Secondhand Truths Part 3: The Cost, The Work & The Future
What it means to unlearn, to teach our children how to seek truth, and to navigate a world where even our tools for knowing need to be tested.
The Cost
Digging into your beliefs doesn’t just take effort. It comes with real costs, but I believe those costs are necessary for us and for the generations to come.
There is a social cost. Many of our relationships are built on shared assumptions, and it’s hard to question those without shaking the foundation they rest on. Families, marriages, and communities often expect silent agreement. When you start asking uncomfortable questions, you may find yourself standing alone.
There is an emotional cost. Changing your mind about something important can feel like a loss. You may feel guilt, regret, or even shame. It can be lonely to stand in the gap between what you used to believe and what you believe now.
And there is a cost of clarity. Once you’ve seen how fragile some of your beliefs were, it becomes harder to trust other ones. You become more cautious, more skeptical, more aware of how easy it is to be misled. That awareness is important, but it can also be exhausting.
Still, the cost is worth it. Our children need to grow up in a world where critical thinking is not just acceptable but expected. And that critical thinking must reach beyond what others believe into the convictions we hold most dear ourselves.
The Work
This process has been humbling for me. I’ve had to revisit beliefs I once held tightly, only to find they were built on shaky ground. I’ve had to confront blind spots and wrestle with uncomfortable realizations. I’ve had to ask myself whether I truly value the truth or simply want to be right in the moment.
It has not made me certain about everything, but it has made me more cautious, more curious, and more aware of how easily we absorb beliefs without realizing it.
I am not a relativist. I don’t believe truth is unknowable or meaningless. I believe there are truths about the world, about human nature, about history, morality, and meaning. But not all information is created equal, and not all sources are trustworthy.
The real problem is not that we disagree. Disagreement is natural, even healthy. What has broken is our ability to agree on the process of seeking truth. We treat influencers as equal to scientists, journalists, and scholars, and then wonder why we are stuck in echo chambers.
With all the information we consume, we need to keep asking: Who is saying this? Where did they get their information? And why should they be trusted?
We need to rebuild trust in how we pursue truth, not just as individuals but as a society. That means holding institutions accountable while also recognizing where our own habits feed the problem.
It means teaching our children how to evaluate information, how to ask good questions, and how to care more about honesty than about fitting in.
The Future
One of the most important things I hope to pass on to my children is this: the ability to think critically, to evaluate what they are told, and to keep moving toward what is real, and ultimately good, even when it is not easy. I want them to know how to verify information, how to ask thoughtful questions, and how to recognize when something doesn’t quite add up. I want them to care more about what is true than about belonging to a group that believes it has all the answers.
I was reminded of how urgent this is while watching Mountainhead, a film that imagines the chilling effects of deepfakes and AI-generated videos in a world already struggling to hold onto a shared sense of reality.
If even video evidence can be fabricated, how will we know what to believe? What will our children grow up trusting when they can’t even believe their own eyes?
At some point, we as a society have to agree that there are shared ways of knowing, methods of truth-seeking that can be tested and accessed by everyone.
We do not need to agree on everything. But we do need to agree on how we pursue truth. That means finding trustworthy sources, learning how to evaluate them, and building systems that reward accuracy instead of outrage. It also means pushing our institutions, our scientific leaders, tech companies, media, education, and government, to do better.
Because if we cannot rebuild trust in how we know what we know, even the simplest questions will slip through our fingers. And in a world flooded with noise, that is not just a personal problem. It is a crisis for all of us.
Truth matters. And our willingness to seek it, even when it costs us, might be one of the most important things we ever do.