Just Because You’re a Truth Seeker, Doesn’t Mean You’re off the Hook

Or, how much do you really know about the ideological structures that dictate your thinking?

Among all the discoveries in the world, the one that fascinates me the most is the discovery of germ theory. Before we realised that something as small as a microorganism could cause us serious harm, we had entirely different ways of explaining human ailments.

Many chose to take a theological or a spiritual shortcut. They believed that diseases were punishments from the gods for wrongdoing or moral transgressions. Even in many present-day cultures, illnesses is still attributed to spiritual causes such as possession by malevolent spirits, witchcraft, or the evil eye. Shamans, priests, or witch doctors perform rituals, incantations, or exorcisms to drive out these spiritual influences and restore health.

But the more scientific-minded had slightly better explanations than gods and spirits playing tricks on us mortals. For example, the popular Miasma Theory proposed that diseases were caused by “bad air” or foul-smelling emanations from decomposing organic matter.

The most popular of all scientific explanations, however was the Humuoral Theory. It originated from ancient Greek medicine and was further developed by Galen in the Roman era. It posited that the body is governed by four humours, namely, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Illness arises from an imbalance of these humours. Treatment often involved practices such as bloodletting, purging, and dietary adjustments to restore equilibrium.

Humuoral Theory was in some ways a precursor to the physiological process of homeostasis — by which living organisms maintain a stable internal environment — so it actually had some scientific basis, but at the same time it also cannot be ignored that Humoural Theory is precisely what killed George Washington.

Now, no one knows precisely what Washington’s complaint was, but it might have been nothing more than a minor throat infection that required nothing but a little rest. Instead, altogether about 40 percent of his blood was removed over two days, his throat was blistered with a toxic preparation of dried bodies of Spanish flies, and for good measure, he was given an emetic to induce vomiting — all in the name of drawing out bad humours. Washington died hard, for real!

What not only fascinates me but also sometimes keeps me up at night is that even though these explanations of ailments weren’t even close to the truth, we took them as the gospel truth. I mean, without knowing that there exists something called “germs” that can create havoc in the human body, it wouldn’t have been possible to come up with a plausible hypothesis for diseases anyway — I believe Galen did the best he could with the information he had available at that time — but the fact that we always have some explanation for literally everything — no matter how farfetched or far away from reality it is — is a matter of grave concern to me.

It’s easy to laugh off these theories now, but I think it’s important to put our feet in their shoes and think about it deeply. I mean, five hundred years back, a lot of things were happening around us, and we had to find a way to explain them, and we did the best with whatever tools and information we had at hand.

Five hundred years later, even now, there are still a lot of things happening around us, and we still have to find ways to explain them — with whatever tools and information we have available.

Now, you might say that we have access to a lot lot more information and knowledge than we ever had, but still, we dunno what we dunno.

I try to see myself as part of that period when Humoural Theory or Miasma Theory or Shaman Theory or, insert-any-other-pre-germ-theory, was the norm. I deliberately try to ponder, what’s the modern equivalent of a Humoural Theory? What model of our understanding of the world, that we are super confident about, is wrong?

The last thing I want is, five hundred years from now, future human beings, i.e., our decedents, laughing at our feeble understanding of the world the way you and I laugh at something like a Humoural Theory.

Mind you, a lot of ancient theories weren’t dogmas. Even if not all, the most accepted theories followed a scientific process. Unlike the flat earth theory, they didn’t ignore evidence. Notions like the world sits on the back of a gigantic turtle and it’s turtles all the way down are what’s unscientific — but not necessarily Miasma Theory or Humoural Theory.

I think it’s important to think of any theory, model, ideology, philosophy as lenses we put on to make sense of the world. We needed these lenses back then, we need them now, and we’ll need them even five hundred years from now.

The fact is, everyone of us are wearing some lens, just that some of us aren’t aware of it. Perhaps this is the very first thing we have to acknowledge.

Until we acknowledge that we’re all rocking these lenses, we can’t even begin to fathom that had we been born of another time and place, to different parents who held different values, to different societies that held different ideologies, we would have entirely different notions about the world.

Until we come to terms with this truth, we’ll be like explorers convinced that our familiar path is the correct route, in fact, the only route through the wilderness. We’d never question the tint of our lenses or the fingerprint smudges on our worldview. This can be very dangerous!

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A HUMAN SUBJECT PARTICIPATING IN THIS UNIVERSAL GAME?

Let me propose a somewhat weird question to think about: What’s it like to be someone who’s participating in this game of making sense of the world around you? Tell me, what exactly has your experience been so far?

This is a weird question because, if you notice, I’m not asking what is it like to make sense of the world around you? Or, how do you understand the world better? No, I’m specifically asking, what is it like to be a human subject participating in this process of understanding the world?

My answer would be something like this — and I’m pretty sure it’ll be more or less the same for you as well: You see, I read books, essays, opinion pieces written by really smart people. I watch documentaries on important things. I listen to scientists, economists, philosophers, academics, diplomats, etc. I consume all sorts of information from a variety of sources, I think about them, I analyse them and try to form something I like to call an “opinion.”

This is obviously a continuous process. It’s not like that I arrive at an opinion about something someday and then stop completely. What do you think that I’m an ideologue? No! I constantly question myself and revisit my notions so that I can update them, and get closer and closer to the truth.

When I talk to other people, I’m constantly testing my understanding of the truth against other people’s understanding of the truth. I’m someone you can most probably call a “truth seeker.” Really, that’s what I am after — the truth!

And, not only that. As a serious player in this game of understanding the world better, I also see a lot of players who aren’t actively trying to change their mind about what they already believe in. They’re people who have just decided to believe in something — which either their family taught them, or they picked up at the school they went to, or worse, they learnt about it from their favourite YouTube channel — all without any sort of scrutiny.

These are the people who treat their ideologies as their babies. For them, ideas aren’t rugged experiments to be kicked around. They’re fragile, precious babies to be adored and protected. “It’s the most beautiful baby in the whole world, and dare you say anything opposite!”

If you love their baby, they’ll be your best of friends. If you even mention any other baby that you also find kind of cute, they’ll spend the rest of their lives screaming at you for being a heretic.

Their adopted ideology is their only truth, and It’s precisely what keeps them blinded from the real truth by derailing the process of understanding things better.

They are nothing but fanatics. I’m not like them. Honestly, I feel bad for them. These people, these zealots, quite frankly, are the real problems to the society.

So, there you have it. This is more or less how I see myself as a member in this society trying to understand things better. I’m a truth seeker. I experiment with different ideas, kind of like a scientist. And I believe that people who aren’t rational about their beliefs and ideas are nothing but fanatics. I’d even go as far as to call them fundamentalists.

This is how I’ve always seen myself. But, it turns out that I’ve been nothing but in the wrong all this time. I’m not actually a truth seeker, at least according to the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek.

Žižek would most likely say that I lack a deeper level of awareness about the game that I’m actually participating in everyday of my life. According to him, even I’m someone who’s blinded by my ideology.

If you know anything about Žižek, you must know that he isn’t really the most accessible philosopher of all. I’ve tried to read him and watch his interviews multiple times, but I’ve drawn blanks most of the time. It takes a while to figure him.

Now, according to Žižek, I’m not someone who’s searching for the truth. According to him, it’s not that the concept of an ideology is reserved only for fanatics or people who’ve given up on the search for truth. No!

Everyone’s an ideologue. According to Žižek, even if we’re not aware of it, we’re always making sense of the world through the lens of an ideology. This means, no matter how good my intentions are, no matter how forthright I am in seeking out opposing opinions, no matter how honest I am in NOT following some codified doctrine, no matter how much I say that I’ll seek out the truth my whole life even if I can never ever arrive at it, IT DOESN’T MATTER! All of us still base our understanding of things off of an ideology, or more appropriately, off of a bunch of different ideologies stacked on top of each other that have huge effects on our thoughts, values, desires, and how we end up making sense of the world.

The central question that Žižek raises is not, “Do we have an ideology?” But, “How much do we really know about the ideological structures that dictate our thinking?”

YOU MUST REALISE THAT THE WORD “TAJ MAHAL” IS NOT THE ACTUAL MAUSOLEUM

As a kid, when I first discovered that in maths, a multiplication is actually a shortcut to add a lot of numbers together — 5 multiplied by 5 is nothing but avoiding the tedious process of doing 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 +5 — I was kind of blown away. What an ingenious way to quickly add a lot of numbers together!

We take similar shortcuts when we use any sort of nomenclature. For example, The name “Taj Mahal” is a symbol that represents the ivory-white marble mausoleum the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan had commissioned in the year 1631 to house the tomb of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal in the city of Agra. A nomenclature is nothing but a shortcut to an idea, a concept, a phenomenon, a thing, a philosophy, or a person.

But unlike maths, where multiplying the number 5 five times is exactly equal to adding it five times, the same cannot be said about nomenclature. Nomenclature involves language, and whenever there’s language involved things get a little murky.

For example, the word “Taj Mahal” is only a representation, a sort of pronoun to the actual mausoleum. Just like a photo of the Taj Mahal isn’t the actual Taj Mahal, the word “Taj Mahal” isn’t the actual mausoleum.

It’s super super important to understand that words usually don’t capture everything. When I say the word “dog,” the image you conjure up in your mind would be very different from what I’d conjure up in my mind. While I might think of an Indian native dog, you’d think of a different breed based on where you’re from. While I think of a brown dog that is running around, you might have a different image in mind.

Having said that, despite its drawbacks, even if words don’t capture the whole picture, they still do a pretty good job at helping us communicate most of the time.

But “dog” is a very simplistic example. When words are combined, they give rise to more complex fictional symbols, such as rituals, traditions, and norms. They undeniably help us communicate ideas better, but we must also recognise that there’s nothing objective about them. A simple phrase like “respecting your elders” would mean very different things for someone who grew up in an eastern culture v someone who grew up in a western culture.

And when you combine rituals, traditions, norms and make even more complex symbols, you create ideologies, religions, schools of thoughts, philosophies, and social and economic policies. Suddenly, you have things like conservatism, progressivism, postmodernism, stoicism, liberalism, and so on and on. No matter how much you explain them in intricate detail, they would never mean exactly the same to two different people.

When we use these symbols to understand big things, like how the world works, the roles of individuals within a society, the relationships between different groups, the purpose of ethics and morality, etc. we are doing nothing but making sense of the world through the framework of an ideology.

We don’t actually access the truth when we try to see the world through the lens of some ideology. Our realities are distorted by subjective symbols influenced by various factors such as where we grew up, our family, our schooling, the kinds of videos we watch, whom we’re friends with, etc., that presents a simplified picture of the world to us. It’s like looking out at the world through a mosaic crafted from the fragments of our experiences, each piece adding its own tint to the picture we perceive. The picture we perceive is never the reality.

Having an ideology is not something that’s necessarily bad. The central question isn’t whether to have an ideology or not. It would be literally impossible to understand the world without having any ideology to bank on. The central question is: how self-aware are we of ours? It’s a call to action for people to think critically and understand the true nature of the game that they’re all participating in.

Ideologies are designed to take the gaps in our understanding and patch them up. Like a skilled tailor hemming the frayed edges of a beloved garment, ideologies fashion a world so neat and tidy that it’s as if the gaps never existed in the first place.

Ideologies are like maps. As maps are never the territory, ideologies are never the reality. The lenses we put on to understand the world also distort and mask the true nature of the world. It is because people often are at the mercy of ideologies to view and understand the world and thereby take action that makes it a particularly dangerous tool — especially if it’s not well understood.

Ideologies give people a very narrow lens to see the world, and then convince them that what they’re seeing is the only way to see things. This means that I am not off the hook just by claiming to be a truth seeker. No, I’m still living under the structures of an ideology in big ways when I claim that being a truth seeker is the only way forward, and anybody who isn’t following this ideology is an ideologue. How does it make me any different from any other ideologue?

Žižek has a great line about this. He says, “The minimum necessary structuring ingredient of every ideology is to distance itself from another ideology, to denounce its other as ideology.” Which means, the defining factor of any ideology is to set itself apart from all other ideologies so that it can criticise them precisely for being ideologies. We are never more entrenched in ideology than when we believe ourselves to be outside of it.