyone') and "subjective" (JETNU DA, or 'true according to someone') truth, assigning one to hard sciences or other dogma, and the other to the arts or the man in the street. When one does not partake of the assumptions (hidden and overt) belonging to the group, one is liable to have a clearer sense of the truth, even as an individual of emotions and other biases, simply by virtue of having removed the sway of the others (the part which I am happy to now have the word "truthiness" for): this tendency to agree which is imperative in neurotypicals, and absent (or even contradicted) in aspergarians. Actually, of course, there is no mooting this RODA, there is only a ZU'I ('the usual') in that JETNU place; one might even say that 'the usual' consists of LO SIMSA PRENU, 'similar persons' who not only override the otherwise opinions of LO NARSIMSA PRENU JA NARPRE ('persons who are different, plus nonpersons'), they enjoy the privilege of not having to imagine whether these opinions exist.

One can still hope for a science that is JETNU ZI'O--true without regard to viewpoint--but that will hardly come about by the efforts of groupthink, nor by a more inclusive politics that carefully validates minority views without having to answer them. This is not to say that only saktra desires truth, but that the truth they desire resides in insight as well as systematic reasoning, nor does the result of mere reasoning force them to accept a truth they might well have reasons for knowing otherwise. Thus aspergian research--in the arts also, by the way--sometimes fails to be acknowledged (even as attempt) because it does not proceed from the body of established practice. It is not a answer to the questions everyone has been asking; it does not take part in the conversation, except to say: look at this. Hear me out.

It may take hundreds of years for that to happen. I suppose truthiness can accrue, little by little, as the air of strangeness that surrounds an unmooted truth slowly yields to familiarity. Looking back then, we wonder why so many people fought for so long not to acknowledge what seems obvious to us today. We wonder, that is, if we are not among those whose simple insights fall on deaf ears in the perpetual present of JETNU ZU'I.