Let there be story.

We are living in an age where voices scream across divides. Two sides of the same coin want similar ends — dignity, security, a livable future — yet they rage at one another about who is right, who is wrong, who deserves life, who deserves death. Truth has become a weapon, and every argument a battlefield.

But what if truth isn’t a coin at all?

In a recent experiment, I staged a debate between thinkers real and imagined — philosophers, scientists, artists, even Asimov’s Cosmic AC. Each answered the great questions of existence differently: Robert Lanza claimed consciousness creates the universe; Mary Evelyn Tucker placed us in a cosmic story of stardust and ancestry; Sabine Hossenfelder reminded us the universe is indifferent; Shelly Kagan insisted on mortality’s finality; artists like Matthew David Rana and Anthony Marcellini argued for entanglement between human and nonhuman.

Each was compelling. Each was incomplete.The insight emerged: truth is not a monolith, but a constellation.

From Coin to Constellation

Coins have two sides, locked in opposition. Only one can face up. This is how much of our politics and public life operates — binary battles, win/lose logics. But constellations tell a different story. In the night sky, stars do not cancel one another out. Their distance and relation create orientation. We navigate by the pattern, not by a single light.

Living by constellations of truth means acknowledging that:

* Science gives us clarity and evidence.

* Philosophy gives us limits and urgency.

* Story gives us orientation and meaning.

* Art gives us embodiment and feeling.

* Relations with nonhuman worlds give us humility.

* Consciousness gives us wonder.

No one perspective suffices. But together, they guide us. If truth is plural, no one owns it whole. This teaches us to treat one another differently:

With humility — our vision is partial. With curiosity— even an opponent may carry a fragment we need. With dignity — silencing others is not just silencing them, but silencing a part of our own orientation.

Instead of asking, “Who is right?” we begin to ask, “What is missing? What do they see that I cannot?” This shift changes debate from combat to composition.

For example, we cannot rest on science alone. It also requires story (why future generations matter), relational ethics (nonhuman dignity), and awareness of mortality (the urgency of our limited time).

Education, too, must move beyond siloed truths — teaching students to hold science, story, philosophy, and art together as complementary ways of knowing. Art itself becomes a mediator, embodying plural truths in ways reason alone cannot.

In daily life, living by constellations can be as simple as pausing in conflict and asking: *What piece of the truth might this person be carrying, even if I resist their conclusions?*

Where is the world headed next?

If we continue to live by coins — binary truths, polarized logics — we edge toward escalation and collapse. But if we learn to live by constellations of truth, we create the conditions for fragile but real flourishing.

The answer, then, is not about choosing one side of the coin. It is about changing the shape of truth itself.

We need truths that are layered, partial, entangled — truths that don’t erase difference, but hold difference in relation. To live well is not to guard the one true star, but to navigate by the constellation. Not masters of truth, but participants in its unfolding, finite, entangled, and creative.