Truth Versus Reality | Teen Ink

Truth Versus Reality

January 1, 2016
By Edward_Abraham SILVER, Norwalk, Iowa
Edward_Abraham SILVER, Norwalk, Iowa
8 articles 0 photos 0 comments

A man once told me that there is no truth in this world.  All the ideas such as Math, Science, Language, and even society is all made up.  That the only reason two plus two equals four is based solely off of one man, saying it does, and society agreeing with it blindly.  But I tell you that there is no such thing as truth, but that it is a truth.
We as human beings need to stand up for what we believe instead of someone telling us what to do.  We have to see the truth in things rather than accept what everyone else is doing.  Just because someone said up is up and down is down does not mean they are right, for all we know up could be down and down could be up.  We need to take a step back and look at one's self before we decide if we agree with everyone else or if we are going against them.  Just because everyone thinks one way, does not mean that they are right.  We need to notice that and take that challenge head on to help other people see the right way.


The cold war is a great example of this. The Soviet Union had their own sets of truths, such that communism is great, everyone is treated equally and that it worked.  They saw America as the bully and a hypocrite, that said communism is bad, you need to treat everyone equal like we do, democracy is great.  Americans saw the soviet union as the worst people in the world because they were communist, we could not fathom that a different kind of government worked besides democracy.  We thought everyone should be treated equally, or go through a war later down the timeline so that everyone is.  So the Soviet Union feeling threatens by America, decide that they had to protect themselves so America would not blow them up like they did in Japan.  America feeling threatens because the Soviets were building weapons decide to build even more weapons just in case they attacked America.  The truth was that both America and the Soviet Union felt threatened by each other, when thinking that the other country was the bad guys, so theyy did what they thought was best  at the time and built weapons to protect themselves from each other, when in reality they  just threatened every other country of a nuclear war to end life as we know it.


When I was in the seventh grade, I was fortunate enough to travel to Spain with my mom and my older sister.  While there we stayed with a host family and all they talked about how much they hated America and our current president.  They claimed that we were the reason why for all their problems and that it was all our fault.  On the night we were leaving, we were walking to our hotel, when all of a sudden people started to spit at and on us, screaming curse words at us in Spanish. They truly thought Americans were the bad guys and there was nothing I could do to stop it.  All this time I thought we were the good guys, helping people, that we are the country that people look to in times of trouble.  That day I realize our country is their trouble.


We all have different truth all over the world, thinking that someone is doing something different from us so the are the bad guys.  When in reality we only  want what is best for everyone everywhere.  We want to make sure we all have a good life with all the freedoms we can imagine.  We all care for each other, and in the end, we are all in this together.  The truth in that is that we all have different beliefs, but the reality in that is that we will never be able to get along.  That is all part of being human.



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Caligirl98 said...
on Mar. 15 2018 at 10:16 pm
I like what you said about people’s opinions! People do have very different opinions. Sometimes they are just opinions and nothing more. I too can relate to you because I traveled to countries such as Romania and Russia both before and after the wall in East Germany came down. Many people that I met were oppressed by the government and were sad they could not live in freedom. Some of them entered the lottery system in Romania to come to the US where they could live out their dreams. Some were selected and live in the US today and say they are so glad they were able to leave communist Romania! You are right that America is not all good. There are so many around the world that want to live here because of our freedoms! We all need to do our best to keep it free and help others around the world who are oppressed! If some in the government don’t want to do it then we should do it personally! The one thing I disagree with you about is about truth. (Or maybe I’m just misunderstanding you in which case I apologize). Some things are opinion but other things are truth. For example one person may believe in God and another may not but only one can be correct. There either is a God or there is not. It can’t be both ways. In this case the opinion of each person doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect the truth. Truth is truth no matter what opinions are. Is that a bit different from what you said? Best wishes!