When Truth Stopped Being Human
We like to think we’re getting closer to truth.
More fairness. More accuracy. More precision.
And in many ways, we are.
But what if, in our obsession with “getting it right,” we’ve lost something even more important?
Something relational.
Something sacred.
Something human.
This is a story about baseball.
And quantum physics.
And what happens when a society stops trusting presence as a source of truth.
The Parable
There was a time when the umpire was the game.
His eyes were imperfect. His calls sometimes wrong.
But his word stood.
He wasn’t outside the action, judging it from above—
He was part of it.
Trusted not for being perfect, but for being there.
The runner was considered safe, or the pitch was deemed a "strike" based on the umpire's decision.
That was the reality—not because it was flawless, but because everyone agreed to play inside a shared coherence.
Then came the cameras.
Then came instant replay.
The freeze-frame.
The magnification.
The slow-motion certainty.
And everything changed.
Now, the umpire isn’t the final word.
He’s a messenger for the lens—
Pausing the game so it can be judged by pixels.
The runner isn’t safe because someone present made a call.
He’s safe if the video shows it.
Truth is no longer enacted.
It is extracted.
Later.
From elsewhere.
And yes—there is more accuracy now.
But something has been lost.
We’ve lost the sacred finality of trust.
We’ve lost the grace of error.
We’ve lost the ritual coherence of a shared reality—of agreeing to live within a system of meaning, even when imperfect.
We traded the flawed wisdom of human presence for the sterile exactitude of machines.
And here’s where the parable becomes prophecy:
At the quantum level—at the very foundations of physical reality—there is no fixed truth.
There is only interaction.
Observation.
Emergence.
A particle’s position becomes real when it is observed.
Its meaning arises only in relationship.
The universe is not made of objects.
It is made of entangled events.
The umpire, in all his fallibility, was closer to the quantum than the replay booth will ever be.
Because he made the game real by being there.
By choosing.
By holding the burden of truth within the relationship.
And now, we find ourselves trying to govern a quantum world with industrial rules.
We are gaining precision.
And losing soul.
Let Us Remember
Truth is not always what is most exact.
Sometimes, it is what is most held together—by presence, trust, and sacred responsibility.
That was the umpire’s role.
And maybe… it’s ours, too.
Epilogue: The Knocked-Out Umpire
There’s a story—possibly apocryphal, possibly not—about a legendary umpire who got run over during a game while trying to make a call at first base.
In the middle of the play, he backed into position to get a better angle. The catcher, sprinting up the line to back up the throw, collided with him at full speed.
The umpire went down. Out cold.
As he began to regain consciousness, still groggy on the dirt, he heard someone yelling, “Well, damn it… was he safe or was he out?!”
He blinked, still foggy, and asked, “Who wants to know?”
The same voice shouted back: “Durocher!” (Leo Duroucher, manager of the team at bat).
Without hesitation, the umpire yelled, “He’s OUT!”
And that was the ruling.
Not because he saw it. But because he was the one who gets to say.
Because coherence is not about omniscience. It’s about shared meaning, ritual trust, and being the one in the field when the call must be made.
Because sometimes, truth is a man flat on his back, rising to his feet, and still carrying the sacred burden of coherence.
And that’s what makes it real.