Friday and the Truth

It's Friday. And I am soo glad. Well, what a surprise. I'm so tired, and my body aches all over, yet it's only been a four day week. Well, I'll get back in the swing of things before too long.

Okay, now that we're done with that whole whoop-de-doo, to the real juicy stuff. When I got home from school today, I read some of George Orwell's 1984. It's a very...disturbing book, I suppose you could say. Thought-provoking. Mind-bending.

I'll try to explain this without giving away too much of the plot: A man is trying to explain to the main character Winston that the Party (which is essentially the controlling totalitarian government) can manipulate the truth. He shows Winston four fingers and asks him how many he's holding up. When Winston replies "four", the man turns a dial that gives Winston some kind of super-painful seizure. Not unless he answers "five" will the man stop inflicting punishment. According to him, Winston is a "slow learner", because he holds firm to the belief that four is four. So he explains to him why he must be taught that four is four.

He explains that the Party will not accept martyrs. They will force people to confess (wholeheartedly believing in that confession), then bend people's will and make them become one of the Party, and then kill them. He says that the Nazis were more successful than past totalitarian controls because they stole their victim's dignity before killing them, but that eventually their "degradation was forgotten." He blames this for the fact that the confessions they were forced to make were "obviously extorted and untrue." Then he says, "All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them true."

This phrase struck me as particularly horrifying - "We make them true." I tried to read on, to understand the whole concept more, hoping that I would come to some conclusion within myself that would settle my thoughts as I kept reading, but after a couple pages I could take it no longer. I stopped, got out my writing notebook, and began to write. Truth, primarily, was the topic. Here's a rough transcript:

"What is truth? Why is 2+2 four? Because it can be proven. Then how do you prove that 2 is 2, or 1 one? Only the very origin of the facts can determine what is true; and it's only the truth because someone says it to be. Then who is the someone we should listen to? Great philosophers? World leaders? Political leaders? God? If the latter, then why must we argue over religion, because everyone's God could be different. And if the truth of the nature of God comes from God, and yours is different from mine, then we believe different truths because they are both true since our someone tells us they are. IS THERE A TRUTH? Then are there lies? Why do I refer to "truth" as singular and "lies" as plural? Does that mean there is only one truth? If there is no truth, then how is there crime? How can we convict someone of an act involving lies when no one can deny the fact that they don't know the truth? Because we've come to accept a truth, that of the law, that tells us what is right and wrong, but only according to our standards, what we believe, our truth. However, we feel the law is unethical in some places; but is it not because their God, their someone, told them the truth to be that and that was all they had to cling on to? But sometimes the unethical nature is due to misinterpretation or ignorance. So how do we determine when this is the case? Because the law, the truth, someone tells us it is. And how do we even know what "misinterpretation" and "ignorance" are, when at this point we can't depend on simply what we were taught or what it says in the dictionary? In another language a word can have a totally different meaning. Yet both are true.

Truth. Someone. WHAT IS IT? And we're back to the beginning."

So the basic just of it: The truth is the truth because we have learned that it is the truth, and that is most likely because someone told us to, just as 2+2=4 and not 5 because we learned that in school. But if someone were to come up to you, hold up 4 fingers, and tell you that was 5, you would think them insane. And they may think you insane. So everybody's truth could be different. Meaning there can be no truth. Which makes me wonder how the world has not turned to complete chaos...and how do we know it hasn't?

I was so bothered by all of these things that I had to talk them through with my mother (who, by the way, is a wonderful talker-througher-with of things. She nodded, and listened, and added to my thoughts, telling me present-day examples of some of the things I mentioned, such as the religion issue. Religion was, upon taking my pencil to paper this night, not something I intended at all to focus on, but what became a huge question. I don't think about religion much - I'm not at a point in life where I really need it. But religion is affecting the whole world a lot right now, and it seems to be playing into quite a few conflicts. While talking with my mom, I came to a comforting conclusion: religion, spiritual practice, following a spiritual path...it's all about believing. I mentioned that if people were so devoted to someone that embodied their religion, and they said to do something that seems totally outlandish to us, they would, because it would be the truth to them. (I'm starting to feel that there isn't really a truth - that it's sort of an empty term.) As she talked about some of her beliefs, I realized that at the heart of religion is having the faith to completely give yourself up and just BELIEVE something without having any actual proof. This is totally different from something being the truth. The terms - belief and truth - are just as related as a bumble bee and my toothbrush: entirely incomparable and not correlated. This calmed me, and I was able to write the word "BELIEVE" at the end of my long written paragraph on the notebook page, and move on with my evening. These thoughts still haunted me, especially since we watched a movie involving someone's identity being stolen (which certainly puts the whole truth at stake), but I was able to give myself up and just believe that I would be fine, and need not worry about these things. Still, could too much simply "believing" be harmful? And the question remains: what is the truth?

I don't think I'll ever find the answers to these questions. However, I'll try to find the most I can. I'll strive to understand, at least, some level of all this complexity.