Stories

Stories, Memories, and Truth

It is widely believed that humans have told and re-told stories since long before there was writing, or books, or any sort of audio or video recording devices. My use here of the term "story" is intentionally vague. It is always difficult to know to what extent stories are based on truth, original fiction, or possibly earlier stories -- which may have been original fiction or based on truth. No matter how hard we try, even true stories are not totally accurate representations of past events, as they are told from a certain point of view, which can never be totally objective, and often evolve somewhat over time and to suit certain situations.

The latest research on human memory suggests that rather than accurate records of past events, our memories are constantly evolving, so that even the most vivid recollection may not be precisely accurate.

Under most circumstances, I sing the praises of truth. In some cases, though, truth is not particularly important or relevant. A story may illustrate an important concept, regardless of whether or not the story is true, just as a memory of an incident may serve as an important life lesson, whether or not the incident actually occurred as remembered. The problem comes only if one presents a fictional story or an erroneous memory as truth, especially if someone is deliberately misrepresenting the truth in order for their story to be more compelling or persuasive.

I try to be as honest as possible about the stories that I tell. Some of my favorite stories are probably pure fiction, while others seem to be based on real events or possibly-flawed memories of my own life. Now that we have access to not only spoken stories but also writing and audio and video recording devices, many of my favorite stories come from fictional television shows and movies (I believe that science fiction is the mythology of our time) -- so the story that I tell is based upon my possibly-flawed memory of something that was probably fiction, or at least fictionalized, to begin with. It can be argued that in this day and age a person should endeavor to accurately research the details of an episode of a 1960s TV series before making reference to it, but under the circumstances that seems to me to be both a waste of time AND irrelevant.

Stories and dubious memories -- of both real events and fictional accounts -- can be viewed as crossing over into the territory of hypothetical situations, where the parameters of reality are defined by the storytellers.

Truth is complicated, and sometimes irrelevant.