“If we live in a culture of spin, there is a good deal of suspicion about claims of truthfulness, so this is also a culture of suspicion.”
The words are from Miroslav Volf, theologian from Yale University talking to a group of faculty and campus religious workers over lunch (last) Friday at Pres House just off the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
He was talking about the “obligation to truthfulness” for academics (if not the expectation for politicians), for people seeking justice in a world where truth too often seems expendable for whatever cause one is pursuing. Volf didn’t use the word, but satirist Stephen Colbert’s use of the term “truthiness” — let’s just pretend what I am saying is true — has come to be seen as a pragmatic substitute for the struggle to be truthful.