By Fr. Victor Ferrao
Rachol, April 3, 2020: Truth has fidelity to inconsistency. It has a disruptive character. It often derails our comfort zones. The eruption of coronavirus in the world brings this hard lesson to us.
Everyone among us is displaced by this minute pathogen. As we have become azad kaidis (free prinsoners) of our own homes, maybe it is time to ponder on some home truths about humanity. Humans are fascinated by the truth. We enjoy all its flavors and may live our entire life without asking the famous question posed by Pontius Pilate to Jesus: what is truth?
The silence of Jesus to this question can be linked to the silence of Buddha where silence itself does the answering. Although this silence is disturbing, it has a (dis)articulative power. This is how truth has a way of distancing from all established opinions and positions.
Truth is not faithful to us and our structures as well as institutions. It has a way of turning around all that we hold as sacred and beyond question. It is faithful to inconsistency. It is a censura. It cuts us away from the shadows of habitual comforts of everyday life. It acts as a censor. It challenges our assumptions and presuppositions about life and opens new vistas to see the world again.
When faced with the truth of our life, we feel challenged and all that we thought was solid melts in the air. Truth gives us a new insight that subjects us and we become subjects of the true living out our fidelity to that truth.
While truth has fidelity to inconsistency, humans have a need for consistency and logicality. We like to assign things to its place. Our society enjoys its patriarchy, casteism, corruption and every form of status quo. We signify a meaning, inscribe order, morality, and happiness into it. This is why disruption that rocks our boat increases the decimals of anxiety, anger, and violence.
We have a habit to be faithful to the status-quo and we consider it a truth of our life. Those that do not observe these Lakhsman Rekha are demonized and viewed as traitors.
Today we are faced with a disobedient virus. Like every pathogen, this virus does not follow our Lakhsman Rekha. It breaks all political, ideological, religious, caste, racial as well as geographical boundaries. It breaks all human barriers. Indeed, this virus has lessons about truth and what it does and what we do with it. It has a disruptive character and is bringing a new insight into the truth of our life.
Inconsistency with our everyday life has disrupted our life. We are indeed facing the truth of our life. We do not appreciate this habit of fidelity to inconsistency that truth manifests. It literally upsets our life and we feel exiled and lost in front of this truth. Maybe we have to ask: why are we not ready to embrace the fact that the truth of a situation is in its inconsistency? The inconsistency that is let loose by the corona moment of humanity is summoning us to the truth that has a habit of being always inconsistent with the established order.
Truth does not rely on consistency but inconsistency.
There are several inconsistent lessons that are exploding from this corona moment of humanity. Let us, for now, delve on the inconsistency of truth and think about other lessons later. Truth has fidelity to inconsistency. This literally means truth is illogical. The illogicality of truth can make it inconsistent with our established institutions, beliefs, positions, assumptions and views.
Truth is not simply an orderly manifestation of the stable. Truth is highly unstable and can bite us. This is why one who knows the truth is set free. Humans operate with several theories to the truth. Almost all these theories are inconsistent with each other. The common-sense theory that we submit to is so-called the correspondence theory of truth. The correspondence theory of truth is that which says that we can picture reality as it is.
Our eyes, for instance, can picture reality as it is. This may not always be true for a person afflicted by color blindness or other disabilities. The correspondence theory of truth gives us consistency and it becomes the main foundation of the establishment of the status quo. This theory is important but its scope is limited to the picturable reality.
There is another side to the truth. This is its logicality. We call this theory as coherence theory of truth. These truths are mainly inferential and intuitive by character. At this time of human distress, our correspondence theory of truth is showing that life is being disrupted but our fidelity to the coherence theory of truth does not accept this illogicality that has infested our life.
Life is complex and so is truth. We are facing a dissident face of truth. This truth disagrees with us. We may think that truth has a consensus-building character. It does have this power. But consent is freely given by humans and it is not easy to get. This is why some even manufacture consent in societies through manipulation tactics.
Real consensus can arise only when we agree to disagree. This is the reason, we may think that dissensus or inconsistency is the fundamental character of truth. It brings us closer to the divine nature of truth as Jesus and Gandhi taught us. We seem to be facing a dissident God in the wake of the Coronavirus.
Our God seems to be disagreeing with our established ways of being human. A dissident truth that shows the dissident face of God is certainly inconsistent with our life. This dissident truth of a dissident God is challenging our anthropocentric thinking that believes that God only agrees with humanity.
We are facing a truth that God is disagreeing with us and is redrawing new space that makes room for nature and its living beings along with the poor and the marginalized humans. Our fidelity to this face of truth can bring new ways of being human in our world that is emancipating to both humans, nature and all living beings.