Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Define Truth

I really enjoyed our conversation in class today and it inspired me to look up the definition of the word truth. I used 3 different sources and I noticed one common ground that I wanted to mention. The word constancy is one of the keys to truth. Truth has to be based on a foundation that is constant, never changing and unmoving. What I find interesting is that the foundation that truth is placed on can be moved based on individuals. I will use religion as an example. If you are a Christian and base your truth on the bible then you will have a different view of truth then an atheist. The real question I ask is can one foundation be wrong and if so, does it matter which one? Let's say that the atheist is right. Then does this affect a Christian's life or even their after life? What if the Christian is right? How does it affect an atheist? Can they both be right? I don't see how because they are exact opposites. The struggle we have as humans is to know what that truth is.

I am not defining truth for you because I feel it is not for me to define. I just want to say that I do believe it is important to define it for yourself.

I read "The Liar" tonight and while it was a bit long and slow I liked the story. I do believe that the moral of the story is that liars want to be heard. This is why stories are written. A writer is telling a lie in order to have people read what he or she wrote. I don't believe that all writers lie but I do believe that if a writer writes a fiction he or she has to lie in order to tell that story. The story never happened, there is no real facts and most of the time the characters are made up.

I don't care if you lie to me as long as I know it. Have you lied to me?

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting, Chris, and I'm glad you liked the story. I think you are getting at one of the very essential parts of this story when you say that "liars want to be heard." You are hitting on something that is mentioned more than once in this story. In one scene, Margaret (James's mother) realizes that Frances (the "paranoid" woman) "just wants someone to listen" (170). And this idea of listening and being heard comes back when James is telling the story about the Tibetans, who, he says, want someone to "listen to their problems" (174). All of us have a need to be heard and understood. One of the most important questions to ask, then, is why does James, if he wants so badly to be heard, choose to lie?

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  2. Simply, because the lie is more interesting to the listener. James recognizes that people are listening to the lie as apposed to the truth. From my own experience as a child I can remember lying on purpose knowing that people would be more interested in hearing the lie.

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