Seeking Truth in a Post-Truth World
Process Theology, Václav Havel, and Living in Truth
(With gratitude to Havel for the phrase "living in truth")
Václav Havel (1936–2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, and dissident who became the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, playing a key role in the peaceful transition from communism to democracy. His works, including The Power of the Powerless, emphasized the moral responsibility of individuals to resist oppressive regimes through truth and nonviolent resistance. As a leader, he championed human rights, civic engagement, and the enduring power of culture and conscience in shaping democratic societies.
Havel used the phrase living in truth to describe the moral and political responsibility of resisting falsehood, deception, and ideological control. It does not involve a claim to have the truth, but it does involve believing that there are objective truths to be discovered and to live with a passion for these truths, whatever the consequences, Thus living in truth is more than rejecting lies—it is an active commitment to honesty - to aligning oneself with reality as it has been, as it is, and as it could be. It is a commitment to honoring the past while remaining open to the possibilities of the future - an act of trust in the unfolding presence of truth—not as a possession, but as a relationship.
God as a Living Archive of Past Events
Open and relational thinkers often say that the divine reality—God—lures us toward the realization of important values: truth, goodness, beauty, peace, and healthy creativity. This framing emphasizes what God does in the world, suggesting an active presence guiding creation forward. But this way of speaking can also leave the impression of a disembodied spirit named “God,” acting as the subject of a sentence, with divine activity as its predicate.
I want to suggest another way of thinking about God—not only as an agent who influences the world but as the very place where facts reside.
By “fact,” I do not mean merely an objective occurrence—an external event in space and time—but an occasion of experience. Facts are not just things that happen; they are lived realities, moments in which the world comes into being through feeling, decision, and relation. In the case of living beings, facts include not only external events but also the emotions, sensations, and subjective experiences that arise as those events unfold. Every moment of existence is a fact—not just as something that is known but as something that is felt.
God, in this sense, is not merely an observer of reality but its living archive, the receptacle in which all facts—all occasions of experience—are held with tender care. Nothing is lost. Every joy, every sorrow, every nuance of feeling that emerges in the unfolding of life—God receives it all. This divine receptacle does not simply record facts as an impersonal ledger might; rather, it feels them, absorbing them into a consciousness that is both infinitely vast and intimately compassionate.
Yet God’s receptivity is not limited to what has actually happened. God also senses the world in terms of what could have been but was not. Every lost opportunity, every unrealized possibility, every tragedy that might have been averted—these, too, are held within the divine awareness. God not only remembers what was but also grieves what might have been. Every occasion of experience carries within it possibilities—some realized, some missed, some forever lost—and God takes them all into the divine life.
In human life, facts are never encountered in pure isolation; they are always facts-as-interpreted. Our awareness of what happens is shaped by memory, perspective, context, and emotion. No two people experience the same event in exactly the same way, nor do they recount it with identical significance. What we call "truth" is always filtered through the lenses of our histories, cultures, and conceptual frameworks. This does not mean that truth is merely subjective or that all interpretations are equally valid—it means that all human knowledge of reality is perspectival. We glimpse the world from particular vantage points, with insights that are partial yet real. In contrast, God’s receptivity is all-encompassing, holding every fact as it was lived, in all its complexity, without distortion, dismissal, or reduction. God is not bound by a single perspective but receives the fullness of experience, including the multiple ways it has been understood, misunderstood, or forgotten.
The Truth of Ideals
To live in truth, however, involves more than an orientation toward the past, toward historical truths. It also calls for an openness to the present and future: to what can be and needs to be if there is to be mutual flourishing for the world. Here, a different kind of "fact" is at work—not just the facts of what has been but the facts of normative possibilities, aspirational ideals, and healthy hopes that are good for the world. These are not facts in the conventional sense of completed occurrences, but they are nonetheless real. They exist as possibilities in the fabric of existence, as invitations toward wholeness, justice, and compassion.
If it seems odd to call them “facts,” just call them lures—divine possibilities that beckon the world forward. Just as God holds the past with unfailing tenderness, God also offers the world a future infused with beauty, love, and transformation. These lures are not coercive; they do not determine the future in advance. But they are present, whispering in every moment, urging creation toward a reality in which truth is not merely recognized but realized in ways that heal, liberate, and renew.
Scientific and Religious Truths
Living in truth also involves recognizing the different ways in which truth expresses itself. Scientific truths describe the patterns and structures of the physical universe—how things function, interact, and evolve. They are subject to testing, revision, and refinement, grounded in empirical observation and logical reasoning. Religious truths, on the other hand, concern the deeper meanings and values that shape human life—questions of purpose, morality, love, and ultimate reality. These truths are not always verifiable in the scientific sense, yet they are no less real in shaping how people live and understand the world.
The two are not in opposition but complement each other. Science seeks truth in the unfolding nature of the cosmos; religion seeks truth in the unfolding nature of meaning, value, and relationality. Both are ways of engaging with reality—one describing the external structures of existence, the other exploring the internal and communal dimensions of experience. To live in truth is to embrace both: to honor the rigor of scientific discovery while also remaining open to the moral and spiritual wisdom that calls us toward compassion, justice, and transcendence.
Truth is Always More than Us
Truth is never something external to us, something merely "out there" to be grasped. We are always already living inside truth—the truths of the past, present, and future. The past shapes us, whether we acknowledge it or not; the present unfolds through our decisions and awareness; the future lures us forward with its possibilities. To live in truth is not to possess it as an object but to participate in it as a dynamic, unfolding reality.
To live in truth is not to claim that one possesses the truth. It is not to have certainty. But it is to believe that there are objective truths, indeed objective facts, that exist independently of human projection, and to have a passion for being honest to them. My suggestion is that these facts reside in God and in an important sense are God. They are the objective content of the divine life.
This means refusing to manipulate facts for personal or political gain, resisting the temptation to reduce truth to ideology, and committing to the hard work of discernment, humility, and intellectual integrity. It is an ongoing process, an orientation of openness, curiosity, and courage.
In a world where facts are denied, distorted, or forgotten, God remains the place where nothing is erased, where no experience is overlooked, where reality—both outer and inner—continues to exist in its full depth. God is not a person if that means an entity located in a region of the sky, but rather a place, field - an environment of truth transcending a house of lies.
This understanding of God resists both totalitarian claims to absolute knowledge and postmodern skepticism that dissolves truth into mere perspective. Instead, it affirms that truth is real and enduring—but always relational, always unfolding in the interplay between past, present, and future. To live in truth, then, is not to grasp it as a static possession but to participate in the ongoing reality of God, the place where all facts—all occasions of experience, realized and unrealized, past and possible—are gathered, remembered, and transformed by divine care.
Havel used the phrase living in truth to describe the moral and political responsibility of resisting falsehood, deception, and ideological control. It does not involve a claim to have the truth, but it does involve believing that there are objective truths to be discovered and to live with a passion for these truths, whatever the consequences, Thus living in truth is more than rejecting lies—it is an active commitment to honesty - to aligning oneself with reality as it has been, as it is, and as it could be. It is a commitment to honoring the past while remaining open to the possibilities of the future - an act of trust in the unfolding presence of truth—not as a possession, but as a relationship.
God as a Living Archive of Past Events
Open and relational thinkers often say that the divine reality—God—lures us toward the realization of important values: truth, goodness, beauty, peace, and healthy creativity. This framing emphasizes what God does in the world, suggesting an active presence guiding creation forward. But this way of speaking can also leave the impression of a disembodied spirit named “God,” acting as the subject of a sentence, with divine activity as its predicate.
I want to suggest another way of thinking about God—not only as an agent who influences the world but as the very place where facts reside.
By “fact,” I do not mean merely an objective occurrence—an external event in space and time—but an occasion of experience. Facts are not just things that happen; they are lived realities, moments in which the world comes into being through feeling, decision, and relation. In the case of living beings, facts include not only external events but also the emotions, sensations, and subjective experiences that arise as those events unfold. Every moment of existence is a fact—not just as something that is known but as something that is felt.
God, in this sense, is not merely an observer of reality but its living archive, the receptacle in which all facts—all occasions of experience—are held with tender care. Nothing is lost. Every joy, every sorrow, every nuance of feeling that emerges in the unfolding of life—God receives it all. This divine receptacle does not simply record facts as an impersonal ledger might; rather, it feels them, absorbing them into a consciousness that is both infinitely vast and intimately compassionate.
Yet God’s receptivity is not limited to what has actually happened. God also senses the world in terms of what could have been but was not. Every lost opportunity, every unrealized possibility, every tragedy that might have been averted—these, too, are held within the divine awareness. God not only remembers what was but also grieves what might have been. Every occasion of experience carries within it possibilities—some realized, some missed, some forever lost—and God takes them all into the divine life.
In human life, facts are never encountered in pure isolation; they are always facts-as-interpreted. Our awareness of what happens is shaped by memory, perspective, context, and emotion. No two people experience the same event in exactly the same way, nor do they recount it with identical significance. What we call "truth" is always filtered through the lenses of our histories, cultures, and conceptual frameworks. This does not mean that truth is merely subjective or that all interpretations are equally valid—it means that all human knowledge of reality is perspectival. We glimpse the world from particular vantage points, with insights that are partial yet real. In contrast, God’s receptivity is all-encompassing, holding every fact as it was lived, in all its complexity, without distortion, dismissal, or reduction. God is not bound by a single perspective but receives the fullness of experience, including the multiple ways it has been understood, misunderstood, or forgotten.
The Truth of Ideals
To live in truth, however, involves more than an orientation toward the past, toward historical truths. It also calls for an openness to the present and future: to what can be and needs to be if there is to be mutual flourishing for the world. Here, a different kind of "fact" is at work—not just the facts of what has been but the facts of normative possibilities, aspirational ideals, and healthy hopes that are good for the world. These are not facts in the conventional sense of completed occurrences, but they are nonetheless real. They exist as possibilities in the fabric of existence, as invitations toward wholeness, justice, and compassion.
If it seems odd to call them “facts,” just call them lures—divine possibilities that beckon the world forward. Just as God holds the past with unfailing tenderness, God also offers the world a future infused with beauty, love, and transformation. These lures are not coercive; they do not determine the future in advance. But they are present, whispering in every moment, urging creation toward a reality in which truth is not merely recognized but realized in ways that heal, liberate, and renew.
Scientific and Religious Truths
Living in truth also involves recognizing the different ways in which truth expresses itself. Scientific truths describe the patterns and structures of the physical universe—how things function, interact, and evolve. They are subject to testing, revision, and refinement, grounded in empirical observation and logical reasoning. Religious truths, on the other hand, concern the deeper meanings and values that shape human life—questions of purpose, morality, love, and ultimate reality. These truths are not always verifiable in the scientific sense, yet they are no less real in shaping how people live and understand the world.
The two are not in opposition but complement each other. Science seeks truth in the unfolding nature of the cosmos; religion seeks truth in the unfolding nature of meaning, value, and relationality. Both are ways of engaging with reality—one describing the external structures of existence, the other exploring the internal and communal dimensions of experience. To live in truth is to embrace both: to honor the rigor of scientific discovery while also remaining open to the moral and spiritual wisdom that calls us toward compassion, justice, and transcendence.
Truth is Always More than Us
Truth is never something external to us, something merely "out there" to be grasped. We are always already living inside truth—the truths of the past, present, and future. The past shapes us, whether we acknowledge it or not; the present unfolds through our decisions and awareness; the future lures us forward with its possibilities. To live in truth is not to possess it as an object but to participate in it as a dynamic, unfolding reality.
To live in truth is not to claim that one possesses the truth. It is not to have certainty. But it is to believe that there are objective truths, indeed objective facts, that exist independently of human projection, and to have a passion for being honest to them. My suggestion is that these facts reside in God and in an important sense are God. They are the objective content of the divine life.
This means refusing to manipulate facts for personal or political gain, resisting the temptation to reduce truth to ideology, and committing to the hard work of discernment, humility, and intellectual integrity. It is an ongoing process, an orientation of openness, curiosity, and courage.
In a world where facts are denied, distorted, or forgotten, God remains the place where nothing is erased, where no experience is overlooked, where reality—both outer and inner—continues to exist in its full depth. God is not a person if that means an entity located in a region of the sky, but rather a place, field - an environment of truth transcending a house of lies.
This understanding of God resists both totalitarian claims to absolute knowledge and postmodern skepticism that dissolves truth into mere perspective. Instead, it affirms that truth is real and enduring—but always relational, always unfolding in the interplay between past, present, and future. To live in truth, then, is not to grasp it as a static possession but to participate in the ongoing reality of God, the place where all facts—all occasions of experience, realized and unrealized, past and possible—are gathered, remembered, and transformed by divine care.
Understanding Post-Truth
Lessons from Central European Philosophy after 1968
In Western Europe, especially in France, after 1968 continental philosophy took a postmodern turn: a loss of faith not only in grand narratives, but also in a coherent subject, in stable meaning, and in absolute truth. Meaning—Jacques Derrida taught—flickers, subverts itself, is ever in flux. His philosophy of deconstruction represented, he wrote, “the least necessary condition for identifying and combatting the totalitarian risk.”
Postmodernism, conceived in large part by the Left as a safeguard for pluralism and an antidote to totalizing ideologies, has today, half a century later, became a weapon of an encroaching neo-totalitarianism of the Right. As Peter Pomerantsev wrote of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in this new world “nothing is true and everything is possible.”
In the aftermath of the Prague Spring, the very same tradition of continental philosophy developed differently in East and Central Europe. This difference was very much bound up with a confrontation with the totalitarian legacy: the imperative was to reject grand narratives claiming to possess absolute truth, while not rejecting the existence of truth as such.
Marci Shore is associate professor of history at Yale University and Visiting Fellow at the IWM. She is the author of "Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968," "The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe," and, most recently, "The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution." At the time of the event she was at work on a longer book project titled “Phenomenological Encounters: Scenes from Central Europe.”
Postmodernism, conceived in large part by the Left as a safeguard for pluralism and an antidote to totalizing ideologies, has today, half a century later, became a weapon of an encroaching neo-totalitarianism of the Right. As Peter Pomerantsev wrote of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in this new world “nothing is true and everything is possible.”
In the aftermath of the Prague Spring, the very same tradition of continental philosophy developed differently in East and Central Europe. This difference was very much bound up with a confrontation with the totalitarian legacy: the imperative was to reject grand narratives claiming to possess absolute truth, while not rejecting the existence of truth as such.
Marci Shore is associate professor of history at Yale University and Visiting Fellow at the IWM. She is the author of "Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968," "The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe," and, most recently, "The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution." At the time of the event she was at work on a longer book project titled “Phenomenological Encounters: Scenes from Central Europe.”
Post-Truth
Imagine that, deep down, you think there are no grand narratives, no objective truth, that all words are but copies of copies of copies, that everyone is seeking power over others, and that everything is PR. You live in an age of Post-Truth. The idea of an objective truth is old-fashioned, out of date. You realize that all alleged truths are constructions, and that your own ideas as well are such constructions.
You work for a politician, and your job is to craft narratives that serve his purposes. One of your narratives is that your own narratives are "true" and that news, except the news you promote, is "fake news." This is very effective. You watch as people adopt your version of reality, not because it is logically sound or factually grounded, but because it is emotionally compelling and reinforces their preexisting loyalties. You understand that belief is not about facts; it is about identity, about belonging. And so you shape not just words, but entire worldviews.
You have learned that what matters is not accuracy, but resonance. People don’t crave truth—they crave meaning, security, the feeling of being on the right side of history. Your job is to give them that. You give them enemies to hate, heroes to admire, and crises to fear. You manufacture outrage, stoke division, and reframe every event to fit your chosen narrative. Your politician flourishes because the world you have built for his followers is more gripping, more emotionally satisfying, than reality itself.
At first, you recognize the game you are playing. You know the stories are malleable, that they shift and change depending on what is useful. But over time, something strange happens. The lines blur. You find yourself believing the very fictions you once created strategically. Maybe there is no difference, after all, between constructing reality and living within it. Maybe, just maybe, truth was never what mattered—only the will to impose a version of it.
And so, you press forward, crafting new stories, refining the art of narrative warfare. You no longer hesitate when bending facts to fit the story; after all, the other side is doing the same. You tell yourself that your work is necessary, that in a world where nothing is truly real, power belongs to those who control the illusion. And so you build the illusion, day after day, one "truth" at a time.
*
One evening, you find yourself at a fundraiser, sipping a drink, surrounded by allies and supporters—people who believe in your work, who benefit from the stories you craft. You nod along as they talk about the latest news cycle, the latest scandal you’ve helped spin. But then, a conversation shifts. A man, well-dressed and confident, leans in and says something that stops you cold.
“You know,” he says, “the Holocaust never really happened. Not the way they say it did.”
The words hit you like a slap.
You stare at him, trying to process what he just said. He continues, speaking with the same easy certainty you’ve used a thousand times before when shaping a message. He talks about "exaggerations," "fabrications," "alternative accounts." He sounds calm, rational, like someone explaining an economic policy or a tax reform. Others around him nod.
And then, something shifts inside you.
For years, you’ve told yourself that truth is just a matter of narrative, that history is whatever the powerful say it is. You’ve made a living bending reality into whatever shape was most useful. But now, here, in this moment, you realize something you’ve never admitted before: some things are not just stories.
Because your grandmother and grandfather died at Auschwitz.
You remember their names, spoken in hushed reverence by your parents when you were young. You remember the black-and-white photographs tucked into an old album, faces frozen in time. You remember your mother crying on Yom HaShoah, lighting candles in their memory. You remember the stories—how they were taken from their home, forced onto a train, stripped of their belongings, their dignity, their lives.
You decide you just might believe in objective, historical truths. You wonder where these truths are, even if denied. It occurs to you that they may lie in God's memory.
You work for a politician, and your job is to craft narratives that serve his purposes. One of your narratives is that your own narratives are "true" and that news, except the news you promote, is "fake news." This is very effective. You watch as people adopt your version of reality, not because it is logically sound or factually grounded, but because it is emotionally compelling and reinforces their preexisting loyalties. You understand that belief is not about facts; it is about identity, about belonging. And so you shape not just words, but entire worldviews.
You have learned that what matters is not accuracy, but resonance. People don’t crave truth—they crave meaning, security, the feeling of being on the right side of history. Your job is to give them that. You give them enemies to hate, heroes to admire, and crises to fear. You manufacture outrage, stoke division, and reframe every event to fit your chosen narrative. Your politician flourishes because the world you have built for his followers is more gripping, more emotionally satisfying, than reality itself.
At first, you recognize the game you are playing. You know the stories are malleable, that they shift and change depending on what is useful. But over time, something strange happens. The lines blur. You find yourself believing the very fictions you once created strategically. Maybe there is no difference, after all, between constructing reality and living within it. Maybe, just maybe, truth was never what mattered—only the will to impose a version of it.
And so, you press forward, crafting new stories, refining the art of narrative warfare. You no longer hesitate when bending facts to fit the story; after all, the other side is doing the same. You tell yourself that your work is necessary, that in a world where nothing is truly real, power belongs to those who control the illusion. And so you build the illusion, day after day, one "truth" at a time.
*
One evening, you find yourself at a fundraiser, sipping a drink, surrounded by allies and supporters—people who believe in your work, who benefit from the stories you craft. You nod along as they talk about the latest news cycle, the latest scandal you’ve helped spin. But then, a conversation shifts. A man, well-dressed and confident, leans in and says something that stops you cold.
“You know,” he says, “the Holocaust never really happened. Not the way they say it did.”
The words hit you like a slap.
You stare at him, trying to process what he just said. He continues, speaking with the same easy certainty you’ve used a thousand times before when shaping a message. He talks about "exaggerations," "fabrications," "alternative accounts." He sounds calm, rational, like someone explaining an economic policy or a tax reform. Others around him nod.
And then, something shifts inside you.
For years, you’ve told yourself that truth is just a matter of narrative, that history is whatever the powerful say it is. You’ve made a living bending reality into whatever shape was most useful. But now, here, in this moment, you realize something you’ve never admitted before: some things are not just stories.
Because your grandmother and grandfather died at Auschwitz.
You remember their names, spoken in hushed reverence by your parents when you were young. You remember the black-and-white photographs tucked into an old album, faces frozen in time. You remember your mother crying on Yom HaShoah, lighting candles in their memory. You remember the stories—how they were taken from their home, forced onto a train, stripped of their belongings, their dignity, their lives.
You decide you just might believe in objective, historical truths. You wonder where these truths are, even if denied. It occurs to you that they may lie in God's memory.