Are you telling the truth?
Are you editing yourself?
RANDY is now taking people for the experiment......
does it work? will we find out something that we didn't know before?
But - the other side of this is do we want to know?
do we need to be editors as well as composers of our thoughts?
Do we believe in 'truth'?
If you are going to tell the truth then we need to ask the right questions
Or perhaps the answer will still be 42. . . .
User login
Navigation
Syndicate
Sat, 03/29/2008 - 16:53
It's not 42 but 49. Ask Oedipa Maas.
»
Sat, 03/29/2008 - 16:19
Truth is whatever we want to it to be. In this sense, we edit ourselves.
What about the truth serum and emotions? Telling the truth isn't always to our advantage. A little hidden lie can save us a whole universe of bad feeling. Does the truth serum assume that truth is a good thing, morally-speaking?
I wonder what Jim Carrey's character in 'Liar, Liar' would think. He could only tell the truth, and look what good it did him, his poor child, and everyone around him.
»
Sat, 03/29/2008 - 15:33
Stories we tell; what we decide to believe; the sanctuary of paranoia; what the other person wants to hear; what the other person has to hear; the opposite of the case; fiction for others but not for us.
FACT Team may be right: telling the truth means asking the right questions. But asking the right questions implies the truth is decided in advance of the answers given. The question drives us towards the questioner's view of things; they know what to ask in view of the end point of the discussion, which reveals the truth of the matter.
Supposing there is an intention not to answer but to ask questions relentlessly. Philosophers, writers, literary critics - they all dislike answers because they disregard single truths. Like God. Like power.
But this doesn't have anything to do with the Truth Serum, which asks - well, precisely, what questions DOES it ask? The process is closed to us. Only those who are willing to participate in the experiment can tell us. Or can they? Do we need the truth serum to draw the truth out of us? When people lie, the body tells the truth of the matter: they blush, start perspiring, trip up on their words, make obvious use of a physical technique to convince you that what they're saying is the truth, use language in a variety of ways - I am! It's the truth! Why would I lie? You know I'm not like that, and so on - and so on. Though we may not know the precise nature of the truth in such physically revealing instances of a person's lying, we know that such a thing exists, and that we are victims of lying. Our only connection to this great unknown truth is the cheek gone red, the skin gone damp, the tongue gone awry.. I suppose what I'm describing is the relationship between the body and mind.
»