Juliana Spahrs Response
Juliana Spahr's Response is an assessment of knowledge and the intricacies of truth. While truth and knowledge are simple in concept, Spahr proves the difficulty of really obtaining them. The main problem with truth is how interpretive it has become, so the "truth" is really just a reflection on an individual or group mentality. She refers to the "The claims of truth in the age of cover-up and misinformation"(pg 53). Spahr follows these "claims of truth" from their point of origin in an attempt to display the elusiveness of the real truth. Truth starts with the witness of something, to the responding to that something, and finally to testifying about that something. It is through this chain of truth that Spahr proves how knowledge is really just deciphering what you experience and she conveys the greatness of the responsibility that comes with those interpretations. The first event in a series of truth would be the way people tell you information. The first line of the book is, "How to tell without violating?"(pg 9). This emphasizes the importance of the violation of truth that can occur from hearing things from other people. Human existence is too short to experience everything firsthand, so if one desired to have kno
Spahr identifies a need for a believable presentation of this testimony to terrible things. We have to decide about why society has accepted the truths it has and interpret the way it presents these accepted truths. Ultimately Spahr says that we have find truth on our own and that obtaining knowledge is not a passive process. With truths of an important nature we have the responsibility of presenting that truth in a believable nature. Spahr uses the example of a woman with dissociative personality disorder to show differences in what people consider their truth. In the process "we try to look with eyes better than what we've had before,"(pg 69). This impossibility makes it necessary to escape from such mass ideas and make truth more of a personal nature. For a number of reasons we will be presented with information that is false and sorting through it do identify truth can be impossible. Spahr describes another responsibility that we have. The impossibility of identifying real truth creates a need for all of us to be responsible for the truth we that testify to. "This is true/ a man in an alley grabbed my arm,"(pg 35). Often it would seem that people tell you things for their own self interest, not yours. Being out of control will just make one seem crazy to others if the people around him don't understand what the problem is. This bias in the spoken truth ranges from the individual to social institutions such as religion. She is saying that someone has to witness the terrible things, but witness is not enough.
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