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The Dead End of ‘Your Truth’

In Oprah Winfrey’s lifetime achievement award acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Globes, she said, "What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have."

“Your truth.” Those two words are so entrenched in our lexicon today that we hardly recognize them for the incoherent nightmare that they are. Among other things, the philosophy of "your truth" destroys families when a dad suddenly decides "his truth" is calling him to a new lover, a new family, or maybe even a new gender. It's a philosophy that can destroy entire societies, because invariably one person's truth will go to battle with another person's truth, and devoid of reason, only power decides the victor.

"Your truth" also puts an incredible, self-justifying burden on the individual. If we are all self-made projects whose destinies are wholly ours to discover and implement, life becomes a rat race of performative individuality. "Live your truth" autonomy is as exhausting as it is incoherent. Depression is the inevitable result and “the inexorable counterpart of the human being who is her/his own sovereign.”

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