don’t let the facts get in the way of the truth

The facts are not the truth.

This is a confusing idea to try and reconcile and I’ve really struggled with putting it into practice. But here’s the explanation.

We experience the world through a series of sensory information. At no point do we get a full picture of what’s going on around us. Our visual environment is limited to the visible spectrum of light, and what is right in front of us, and bright/dim enough for us to see. We only hear certain frequencies. We can only touch things within arms reach.

There is an entire world of reality outside of us, and we have no idea it even exists. We can only imagine it in theory.

Beyond that, to process any of the sensory information we’re collecting, we have to actively pay attention to the world. Do you pay attention to everything around you all the time? I don’t.

That’s because we don’t notice our objective status.

We really only start paying attention when novelty occurs, because change makes us pay attention.

We can only think of things in comparison to something else. Nothing exists in a vacuum in our minds. (As an aside, this is also why all art is contrast.)

If we do pay attention, and we do process this information, it’s filtered through and tainted by our biases, values, experiences, emotions, and perspectives. Because of this, objectivity isn’t real. There’s no such thing as objective truth.

So then, it would seem that the truth of reality exists outside of our ability to understand it.

When we tell a story, the goal is to convey the truth of our experience to the best of our ability to another human being. Someone who is going through the same sensory process and muddying up our story with their own perspectives. Storytelling is a conversation between teller and audience, and a conversation is playing toss with clay. We go back and forth, shaping the form with the shape of our hands and our fingerprints with each toss.

Confronting all of the biases and inability to interact with the real facts of our world make us seem incapable of truth. But the opposite is the case.

Good storytelling helps preserve moments of humanity. The whole point is to transfer the feeling of the human experience from one person to another.

Often, when telling a story, I find myself jumping around to unnecessary details as I remember them. This is normal. The process of remembering something activates the same neurons as the initial experience. But we don’t get the whole picture all at once. The brain doesn’t work like a camera, sequentially relaying the information back. Instead, we retrieve memories in circuits. Stimulating one part of the circuit activates the rest of the memory. The act of telling the story helps us further remember it.

But just because it’s normal doesn’t make it helpful. It adds lots of confusion and necessary detail. Often, storytelling is about withholding information. It’s about holding back certain details, and certain facts, so that we can convey the experience more effectively.

It even means, on occasion, that we need to alter the facts of the story. There’s nothing immoral about this. We’re not lying. At least, we’re not lying anymore than we already are. We’re just altering the facts intentionally, in service of the story, rather than unintentionally, in service of nothing.

We don’t have any reason to believe that our memories can be trusted. In fact, we have evidence of the contrary. Our memories are wrong.

So instead of shaping our story unconsciously, we’re doing it on purpose. And we’re doing it in effort of being more truthful, not less.

Don’t let the facts get in the way of the truth.