Verified facts and culture wars

We reach into our grab bag of verified facts to throw as weapons against the other, often inadvertently unaware that our verified facts are stripped of all context. In doing so, we contribute to the culture war.

I have been guilty of this. More than once.

Facts require a whole systems ecology to become truth.

We need to know, at the minimum, where they were created, what was present, what was missing, who was testing, what their biases were, how the facts were established, and what the purpose was.

The grab bag of facts I throw into the culture wars pit is as likely to be true but as incredibly partial as the ones thrown back at me.

If there is willingness, we might instead sit with those across the cultural divide from us and open-heartedly and open-mindedly explore all the extra domains of each of our facts.

If there is a genuine commitment to doing this, we might discover that we both have held a partial truth.

Photo Taken December 21st 2023