Personal Truth

We go to school to learn. What we hope we are being taught is truths, because if we were being taught something that is false there would be no reason to go to school. But with that statement we need to ask, what is truth? As individuals we take in our experiences and organize them into schemas. These schemas then become our personal truths. As a society we can define what something is and what something is not based off of our individual truths and knowledge. Those truths are accepted by all of society and therefore apply to all of society.

As children everything we experience is new to us. Our senses are our only insight to the world around us. Those senses are how we take in our experiences, and therefore are the only way of finding the truth. Humans, whether consciously acknowledging it or not, have unconscious desire to organize. The information we take in on a day to day basis is then organized in our minds based off of different factors. One of the ways we organize our experiences is through schemas, this can provide a framework to help us understand future experiences. However, when something occurs that should fit a previously made schema and doesn’t we accommodate, we change our schema based off of that new experience to fit our new knowledge. The things we go through are what define our world around us. A baby seeing a dog for the first time is an example. Roxy is the family dog of the baby and is well behaved and friendly around the family as well as company. When the baby crawls over to play with Roxy, then the dog reacts nicely and kisses the baby. Because that was the first time the baby has interacted with a dog, the baby created a schema that all dogs are nice. This is statement; ‘all dogs are nice’ is the truth...

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... system and no matter what time period it is or where you are three times four will equal twelve. However this number system is created off of what we defined it as. If we wanted, we could have made three times four equal eleven. It’s based off of our definitions that we give it, and therefore is relative. That can be said about how oxygen is a necessity to life, we define what oxygen is thereby making it relative. Because we put definitions on everything, we make truth relative.

As individuals we take in our experiences and organize them into schemas. These schemas then become our personal truths. As a society we can define what something is and what something is not based off of our individual truths and knowledge. Those truths are accepted by all of society and therefore apply to all of society. Truth is relative to the time and place, and can never be absolute.