{"id":272057,"date":"2024-08-26T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=272057"},"modified":"2024-08-23T06:55:34","modified_gmt":"2024-08-23T05:55:34","slug":"about-truth-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/08\/about-truth-2\/","title":{"rendered":"About Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

The idea of Truth is as relevant for the arts as for the sciences.\u00a0 Truth is an attribute of a symbolic articulation–a thesis, a text, a painting-sculpture, a piece of music–when held up against reality: does it reflect, agree with what we consider “reality”?\u00a0 Some deny the existence of any reality outside articulations.\u00a0 Submit that to the buddhist test for sentient life; does it impact on you with dukkha-suffering, and-or sukha-fulfillment?\u00a0 You may critique–and you should– any discourse about HIV-AIDS, but those letters may also spell death and it is not obvious that the discourse was the killer.<\/p>\n

Science divides the world into observed-unobserved and foreseen-unforeseen by a thesis. The thesis is true if the observed is foreseen and the unforeseen unobserved.\u00a0 A set of theses can be woven together to a text.\u00a0 For the artists we usually start with the text–written in words, in music, in colors and shapes, whatever–conceiving of it as “reality seen through a temperament”, by people with great sensitivities,\u00a0 abilities to see the unseen and hear the inaudible, to reflect not only empirical but also potential reality, and great power of articulation.\u00a0 The difference is one of degree.<\/p>\n

How True! we may exclaim when the text starts owning us.\u00a0 But where Western scientists follow Aristotle and Descartes in subdividing reality in morsels to be reflected one at the time, artists are more oriental, more holistic, reflecting some totality with its tensions, like in the incredible complex novels initiating that tradition in Japan, The Tale of GENJI by Murasaki Shikibu, and Dream of the Red Chamber by Tsao Hsueh-Chin.\u00a0 They make us sense the China now made famous by the incredible books by Gavin Menzies, 1421 and 1434.<\/p>\n

Two critical-constructive links for Truth and Literature: Truth Complexity and Truth Creation.\u00a0 Neither Marx nor Freud, nor phenomenology, (post)structuralism or feminism–leaning on Jonathan Culler in his Literary Theory–not less important in our globalizing and deeply troubled world, with worse to come.<\/p>\n

First, today we live our lives at four levels at the same time, micro-meso-macro-mega, with those nearest to us, in the social reality of genders, race and class, in the relations to other countries near and distant, and in the tectonic shifts between major configurations like North vs South, West vs the Rest, or Christianity vs Islam.\u00a0 We live them and they live us, whether we like it or not.\u00a0 It is not only, say, Freud for micro and Marx for meso; add Sun Tzu-Clausewitz for states, Gandhi for North-South and Lewis-Huntington for civilizations! They are all in all of us at the same time, not micro here and mega with that one.\u00a0 Ibsen combined micro with meso as gender and class, but the others were absent even from his world map.<\/p>\n

But they are on most people’s minds today.\u00a0 We still live the loves with our partners, and relate to, say, our mother in-law.\u00a0 But–what are the immigrants up to?\u00a0 Islamization on the sly?\u00a0 What happens when the US Empire not only declines but falls, will we follow?\u00a0 Will the world poor rise against us?\u00a0 Who am I, with whom am I, on the right side, the wrong?\u00a0 How has my mother-in-law programmed her daughter for it all- – \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0A super-complex world.\u00a0 Yes, it is the task of literature to reflect this to be true.\u00a0 Less Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head, or Melissa Bank, The Worst Thing A Suburban Girl Could Imagine, with their simple worlds.\u00a0 More of Indian Pranav Kumar Vandyopadhyaya’s Passing Time in Biharipur, not to mention Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola.\u00a0 They have seen it before we do in the West.\u00a0 Time to wake up.<\/p>\n

The second critical-constructive reflection is centered on Truth as something to be created, not merely reflected.\u00a0 Truth as correspondence between foreseen-unforeseen and pursued-rejected, and ultimately also observed vs unobserved.\u00a0 How about literature?<\/p>\n

Aristotle launched us on an unfortunate track distinguishing between tragedy and comedy.\u00a0 Also known for his tertium non datur, there is no third possibility, we have been led to believe that literary expression either has an unhappy, bad ending or something comical, laughable.\u00a0 Like in media: distorted reality by pressing it into those two forms as violence journalism, something negative-sad-bad; or entertainment.\u00a0 Infotainment.\u00a0 No solutions, no optimism.<\/p>\n

But what is the alternative?\u00a0 Wouldn’t that be “happy Hollywood ending”?\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 Music often does this better, like Beethoven, maybe particularly from some of his quartets.\u00a0 Striving, struggling exactly to obtain that reality where harmony is nevertheless possible, in a musical sense of ending on tonica, in the peace sense of ending with a solution, a positive transcendence of conflict.\u00a0 There is a sense of release, which may also produce the needed recovery and rebuilding for the next problem or conflict.\u00a0 Music that does not provide this sense is hardly peace productive music.<\/p>\n

Authors like Han Yin and Bernard Malamud, in his A New Life, have written moving novels where the actors live through enormous problems and conflicts in highly untidy landscapes and yet work it out in the end, giving them and also the reader a deep sense of release and strength.\u00a0 They transcend their problems.\u00a0 Not tragedy, not comedy either. “Transcendy”?\u00a0 So badly needed in the media, some light, yet in no way afraid of reporting suffering.<\/p>\n

Peak-happiness, say on p. 48 using the rest of the novel to tear it all down is not good enough.\u00a0 The world needs and often gets solutions.\u00a0 Go for tragedy and you are on the wrong side of history.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Originally published<\/a> on 27 May 2009 – #63<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Johan Galtung (24 Oct 1930 \u2013 17 Feb 2024), a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, was the founder of <\/em>TRANSCEND International<\/a>, <\/em>TRANSCEND <\/a>Media Service<\/a>, and rector of <\/em>TRANSCEND Peace University<\/a>. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize numerous times and was awarded among others the 1987 Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative NPP.<\/em> Galtung\u00a0has mediated in\u00a0over 150 conflicts in more than 150 countries, and written more than 170 books on peace and related issues<\/em>, 96 as the sole author. More than 40 have been translated to other languages, including <\/em>50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives<\/a> published by <\/em>TRANSCEND University Press<\/a>. His book, <\/em>Transcend and Transform<\/a>, was translated to 25 languages<\/em>. He has published more than 1700 articles\u00a0and book\u00a0chapters and over 500 Editorials for <\/em>TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>. More<\/em> information about Prof. Galtung<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>all of his publications<\/em><\/a> can be found at <\/em>transcend.org\/galtung<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea of Truth is as relevant for the arts as for the sciences.\u00a0 Truth is an attribute of a symbolic articulation when held up against reality: does it reflect, agree with what we consider “reality”?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[800],"class_list":["post-272057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272059,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272057\/revisions\/272059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}