I have dived into a book entitled, Time for Truth by Os Guinness. I have been awestruck by the examples he shares of fake biographies and stories published all in the name of trying to get at the truth of a matter. He shares the example of the Nobel peace prize winner from Guatemala who wrote a book in 1983 depicting her brother's execution in the village of Chajul. She was honored by Pope John Paul II. It turns out the whole story was fictionalized. Her brother was executed, but not in the manner depicted which included bizarre descriptions of being burned alive in a town square where people were forced to watch.
He shares other examples including the life of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens).
Recently, I have also been reading a book, Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell. I saw her speak at the recent National Association For Elementary School Principals. She has done an amazing thing. This book is essentially a compilation of diary entries from the students in her English classes who were writing about their own realities in inner city LA during the 1990's and the Rodney King backlash. She was able to get the students to compare their own existence to the lives of Ann Frank and others such as Zlata Filipovic (siege of Sarajevo). I have to say that this is some of the most honest writing I have ever read. Mind you, I have no way to check out all the stories that are being shared, but it is hard for me to believe the experiences of these students are fictionalized.
In thinking about Os Guiness's assertion that as a western society we have lost respect for the truth, I have to say that I agree with him. I agree that there are many examples of stories that were made up just to get attention and promote a cause. But after reading the entries of these students and their own discoveries of the similarities between their existence and the life of Ann Frank, I find it hard to believe that they could be exaggerating. I believe that sometimes truth hits us so hard, that we refuse to believe it. Truth is a funny thing. It seems that sometimes we need to change it somehow to make it more glamorous or sexy. And at other times we need to minimize it or just ignore it altogether.
But to glamorize or minimize, we have to have some certainty of what the truth is before we can do either. I wonder what someone like Nietzsche would say about the Freedom Writers. Guinness quotes Nietzsche in his book, Beyond Good and Evil.
He says, "Indeed, it may be a characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure- or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, falsified."
The diary entries of the freedom writers are for the most part, short and straight to the point. There isn't much sweetening that I can tell. They are heroes trying to communicate forgotten truth or truth that we refuse to pay attention to- the poverty in our inner cities, the growing gap between haves and have nots, and the lack of equity in our educational systems. Why can't we all follow the example of the freedom writers by sharing our own realities, sharing the truth about our lives without fabrication? Somehow, I can't help but think that we could build a better existence. Nietzsche says this is impossible and that we cannot endure the truth. Perhaps by sharing it, we can be healed and move on to be transformed to some higher form of existence.
