Month: October 2019

“In my experience, the truth is usually in between the two stories.”

“In my experience, the truth is usually in between the two stories.”

How many times have you heard someone use this line? I’ve lost count. It’s an awfully convenient line, allowing the speaker to sound sophisticated and wise while also providing an excuse not to investigate the matter.

It’s nonsense.

“The truth” is simply a name for what really happened. It doesn’t move around as more people speak. It’s not a weighted moving average. It’s what actually went down in the real world, and the truth itself never alters no matter how many false statements are made. In my experience — and I suspect in that of most others, really — it’s extremely common for one version of events to be much, much closer to the truth than another is. Only investigation will let us determine where the truth lies.

If no real investigation is possible, it may make sense to assume the truth is somewhere vaguely in between the two versions. If there is genuinely no other evidence and no hope of acquiring any, what else can the evaluator do? The only options are to do nothing at all, to choose between them based on the evaluator’s own prejudices, or to assume approximately equal credibility. Someone might legitimately choose that last option when no better choices are available.

More often, though, it’s a statement born of laziness. The speaker just doesn’t want to be bothered determining the truth, so assumes it to be somewhere near a sort of compromise. Unless some other party is supervising, there’s no downside for the person taking this shortcut … but there sure is for the truthteller.

The Internet Is Great

I recently followed the tale of a young man, 14 years old, whose mother drugged him and tattooed her own name on his arm while he was unconscious. He asked Reddit for help, and Reddit came through with an outpouring of support and strong urgings to call the police. He did so, and he and his brother were rescued by CPS, while his mother is now jailed. It was a deeply satisfying ending to a story which should never have happened.

This story got me thinking about how important the Internet can be to young people in such families. This poor guy could have called the police right away … but he didn’t know that. People who grow up in these environments have no idea what is and isn’t actionable. No one has ever cared or helped before, so why would they now?

With several hundred adults telling him that this isn’t normal, that the police will help you, that maybe no one had ever listened or helped before but this one was genuinely different, the young man found enough hope to call.

If he had lived forty years ago, with no Internet access, he would have had no way of knowing that his crazy mother had finally crossed a line which would make others care. If he didn’t give up entirely, he would probably have continued timidly telling other people that his mother was crazy and possessive and controlling, and continued receiving big smirks and patronizing “explanations” that his mother loved him very much and only wanted him to be safe.

He would have ended up like me, wandering lost through his twenties, firmly repressing it, and occasionally falling apart from the unresolved trauma, utterly certain that no one would ever, ever care.

The Internet is a wonderful thing.