No, Starbucks, that's not true for anyone, not even you

I note that Starbucks, as part of its drive towards political correctness, has put out a training workbook for its staff (link is to an Adobe Acrobat document in .PDF format).  It includes this drivel (click the image for a larger view):

There is no such thing as "your" truth or "other people's" truth.  There is only TRUTH, and that word has meaning.  Here are a couple of definitions:

• The truth about something is all the facts about it, rather than things that are imagined or invented. Synonyms: reality, fact(s), real life, actuality.  (Collins)
• (1) : the body of real things, events, and facts : ACTUALITY  (2) : the state of being the case : FACT... (Merriam-Webster).

If something is not in accordance with the facts, or with reality, and so on, it may be opinion, or belief (including religious belief, which typically cannot be tested against empirical evidence), or philosophy, or whatever - but it cannot be labeled as TRUTH in any objective sense.  Objectivity requires that something's truth should be testable against reality, and only accepted as true if it conforms to reality - not one's opinion of what should, or should not, be real!

If Starbucks is trying to teach its staff that reality can be ignored in favor of politically correct waffle, it's no wonder the chain is running headlong into problems in the marketplace.  The market is real, in the sense that people vote with their dollars.  When they find that their dollar doesn't buy them as much as they want from a particular company or industry, they'll do their best to find it somewhere else.  Starbucks has chosen to cater to people for whom dollars are not the primary currency of conversation or belief . . . so it need not be surprised that its dollar sales suffer as a result.

As for "what you are feeling", if that doesn't conform to reality as well, then your feelings aren't true or truthful.  Ask anyone who's had to listen to a battered woman argue that her abusive husband or partner "really loves her", and she wants to go back to him because she knows "he didn't mean to hurt her" - this after her fourteenth visit to the emergency room with bruises, cuts and broken bones.  Yeah, right.  Feelings have their place, but they are irrelevant when it comes to facts, and in business they count for nothing in the bottom line.  If the bottom line is anything but factual, that business will close its doors.

Q.E.D.

Peter