It is hard to explain truth completely, for it has many sides, and is not just "right" and "wrong." How do you know that things really happened? How do you know that what we are learning in school is true? We will probably never know.
Truth, to me, is what is right or correct from a certain point of view. It all depends on your perspective, and what your beliefs are. You will never be able to tell the entire truth, because in order to do that, you would have to have everyone who was involved tell their story exactly how they saw it, and even then they could be lying.
There are many parts to truth, and if you really dig down in it, it would seem that there is always a different view of truth and that in reality, truth doesn't exist. Fiction and nonfiction are just names that we give to genres, but how do we know that nonfiction is real and fiction is not? History is usually told from the winning side, and that is what is considered truth, but what about the losing side? The "dark side" such as during the first World War, with the Germans? They may have seen us as the evil ones, just as we thought that the Germans were evil.
If you are a writer or a reader, you must understand that the truth can be twisted, and that not everything can be trusted. You could believe that a "fictional" story is true, when the author of the book does not. It all depends on your point of view. Take, for example, the writer Tim O'Brien. He gave a great example of your point of view on a story and his point of view. He says in his writing of How to Tell a true War Story that if the answer to your question of "is it true?" really matters to you, then it will be truth, and you will say that it is truth.
If you write or tell stories, you will, at some point, add or subtract something that will make it not entirely the truth, and it will never be the whole truth.
When you listen to a story or read a story, there is no real "truth", yet not all stories are lies. There is but a small amount of truth, despite facts given, and you must always remember that there is always something more that can be added in the telling of the truth.
-bookhouse4
You say that a truth depends on belief and perspective. I think that's a very astute observation. You also bring up a great point that once a writer takes out information the story can't ever be fully the truth again. Trying to bring back facts turns into simple speculation.
ReplyDeleteI like your point that not all stories are lies.
Thanks for making me think!