We are said to live in a ‘post-truth’ world. In 2016, the term was named Oxford Word of the Year. While the immediate motivation for the term may have been a description of Donald Trump’s “war on truth”, in reality, the subversion of truth has been a strategy used for millennia by rulers, their emissaries and their spies.

From the Trojan Horse to the falsehood of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, certainty and doubt, trust and deception keep exchanging places, confusing the general populations.

History is riddled with ‘double-speak’. While one hand is held out to help, the other is filling a pocket. Where the world sees genocide in Palestine, Zionists see the ‘promised land.’ Artist Khalil Chishtee made a sculpture with plastic bags of two men embracing while each holds a gun behind his back.

Taking liberties with the truth is justified by advertisers, by politicians and by defence lawyers. It is considered acceptable because people are aware these are strategies and learn to read between the lines. People learn to negotiate fake news, as the saying goes now: “Swipe for truth and scroll for doubt — the algorithm will sort it out.”

Accessing, understanding and manipulating the ‘truth’ has preoccupied and puzzled people across history — and it continues to do so

The real casualty is not the lie, which time always reveals, but the loss of trust. Once, the media, respected public personalities and institutions, and religious leaders were expected to be truthful. Today, the public finds itself undefended, left to navigate a minefield of partisan, managed or fake news. The loss of faith is understandable. Whether in America or in Pakistan, the public feels outrage that the officials paid by their taxes to protect their borders and streets, and manage government, are only protecting their own interests.

Seeking the truth has occupied philosophers for millennia. We often use the word, yet cannot define it. Most people would say they just know in their heart of hearts or simply sense the truth. Samuel Abel, environmentalist and co-founder of the Eden Foundation, concludes we have no need of truth. It’s more pragmatic to accept shared beliefs, such as nationalism, cultural identity or religion, what Socrates called “the noble lie”, even if they are completely made up.

This is because people cannot comprehend the truth in its pure sense or don’t want to face uncomfortable truths. A person need not know how electricity is produced in order to turn on a lightbulb. It is enough to experience the reality that, when a lamp is turned on, the room gets lit.

While reality is an objective fact, truth tends to be subjective, measured by the limits of a person’s own understanding. A car crash is the reality, but how it was caused can have multiple versions, each true in its own way.

In Arabic, instead of a word for abstract ‘truth’, there is haq [reality] or sadaqat [sincerity]. The Quran asks believers to observe reality and act with sincerity. Yet, every Sufi is on a quest for ‘the truth’ and those that apparently find it cannot share what they find. Rumi explains: “A seeker of truth looks beyond the apparent and contemplates the hidden.”

So what is ‘the truth’? Plato describes truth as abstract spiritual perfection. The Sufis believe truth is synonymous with God and can only be experienced through a spiritual journey and not by rational knowledge.

Yet, no one would deny the existence of truth or say it does not matter. Society’s structures could not exist without a correlation with truth: no laws could be formulated, no scientific discoveries made, no parents teaching children correct values. So, how can ordinary people, who cannot follow the Sufi path, access truth? From the earliest societies, humans have turned to the arts to comprehend the universe.

Pablo Picasso said, “Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.” We all know an actor is playing a role, yet we easily trust the truth of the story told. The words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Bulleh Shah, William Shakespeare and many more protect and preserve universal truths from the ethos of cynicism.

The arts, with their ability to delve into the depths of human experience, bypassing the restraints of rationality, reveal profound insights that are intuitively recognised as truth.

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist.

She may be reached at durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 18th, 2026