"The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty.", Tim O'Brien
The truth is not always written in stone, but it is often mistaken to be. The truth in any event varies depending on what you experienced of an event. To fully understand the truth of an event you would have to witness the event from everyone there's perspective, and then figure out who saw what actually happened for. Even if you could do that you could not be sure if the perspective you chose was right, or if they were right, but missed some details. This is why jurors in a court do not make their decisions based on the word of one witness, because one witness could not see every detail of the whole event. That's why I believe that there is a truth in historical events, but it is not humanly possible to find. The only truth that we can find are the ones authors make up in fiction, because the view of their character or characters is the only view of that event, where as non-fiction writers have to try and find a set truth of an event instead of being able to make one up. So in some ways fiction is more truthful than non-fiction, but it is true to the authors truth instead of reality. http://files.meetup.com/423109/How%20to%20Tell%20A%20True%20War%20Story_Tim%20O%27Brien.pdf
“Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.”, Tim O,Brien
So as you can see the truth, pertaining to real life events, is not simple at all. It can vary between any two people who witness an event, and it is impossible to find the perfect truth. Only in fiction or in extremely rare events can you find a perfect truth, or near perfect truth.
You say that there is truth in historic events, but that truth is impossible to find. That reminds me of a person who would always try to advertise in the college newspaper I worked for. He offered a $100,000 prize to anyone who could prove to him that the Holocaust really happened. The catch behind his offer was that it's impossible to prove that anything in history really happened to a person who is unwilling to believe it. He just wanted to spread doubt, uncertainty, and hate to people who looked at the ad and contacted him about the prize. It was pretty horrible. We never ran his ads, even though he would offer to pay a lot more than we charged for advertising.
ReplyDeleteYou have a good first post. Thanks for helping me make a connection.