Culturebot.org: Mike Daisey's TRUTH:
Any writer will accept that memoir is a slippery medium. And I don’t think that any artist would hold another artist accountable for a so-called “personal” story that is less-than-entirely true. We know that, ideally, art is the willful manipulation of raw life in the service of a larger truth – and by that standard Frey’s greatest crime is probably that of being a very bad writer.
But what about the underlying urge for truth in our culture, the feeling of being constantly lied to with no recourse, no-one to blame, no way to call out? What about the enormous sense of powerlessness that comes from the knowledge that we are constantly being deceived and can do nothing to stop it?
And while Daisey doesn’t specifically address the idea of lies in interpersonal relationships, it is implicit. We exist post-truth in an age of absolute relativity. It is almost too obvious and facile to say that we live in a media-saturated age where truth is manipulated by video, tv, film and the internet – that is generally acknowledged. But I think what is less acknowledged is the degree to which we are affected by our environment. We’ve all text-messaged people saying we were somewhere we weren’t. It is easy enough to call someone from a cell phone, to leave a voice mail or send an e-mail to create an alternate personal narrative that allows us to avoid responsibility or buy ourselves time or make excuses or just plain lie. But since we live beyond right and wrong, we accept it. After all, everybody does it so... how can it really be wrong? It is just a little lie.
4:55 PM
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