Truth

Just reading through the news items that make it to the various Internet sites made me wonder about the truth.

Why don't people tell the truth?

It begs the questions 'whose truth?' and 'what is truth?'.

When I took a creative writing class in school, our teacher told us the things every good reporter needed to ask 'THE FIVE W's' in order to write a story on any event. We needed to know WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY in order to make something solid from the wispy bits of fact and fiction that surround every event.

Now it seems another question must be asked. HOW?

How did we get to the point that violence seems to be a universal constant and an unfortunate answer for entire civilizations?

How did we get to the understanding that truth was a commodity that fluctuated in value according to the political expediency of the answer we wished to present?

How did we become a nation that speaks only in half-truths and distortions that employs 'spin doctors' to make plausible that which should never be considered?

How can we overcome the tendency to put self - interest ahead of the common welfare of all mankind?

While I understand that sometimes our perspective on what happens in life depends upon where we sit when events unfold before us, that additional view on the action should not be determined to exist as a sole point of reference on the scales of truth and lies.

Our personal truths are unfortunately tainted with circumstance and the level of understanding we might happen to possess at that moment in time. We have all, at one time or another, looked back and said 'Now that was stupid! I wish I could take it back'.

But sometimes our learning curve must be tempered with our stumbling attempts to fine tune the direction of our lives through mistakes. As individuals we do tend to learn more from our failures than our successes by virtue of the fact that we fail much more than we succeed.

Our memories tend to dwell on our successes since they are pleasant. Our mind begins to discount and cheapen our failures in order to eliminate the unhappy thoughts from our consciousness.

It is at that moment when the dilution of truth begins and rationalization takes the place of what happened in order to spare ourselves the unvarnished truth of our own existence.

So, we come to the crux of the matter. We must inevitably decide how far down the road of self deception we are willing to go and upon what shifting sands of public opinion and glorified personal comfort that we will employ as our personal foundation.

Can you ever be honest enough? Is truth circumscribed into one great whole from which we must each take that part with which we can comfortably live within our own skin?

Can my personal truth replace or supplant yours?

Can your truth sway the validity of mine?

These are things that will take a lifetime to sort out and probably more. Especially since you consider that way back in the Garden of Eden the chief disciple of propaganda hissed his message of 'refined truth' to Eve who chose to believe him and his pleasant message.

Does this mean there was no truth in the message?

Nope, quite the contrary.

Adam and Eve got what they were promised - they had their eyes opened and understanding came to them after they ate the fruit. Instead, the preeminent spin doctor of them all also led them to believe something that wasn't true by his cunning and subtle pitch. There was no rainbow and no pot of gold. Just a lot of 'sweat of thy brow' and 'thorns and thistles'.

Unlike today, the fallout didn't just affect Adam and Eve. Satan got a healthy dose of 'personal truth' when he was cursed and cast out.

I guess what I'd like to see is that same application of reality for those who distort and malign for personal gain.

Come to think of it, maybe for most of us, it does exist. We can't dance on the edge without falling off or getting hurt in some way or worse yet, without hurting someone who placed their trust in us.

Truth in advertising. Maybe we are the ones who determine if that is an oxymoron or if it can be a reality.