Ang Lee's Life of PI, thoughts
"I have just
told you two stories. In both, the facts are the same. In both, the boat still
sinks. In both, my family dies and in both I still survive. Which do you
believe? "
Two strong themes in
Life of PI is that of belief and truth. It suggests that truth is separate from
fact and that it is our beliefs that filter the latter into the former.
But. What is truth?
From a philosophical
perspective, there are three simple ways to define truth:
1.
Truth is that which corresponds to reality.
2.
Truth is that which matches its object/referent.
3.
Truth is simply telling it like it is.
The past week at
SUTD has been a volley of conversations with Andreas. Chief in my mind is the
necessity to explicate the facts behind a project. In the Library pavilion, for
example, the facts are explained and new knowledge produced. It is fact, but is
it truth?
The patron saint of
postmodernism—Friedrich Nietzsche—describes truth like this: “What then is
truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms … truths are
illusions … coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no
longer as coins.” Although the postmodernist holds coins in his hand that are
now mere metal, he affirms at least one absolute truth: the truth that no truth
should be affirmed.
The dull truth of
Nietzsche's statement is that though it may be true, it doesn't matter. Such is
the logic of his truth. Optimistically, maybe it doesn't need to matter for it
to be true. That is the liberation, should you drink his spiked kool-aid.
Educating Pi, his
father educates: "I would rather
you believe in something in disagree with than believing in everything. Choose
what you reject to affirm what you approve. Reason is the filter for
this."
From this, truth is
also defined by its negation. This negation is a selection that is filtered,
perhaps through our beliefs. As a filter, reason and fact are also a belief.
The subjectivity of beliefs, however, confines truth to the myopia of the
personal. Without denying its validity,
a truth that is only personal does negate its relevance.
The
Greek word for truth is alētheia, which
literally means to “un-hide” or “reveal”. It conveys the thought that truth is
always latent, always open and available for all to see, with nothing being
hidden or obscured.
As a definition of
truth, this is the most projective: it is expansive because, in the words of
mulder and scully - "the truth is out there".
Or maybe, it is
"in here".
I believe that Life
is the inhabitation of an idea.
We act out our lives
to a set of biological and anthropological stages. But inside every life
there are also latent truths.
The architecture of
a life lived in truth is the pursuit of understanding one's latent internal
truths and reifying them in the external world of facts and opinions. It is a
long and winding path, I think.
"Before one can
find one's way, there must be a path!" because, "if we don't know
where we're going, then it doesn't matter where one ends up."
And that is the
truth.