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the power to make truth
Jan. 22nd, 2020 06:27 pmI'm reading Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower right now, and finding it VERY thought provoking if a little slow with regard to actual story-stuff happening. The narrator is a god, and gradually from the narrator we learn what that means. Which is interesting, right? The parameters and limitations of divinity.
One thing that characterizes gods is that what they say MUST be true. It's a requirement. Instead of this fact conferring great power, though, the causality works the other way: a god can only say those things that it has the power to back up.
This got me thinking to who/what has the power to create truth in our present day. In some nation-states, the government has that power--as The Simpsons noted:
The editor in me wants to let you know that in proper pinyin romanization that should be Tiananmen
It's possible to say that government-dictated truth is merely something that people pay lip service to. It's not true truth. People can argue that true-truth exists, even if we don't know what it is, even if we never know what it is. I think I agree? I'm never 100 percent sure of anything. But I'm not sure what practical use the knowledge that there's a true-truth out there is to us in a world where we have to make decisions and judgments based on the less-certainly-true truth. That's not to say true-truth isn't valuable or important. There are lots of things are are valuable and important that don't have practical applications ... I'm simply saying that in our everyday lives, it's worth considering who decides the less-certainly-true truth.
One thing that characterizes gods is that what they say MUST be true. It's a requirement. Instead of this fact conferring great power, though, the causality works the other way: a god can only say those things that it has the power to back up.
Gods have to be very careful when speaking about the nature of things. It might be that if you're strong enough, you can perhaps risk saying something like The world is round like a berry and moves around the sun, which is much, much larger than it looks in the sky without knowing beforehand if it's true. Maybe. What if you're wrong? What god is strong enough to endure the loss of the sort of power that even begins to touch what it would take to make that true, to change the very nature of the entire universe? ... So everything we said to each other had to be couched in qualifiers.--The Raven Tower, 87.
This got me thinking to who/what has the power to create truth in our present day. In some nation-states, the government has that power--as The Simpsons noted:
The editor in me wants to let you know that in proper pinyin romanization that should be Tiananmen
It's possible to say that government-dictated truth is merely something that people pay lip service to. It's not true truth. People can argue that true-truth exists, even if we don't know what it is, even if we never know what it is. I think I agree? I'm never 100 percent sure of anything. But I'm not sure what practical use the knowledge that there's a true-truth out there is to us in a world where we have to make decisions and judgments based on the less-certainly-true truth. That's not to say true-truth isn't valuable or important. There are lots of things are are valuable and important that don't have practical applications ... I'm simply saying that in our everyday lives, it's worth considering who decides the less-certainly-true truth.
