The truth about truth, By Osmund Agbo

Perhaps, then, the deepest truth is that there are many truths, each shaped by the vantage point of the observer, each coloured by the language, history, and emotional fabric of the person who holds it. Truth, in this sense, is not a singular mountain we all climb toward from different paths, but a vast landscape of perspectives, each revealing a different contour of reality.

Last week, as yet another tragic chapter unfolded in the intractable and ever-escalating Iran-Israel conflict, I found myself in the midst of conversations, intense, impassioned, and sometimes uncomfortably raw. The participants weren’t diplomats or scholars. They were ordinary people – men and women, brown and white, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians – all fiercely devoted to their own perspectives, each convinced they were defending not merely an opinion but the truth.

One particularly striking exchange stood out. It was between two men: a Jordanian Muslim and a Nigerian Christian. The Jordanian, animated and seething with conviction, declared with unwavering finality that anyone supporting Israel’s military actions must be either ignorant or inhuman. “That’s the simple truth,” he insisted, as though all ambiguity had been resolved. His voice trembled with the weight of ancestral memory, of grief and disillusionment etched deep into his identity. 

In contrast, the Nigerian, hailing from the country’s conflict-ridden North-Central region, saw the matter through a vastly different lens. To him, Israel’s actions were not only justified, they were essential. He saw in Israel’s defiance an echo of his own people’s struggle against extremist violence, often committed in the name of Islam. His reality was one of survival against forces that claimed to speak for a religion he now associates with chaos and pain.

These two men come from vastly different geographies, cultures, and histories, but both cling with equal fervour to what they believed is “the truth.” Intriguingly, neither was lying. Neither was necessarily wrong. But their conclusions, irreconcilable as they are, emerged from the unique contexts that shaped them. That moment brought to mind a statement often attributed to physicist, Niels Bohr: “The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth — just from a different perspective.”

A few years ago, I witnessed a similar dialogue between Michael, an American Christian, and Hasib, a Pakistani Muslim. Michael spoke with calm assurance: “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him.” For him, this wasn’t mere doctrine, it was the scaffolding of his spiritual existence. 

Hasib, raised in a devout Muslim home, viewed Jesus (Isa) with profound respect, as one of Islam’s greatest prophets but ultimately believed that Muhammad was the final and most complete messenger of God. 

Both men were thoughtful, sincere, and deeply committed. Yet, the convictions they so passionately upheld may have had less to do with reasoned choice than with geography and the accident of birth. Had Michael been born in Karachi and Hasib in rural Georgia, their spiritual worldviews might have looked quite different.

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What we often call “truth” is not always the result of rigorous logic or divine revelation, but frequently the inheritance of place, language, and lineage, the stories and traditions passed down before we even learnt to question them. In a world increasingly characterised by absolutism and ideological trench warfare, few questions are as pressing or as discomforting as this: What is truth?

We inhabit a time of competing truths. Our conversations about religion, politics, morality, and identity are less about exchange and more about entrenchment. Each side, armoured in its worldview, declares itself the sole custodian of righteousness. But what if truth isn’t monolithic? What if, more often than not, it is fluid, shaped by our lived experiences, cultural environments, and emotional landscapes?

It’s crucial here to distinguish between facts and truth. Facts are objective, measurable, and verifiable. They are the raw, neutral data of existence. Truth, on the other hand, is the story we construct around those facts, a narrative sculpted by our beliefs, biases, backgrounds and deeply coloured by perception. As someone eloquently put it, “Facts are the stars. Truth is the constellation we draw between them.” Two people may look at the same night sky and see entirely different constellations. The stars remain fixed, but the meanings we assign to them do not.

This is not just abstract philosophy. It has real-world implications. The ideological chasm in American politics is a perfect example. A conservative might assert that government regulation stifles freedom, that gun ownership is a God-given right, and that taxation is essentially theft. Meanwhile, a progressive might argue that true freedom means access to healthcare and education, that gun control saves lives, and that taxes are the price we pay for a just society. These are not disagreements about facts, but about values. Each side is anchored in a different moral framework, and each constructs its own version of truth.

The problem isn’t disagreement, it’s the certainty that so often accompanies it. Certainty seduces. It simplifies. It offers a clean, comforting dichotomy between right and wrong, good and evil. But when left unexamined, certainty becomes dogma. It silences nuance, shuts down dialogue, and transforms complex human experiences into easy-to-digest slogans. It creates echo chambers in which opposing views are not only dismissed, but dehumanised.

This is why one of the most mature and underappreciated phrases in public discourse is: “It depends.” Far from a cop-out, it signals a recognition of complexity. It acknowledges that what is true in one context may be false in another. Even our beloved proverbs betray this ambiguity. We say, “look before you leap,” but also, “he who hesitates is lost.” We proclaim, “patience is a virtue,” yet we caution that “time waits for no one.” So which is it? The answer, as always, depends — on timing, on stakes, on temperament.

Truth is rarely absolute. It is shaped by context, history, trauma, and identity. A Palestinian in Gaza and a Jewish settler in the West Bank may look at the same wall, the same checkpoint, the same plot of land and see diametrically opposed realities. And both can be telling the truth as they know it. The contradiction is not in their honesty, but in their vantage point.

We’ve been conditioned to think in binaries: success or failure, right or wrong, truth or falsehood. But real wisdom resides in paradox. Courage is good, but so is caution. Speaking up is brave, but so is knowing when to stay silent. Structure brings freedom, yet freedom demands structure. In all these, context reigns supreme.

What truly endangers us is not disagreement, but the unwillingness to believe that someone else’s version of the truth might also hold water. We don’t have to agree with everyone, but we must learn to understand them. Behind every firmly held belief lies a human being, shaped by a unique constellation of influences, stories, fears, histories, and hopes. This kind of understanding doesn’t dilute conviction; it deepens humanity.

So, the next time you’re tempted to declare your perspective as the only legitimate truth, pause. Ask yourself: What would the opposite of this belief look like? And could that opposite also be true, for someone, somewhere, shaped by a different experience?

We do not perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as we are. Our truths are not mirrors of objective reality, but prisms refracting it through culture, psychology, and emotion. The more we become aware of these prisms, the more compassionate and less rigid we become.

In an age in which it is easier than ever to shout, to cancel, to condemn, the real act of courage is to listen. To lean into complexity. To resist the seductive simplicity of certainty. Life is not a courtroom in which one side wins and the other loses, it is a conversation in which every voice adds dimension to our collective understanding.

Noam Chomsky once observed that indoctrination runs so deep that even the educated often mistake obedience for objectivity. This is a powerful and unsettling truth. It suggests that much of what we take as rational, balanced, or “truthful” may in fact be the unexamined inheritance of the systems we belong to, be they political, religious, cultural, or academic. Education, while a powerful tool for liberation, is not immune to bias; in fact, it often refines the tools of conformity and persuasion. 

The liberal professor who scoffs at religious dogma but never questions the sanctity of progressive orthodoxy; the conservative intellectual who champions free thought yet recoils from questioning inherited patriotism. Both may claim to be independent thinkers, yet both may be unwittingly entangled in the frameworks they were trained to protect.

We are all, in some way, caught up, whether by loyalty to our tribe, fear of rejection, or simply the inertia of familiarity. And this realisation forces us to reconsider the way we think about truth. If our convictions are shaped, even subtly, by systems of influence we rarely question, then what we often assert as “truth” may be something far more fluid and fragile.

Perhaps, then, the deepest truth is that there are many truths, each shaped by the vantage point of the observer, each coloured by the language, history, and emotional fabric of the person who holds it. Truth, in this sense, is not a singular mountain we all climb toward from different paths, but a vast landscape of perspectives, each revealing a different contour of reality.

We are not relativists for recognising this; we are realists. We understand that no one view holds the monopoly on insight, and that humility in the face of complexity is not weakness but wisdom. The human condition does not lend itself to certainty without arrogance. And so, perhaps the most honest thing we can do is acknowledge that we are all seeking, reaching for meaning, coherence, and belonging in a world that rarely offers them in simple terms.

In that light, to live our truth is not to impose it on others, but to honour it with sincerity, and to hold space for others to do the same.

Osmund Agbo is a US-based medical doctor and author. His works include Black Grit, White Knuckles: The Philosophy of Black Renaissance and a fiction work titled The Velvet Court: Courtesan Chronicles. His latest works, Pray, Let the Shaman Die and Ma’am, I Do Not Come to You for Love, have just been released.