Tag Archives: Ferguson

Maybe It’s Not True, but It Feels True

Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution at Stanford offers a profound concept in his new documentary about what happened in Ferguson, MO, called What Killed Michael Brown? It’s the term “poetic truth.”

“People believe cultural myths, he says, not because they have examined evidence and found it credible but because they align with narratives they’ve already bought into. They feel true,” Megan Basham writes for World News Group.

This ideas touches all groups. I would say most of us feel something is true and are willing to defend it before we know the facts. That’s pretty much how life works. We can’t research everything. There’s too much information in general. The most practical solution is for us trust certain sources to tell us the truth, a trust we form largely by feel.

I suppose that means not only the righteous live by faith.