One is reminded of the Japanese book and movie Rashomon. The story was written by Akutagawa Ryunosuke in 1922 and the film, directed by Akira Kurosawa, followed in 1950. The tale, set in 8th Century feudal Japan, involved a rape and a murder with each of the four principal characters providing his and her own version of what had occurred. The murdered samurai speaks through a Shinto psychic, while a bandit-witness in the forest, a traveling monk, and the samurai’s wife, who was the rape victim, all provide alternative versions of what had taken place. The story reveals how all of the contradictory testimony was fundamentally dishonest, in that each participant was interpreting events to support his or her self-interest in the outcome of the tragedy.Obvious maybe, but someone needed to say it and draw the parallels.
There are, of course, ideological differences between the parties in the US that shape perception of events and circumstances. Ideological differences are also intensified by feelings. My sense is that one party is dominated by anger bordering on rage, while the other is dominated by hatred, motivated to a degree by fear. The situation has devolved from talking past each other to shouting past each other.
Is this situation reminiscent of Germany prior to Hitler's rise to power? (rhetorical question) Or is it just Americans being Americans? (culturally adolescent)
The Unz Review
Rashomon American Style–Truth is somewhere in between
Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer, now Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Yet they still manage to agree on massive military budgets and giveaways to Wall Street.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble with truth
ReplyDeleteComment on Philip Giraldi on ‘Rashomon American Style–Truth is somewhere in between’
Philip Giraldi’s summary misses the point by suggesting that truth is an entirely subjective affair: “The story reveals how all of the contradictory testimony was fundamentally dishonest, in that each participant was interpreting events to support his or her self-interest in the outcome of the tragedy.”
This conclusion is true for the political sphere. In the Rashomon story, though, the 5th person is missing: the detective/scientist. It seems that the paradox of multiple truths has been solved already by the ancient Greeks: “There are always many different opinions and conventions concerning any one problem or subject-matter … This shows that they are not all true. For if they conflict, then at best only one of them can be true. Thus it appears that Parmenides ... was the first to distinguish clearly between truth or reality on the one hand, and convention or conventional opinion (hearsay, plausible myth) on the other ...” (Popper)
The idea of truth has no meaning in the political context. It has no meaning in economics either, because economics is not a science. Science is digital=binary=true/false and NOTHING in between. There is NO such thing in science as roughly right or roughly wrong, it is only materially/formally true/false. The swamp between true/false where “nothing is clear and everything is possible” (Keynes) is the natural habitat of morons, agenda pushers, confused confusers, blatherers, fraudsters, trolls, incompetent scientists, in one word, of political economists.#1, #2
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Economics: The greatest scientific hoax in modern times
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/05/economics-greatest-scientific-hoax-in.html
#2 Failed economics: The losers’ long list of lame excuses
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/01/failed-economics-losers-long-list-of.html