Thursday, February 12, 2015

Response Blog: The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth

In response to Joe Average Writer, original blog post found here.

Truth is a funny thing, and truth in the terms that you're discussing is so funny as to be hilarious, given certain considerations. My current favorite quote regarding truth goes something like "there are three sides to every story: yours, theirs and the truth."  Your story touches on some of the themes that bolster this platitude's street cred in current discussions of the topic, but I'd like to dissect what you're talking about just a little bit further before I start Frankensteining it back together again.

First, we have to establish that truth exists. Not an easy task, but for the sake of the current discussion, let's make some assumptions. I believe that there are such things as facts in the universe, and that these facts are knowable and often quantifiable. That's making a lot of philosophical leaps, but I think those assumptions, those beliefs, form the basis for a lot of the things we believe we 'know' in our lives. I know I'm hungry because I have observed the sensation from my stomach that I've come to know means I need to put food in it. I know my eyes are hazel because I've observed the culturally constructed condition known as hazel eyes, and observed that my own fit that profile. I know that the currently-accepted English plural of goose is geese because every time I've said 'gooses,' I'm understood to be exerting some kind of sense of humor people give me credit for having. I know that I wore khaki pants to work today. Etc.

So relevant to your story, there are some things that we can know. You were present in a certain place at a certain time for the purpose of watching a fireworks show. At some point in the proceedings, a rocket flew overhead and fell out of the sky. Several members of your family were present there with you. These facts appear to be uncontested. Those things under contestation are 1) whether or not a truck blew up, 2) the level of spectacle caused by said truck potentially blowing up, and 3) whether or not you were there to actually witness said spectacle, if it occurred at all.

I don't know the truth of any of these points, nor do I have a direct means of learning such a truth. I was not involved in any way with the events that you describe. What I know for certain is that you have said such and such a thing to describe the situation. All I know factually is that you gave an account that reads in a certain way. This by itself is obviously not irrefutable proof. If I were a regular listener to your stories, and had built up some trust in you as a reliable source, I might be more inclined to believe that you did in fact see what you said you saw. If I knew you for a habitual exaggerator and bender of the truth, I would be less inclined to do so, but having neither range of experience to color my opinion of your reliability, all I can say for certain is that I know you said that something happened.

Which brings me finally to your question: Does it matter which version of the truth you guard in your memories?

Yes, but possibly not in the way you might think, at least in my opinion.

Whether something matters or not means that you are asking me to place value on a certain thing. That value will be, by definition, a purely subjective concept. What matters to me could not possibly matter less to a snail crawling up the side of a building in Hong Kong. We have entirely different value sets in life. Herein, I believe, lies the fundamental disconnect with questions of the type you are posing. You are asking if the truth (objective construct) matters (subjective construct).  The answer will always be "it depends."

My personal perspective is that the degree of value which I place on the truth of a story varies broadly depending on what I expect that story to accomplish. If my child goes out one night and comes back two hours late, I place a great deal of importance on the factitive nature of the story he gives me by way of explanation for such behavior. If I read a fantasy novel about a dark wizard and a chosen little boy who's supposed to defeat him, the facts of the story take on their own internal relevance, which it is important to me be maintained, entirely apart from the context of the rest of reality to which I've become accustomed. When I read a story about a fireworks display that happened years ago in a place I've never even visited, describing events that had an impact stretching no further than the city in which said events took place, I have no stock in whether the story is factually accurate or not. I am, in all likelihood, reading to be entertained. Therefore, what matters to me is that I find the story entertaining, not that I believe it to be accurate.

Over and above these things, though, I believe that truth matters. Period. It's important whether a truck blew up that day because that means somebody probably lost a job. Or funds had to be cut buying a new vehicle. Maybe someone was injured. Or maybe it never happened and nobody who could have been hurt was actually harmed in any way. That would be important too. The show's not-happening had an effect on all those who showed up to see it, and that effect is important because of the impact it had, however minor. Every tiny piece of creation, from the snail inching its way up a Hong Kong building to the truck that may or may not have blown up that day in Vegas, is important. They all form building blocks that, cumulatively, make up the relevant facts of the reality in which we live. They all have their place, however great or small.

In this way, I believe the truth of the stories we hold onto is important because it is our way of shaping the methods by which we remember who we are. It is incredible to imagine the lengths to which the human mind will go in order to avoid dealing with certain kinds of pain and trauma, or simply inconvenient truths about our existence. Once observed by the person in question, the truth under consideration can be accepted by the mind, forming a piece, however small, of the person's identity (yes, I'm the kind of guy who eats a #8 from Jimmy John's on February 11th, 2015, at roughly six thirty in the evening, central time). They can also be denied, on a sliding scale from casual dismissal as irrelevant and unimportant all the way to vehement, psychotic denial to the point of repression and altered perceptions. On the other hand, memories can be fabricated, either in the most mild example like your potential exaggeration above, slipping in snippets of fiction to enhance or otherwise flavor the narration of events we actually observed, or in the more extreme examples of psychoses like schizophrenia, in which it becomes impossible to distinguish the constructed reality of the mind's creation and the observable reality of the person's surroundings. Where your brain falls on this spectrum is absolutely vital to the quality and character of your life, and is a consideration that should never be taken lightly.

All of this, all of these considerations should be factored in when considering the importance of what truths we pass on. How do we tell others about the world? Do we do it in facts? Do we do it in opinions based on hearsay? Do we deny parts of the reality of which we are aware because we consider them inconvenient? Do we pass off the inventions of our own mind as reality? The means by which we attempt to convince other people of the veracity of our communications says a great deal about who we are as people. You may be the kind of person who relates a story without being 100% certain of its truth. That's all well and good when the stakes are low. Would you, as the context of your entry references, tell the same story the same way on a witness stand? No, I don't believe you would. You would understand that the stakes are higher in that context, and that the importance of verifiable, observable, objective truth is much higher than the entertainment value of the story in question.

In summary, the presence and acceptance of truth in our own minds, together with the presence and acceptance of truth in our communications with others, will define us as people as we live our lives.

So yeah. It's pretty important.