How can I know when someone is saying the truth?

Jennifer Armstrong

studied philosophy formally and independently5h

Well, I think that this is easier said than done, especially if you do not share a common culture with a person. In my case, I came from such a heavily propagandized cultural situation that all versions of reality were already highly weaponized by the time I received them. Most of all the versions of the truth I received were heavily loaded in terms of attributing moral culpability. This situation, although unbelievable, was Rhodesia at war.

My father’s version of things was one way. Anybody who had a different story from him was somehow tricky and deceptive — especially women, but also those of other political persuasions. It’s not that they were necessarily tricking, but he deemed them so, and viewed their version of things as somehow deriving from an extreme moral corruption. I, myself, was viewed as being extremely morally corrupt, due to the threat I represented to him as a female.

Now, you go to any regular old psychologist to try to unravel familial problems, and they look for reasons, especially causes and effects. If the father doesn’t trust you, if he doesn’t even like you, then there must be some jolly old reason for it, they presume. An explanation of plain old misogyny, although true, doesn’t seem to cut it. So I had nobody to take my side, and kept wondering where the moral culpability lay. Because I am also highly analytical and creative, I kept trying to come up with a different version of things that would make sense. I mean my father saw me in a sense as “Eve”, back in the garden, full of all the vices and modes of deception that had brought down the male race.

But on the other hand, if I was actually not genetically deceptive, then it seemed he was deceptive — a situation of either-or. My weak ego and rather aggressive superego would not allow me to immediately embrace that solution, so I was stuck. Apportioning blame more evenly did not really make much sense either, since I had hardly been given a chance to prove anything about myself before I came under immense punishment and criticism. So, I kept working on the “story”, writing it down, changing it, whilst trying to build up courage to directly criticize my father.

It didn’t help, however, that in political terms I had come from the same country, and was identified with my father. This distortion on the other side made it even more difficult to see things impartially.