what's the use of truth response

after having read the book, my vision of truth hasn’t been altered much as it doesn’t give me a definite answer of what truth really is and why it means so much in today’s society. but the interesting points came up when they started to discuss this matter. an interesting case study was put into place in journalism subject. journalists seem to claim themselves as professionals and declare that they have such high code of work ethics yet some of them made stories up and spread the untruth. journalism is a pretty important information media for it directly relates to the public – and not a few would actually depend their knowledge on these type of media – so if there are no truthfulness in writing the news up, then it is very possible that many people might be fooled by the news coverage.

truth is a norm in society. the concept of truth is very subjective and personal; truth is like our expression of agreement into a statement or our justification upon certain things. the justification of what we consider of being true is the most important aspect in defining truth. the truth has become the new norm and the goal of life that is pretty impossible to fulfil. what we believe to follow and what we believe as true – but a belief is correct if and only if . but if all these statements are the real definition of truth, then we can say that there is nothing more than truth; there are no hidden meanings, no metaphysical matters about it and it’s simply just another word in the English vocabulary. if truth has nothing more to offer than just an instrumental value, how could the virtues of truth, being trust, sincerity, exactness, honesty, reality, even exist?

there is a slight obligation in our lives to seek for truth and that is an intrinsic value or goal of one of the serachings in life. but this doesn’t mean that there’s an obligation to say or believe the truth all the time – which would be an abnormal behaviour. the truth is very normative; it is a norm of assertion as a form of moralism. it is very easy to be confused between the aspects of the truth it self such as the definition of truth, the concept of truth, the virtues of truth, what is considered to be truth and the manner of truth – as this is the state of mind that i’m in right now. but, from all these randomness and subjectivity around truth and all its virtues, i might be able to say that this matter is infinite and arguable – it is very personal. i thought i would get a definite answer from reading this book as it was my original intention of purchasing this book.

but regardless of the unexpected ending (conclusionless) this book does triggered me to think about other things and start making links into some of my previous thoughts and opinions about truth and our ability to control over our lives. there are no such thing as definite facts of truth. it’s undefinable. and i must agree that it actually has become the today’s society’s norm – with if we look at it as a bigger picture, might create chaos and deep confusion in life – which perhaps are really happening right now. almost anything that are happening right now can be linked into one thing called ‘truth’. truth has made us have the will to seek more, to think more, to read more and become more sensitive to the matters around us. truth is so vague that we’ve lost its meaning – thus, perhaps people started to neglected it and think no more of it. but how could we live without knowing what the truths in life are? so what are we living for right now? and on what basis are we living on?


i guess this is one of those ‘good’ books where the ending or the conclusion is left for us to solve – as an on going thought.