truth

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed Feb 5 23:49:07 UTC 2014


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 4:13 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Blithely used to mean "deeply-held opinion; conviction proclaimed to be
> true."
>
> Very postmodern, though it bears a superficial resemblance to OED 3b
> (obsolete). Otherwise, not defined in OED.
>
> I just heard a learned person explain that "Before deconstruction there was
> just one truth, but now there are multiple truths."
>
> You know, "what's true for you isn't necessarily true for me, and vice
> ******* versa."
>
> That sort of statement, often uttered by people who've never heard of
> poststructuralism seems to me to be a warping of the unexceptionable
>
> "What's true of me may not be true of you, and vice ****** versa."  In
> other words, I prefer hedgehogs, you prefer goldfish. No prob. Just get the
> prepositions right.
>
> Cf. my past, sometimes fiercely disputed, exx. of "fact" = 'idea' and
> "novel" = 'book of narrative prose.'
>

Reminds me of the claim that Goebbels once spoke to the effect that a lie
becomes the truth, once that it's been told enough times. And then there
are the claims of for-profit schools that all you need in life is a skill,
so why bother with boring lectures that you don't need and whose only
purpose is education, not job-training?


--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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