The Wexner Center for the Arts is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts center located on the campus of the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, United States. The center was established in 1989 and is named after Leslie Wexner, the founder of The Limited retail chain and a major donor to the Ohio State University. It is dedicated to presenting and supporting contemporary art, film, and performing arts. It’s a new art building for the university. It is a fascinating building designed in the post-modernist view of reality. The building has no pattern. Staircases go nowhere. Pillars support nothing. The architect designed the building to reflect life. It went nowhere and was mindless and senseless. As I read about this building, I remembered what Ravi Zacharias, a famous Christian apologist, thought about it – “Did they do the same thing with the foundation?’ You can’t do that with a foundation. You can get away with the infrastructure. You can get away with random thoughts that sound good in defense of a worldview that ultimately doesn’t make sense. Once you start tampering with the foundations, you begin to see the serious effects”.
The ‘most fascinating thing’ however is despite not leading anywhere, these staircases often draw attention and provide a sense of mystery and intrigue. People may see them as symbolizing the journey of life, where the destination is unknown, and the focus is on the journey itself. I heard many saying the journey is more important than the destination. Really? If not to reach the destination where and why am I traveling? The problem is that ideologically we not only have staircases going nowhere and pillars supporting nothing, but we are also tampering with the foundations. If the foundation is not there, the whole building begins to crumble, no matter how beautiful it is. But we live in a relativistic age where we are sure that the truth is ABSOLUTELY relative.
The idea that truth is relative is a philosophical belief that states that the truth and meaning of something is dependent on the individual’s experiences and perspectives. This means that what is considered true for one person may not be considered true for another. This idea is often associated with postmodernism and challenges the concept of absolute truth. Proponents of this view argue that there is no objective or universal standard for determining truth and that truth is constructed by individuals and communities.
I had to travel back to India in November 2020 as my father’s health deteriorated. One of my friends kindly offered to drop me off at the airport in her car. “I have the car for a reason Anu”, “I would love to help you,” she said. I was moved by her kind gesture. I packed lunch for both of us and brought some of her favorite chocolates for her. We started our journey which lasted for approximately 2 hours. We discussed a lot of things about life etc. We somehow landed on the topic called ‘The truth’. At the time, I was unfamiliar with the idea of relative truth. I attempted to argue that truth is absolute, but she provided an example to make my not-so-perceptive mind grasp the concept. She asked me to imagine a green tree and explained that while ‘my truth’ is that the tree is green, for someone who is color blind, their truth would be that the tree appears differently to them. I jumped from my seat in disbelief and said – The color of the tree remains the same regardless of whether someone can see it or not. In this case, it is objectively true that the tree is green. How individuals perceive it varies. Truth doesn’t.