Thoughts arising

[avevale_intelligencer]

"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. (Bacon)

"You can't handle the truth!" Aaron Sorkin, "A Few Good Men" (spoken by Jack Nicholson)

"The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip away the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again." (Michael Flanders)

All this is going to be very subjective, so bear with me.

It's been my impression, going to and fro in the world and walking up and down in it, and then having to stop for a sit down, that truth is a commodity whose value can go down as well as up. It's a truism (there's an interesting word) that telling the exact truth all the time is going to get you into trouble. Ideally, of course, this shouldn't be so, and perhaps for some people it isn't, but for such as I whose talent, such as it is, is for spinning untruths, the fact that we are capable of lying (that, as I said earlier, the capacity for lying is built into language itself) is not as bad a thing as some might think it.

There are things I hold to be true, as we've discussed at some length, and on which I don't allow for any compromise...but these are quite few compared to the many things on which I am willing to flex myself into whatever variety of pretzel you fancy. And on a number of those things, I've found that some other people are as inflexible as I am on my own truths.

Truth tells you what is. Lies--fantasy, fiction, falsehood, flim-flam--tell you what could be.

It is only through lies, in the broadest definition of the word, that we come to new truths.

Truth says man cannot fly. The imagination spins a lie, and from that lie comes a new truth at Kitty Hawk.

Truth says man cannot survive in space. The imagination spins a lie, and from the lie we leap to Tranquility.

Truth says there is no God. The imaginations of countless human beings spin a bewildering variety of lies, and from those lies we may yet find that there is, after all, something to attach that label to.

Truth keeps us where we are. Lies give us a reason to move beyond that. Dismiss the lie, and you dismiss the reason to move.

But what about the lies that tell us we don't need to move? What about the lies that tell us that everything's all right, that the government has our best interests at heart, that sometimes you have to allow for a slight and temporary latitude in the interpretation of the law to ensure national security?

It's obvious that truth isn't all bad, and lies aren't all good. The hard part is telling the difference, and there isn't an easy rule of thumb that works for everyone. Mine doesn't always work for me.

But that there is room in our world for more than exact, literal truth...that pleases me.


Unlike the runny nose I've had since last night. Bleaurgh. If it's not one thing, it's another...

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Good stuff, thanks. Here's some stuff from my quotes file that this inspired me to dig out.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

"We live in a world where joy is possible, love is possible, happiness is possible; where all things are possible, if we're willing to take the time, take a chance, take a breath and step off the edge of everything that is for the sake of everything that might be."
--cadhla

"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty."
-- Stephen Jay Gould

"I would rather live in a world where life is surrounded by mystery, than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it."
--Harry Emerson Fosdick

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.
--H.L. Mencken

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I prefer not to say "lies" because the negative connotation of the word -- "deliberate untruth intended to deceive" -- allows for a clear distinction between those things that are not true, but intended maliciously, and those spoken without such intent ("untruths" or even "nontruths").

In many ways, the difference between truth and untruth is the difference between "I shall" and "I will", where the latter is understood to mean the imposition of one's desire upon something outside oneself. "I shall" accounts for what is, and only what is, where "I will" allows for dreams, ideas, and novelty.

There's lots of meat here for thought. Thanks for the light pointing in this direction.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Whichever of Clarke's Laws it is: "The only way to find the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."

But I would distinguish between things which are actually true (things fall toward the nearest large mass[1]) and things which are generally believed (often incorrectly) to be true (men/bumblebees cannot fly). The latter are based on inadequate experiences and are no more valid than any other opinion or theory of an uninformed person.

[1] Simplification, of course. But for all practical purposes we can depend on it as verifiable by anyone. "Heavier-than-air flight is impossible", however, was opinion not truth and not based on fact (bird had been doing it for ages).

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

"Heavier-than-air flight is impossible for creatures with solid bones and non-aerodynamic bodies" was truth, not opinion, till we changed it.

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

My PhD thesis was on the relationship between reason and truth. Complicated or wot.

Thanks for your thoughts. Interesting as ever.

[howeird]

Hmmm. I was having a conversation with mastersantiago similar to this. His definition of truth and mine differ, yours appears to be somewhere in between.

To him, truth is what one believes to be true, regardless of how factual.

"Facts are the enemy of truth" - Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote.

I like to think truth is unchanging, it is our perception which changes. IMHO 1,000 years ago it was true heavier than air flight was possible, it had not been achieved, and the popular perception was it was not possible. OTOH, the Greeks apparently thought it was possible (Daedalus & Icarus, et. al.).

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

This is so good that I want to perform it for radio.

Alas, it's late, and I am tired. Perhaps tomorrow...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I'd leave out the line about the runny nose if I were you. :)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

[BLINKS] [SCRATCHES HEAD]

That was the line I meant, actually.

=;o}