We all need to know the truth. It’s in everyone’s interest to know what is true. But what exactly is truth?

Truth is that which corresponds with reality. Reality is where you need to look in order to find truth.

For example, the statement “Water flows downhill” corresponds with reality. It hardly needs to be verified because we all see the empirical evidence in our direct experience every day. But it can be easily demonstrated as true by observing reality.

Let’s take another example. If you heard that you can generate an electrical current by spinning a coil of copper wire in a magnetic field, you might just take it as true because it sounds convincing, but you could easily verify the truth of the claim by experiment. i.e. by checking the empirical evidence. Which means, looking at the facts of reality. If you set out to generate electricity on this principle you would succeed because it is true.

But if you acted on the suggestion that spinning a reel of cotton in a tub of lard produced electricity you would get nowhere no matter how many times you tried and no matter how positively you thought about it or how much you wanted to believe that it was true.

Reality dictates truth

It is the facts of reality that dictate what is true. The facts of reality dictate how electricity is generated, or how one form of energy can be transformed into another. This may sound so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said. But these days it does need to be said because so many people seem to be dangerously out of touch with truth on so many issues. They seem to swallow any old nonsense as long as it is presented convincingly by an impressive authority or believed by most people they know.

It is reality that we must discover if we seek truth. We must identify the nature of objects and the properties they possess that govern how they behave. We must discover the principles that govern how various forms of matter interact with one another before they can be harnessed for our benefit. The cars planes and computers that many take for granted all work by strict rational adherence to the facts of reality, and it is the same for all successful human endeavours. We succeed to the extent that we act in accordance with the facts of reality and we fail to the extent that we do not.

This is why we all have a vested interest in discovering what is true and what is not. It is the difference between success and failure. And with respect to growing food, knowing how to be healthy, whether or not to vaccinate or harnessing cheap and abundant energy, it is the difference between life and death.

It serves us individually to act on truth and we have the power to do this if we use our minds. But is also serves us individually to live among other people who are acting on truth, in a society that pursues and values truth. It serves us to live in a rational society. Unfortunately this is not what is happening today. This is an age of disinformation, propaganda, fake news and lies. The truth is still there somewhere, buried under all of the above, and it is your job to find it.

If we value truth, reality is the page where we must all meet in any and all human exchanges of ideas or theories. Most importantly, we must all meet each other on that same page if we are to have any chance of enjoying peace, freedom, wealth and abundance. It is that important.

So what do I mean by all arriving on the same page, called objective reality?

There is only one reality. Reality is the way it is. Things are what they are. You cannot pick and choose between competing ways in which things work. Electricity is generated the way that it is. Its properties and how it behaves are the way they are. They are not open to debate. There are competing theories, only one of which corresponds to reality. One of which is true. When two people have contradictory ideas about how something works at least one of them is wrong...