What is Truth?
Brooke Crowell
Mrs. Moritz
Honors English 11
15 December 2014
The Not So Definite Definition Late one night, as I was sprawled out on my living rooms couch, I began to browse through my social media on my laptop. As I scrolled through Facebook, I noticed that a disturbing video continued to appear. The first time that I noticed it, I simply scrolled past, not interested enough to watch it, but the video would resurface seconds later. Eventually, I decided to click on it out of my growing curiosity. It displayed an African American man lying dead on the ground as policemen walked around the scene and talked to one another. As I watched, I thought it was disturbing that someone posted a video of some random man who, from what I assumed, was killed. Of course, at the time, I was not sure of anything that happened and was unsure of how I should have felt about the video.
After watching the clip, I began to read the comments below. I quickly found out that a vast amount of people had commented their opinion on the event. However, most of these statements varied greatly and almost all of the people that commented something were quick to add that they knew for certain that they were correct. Some would say that the African American died because of the color of his skin, while others said that it was because he was a criminal. Of course, not all of these statements could be the truth, right? In my opinion there is not a definite definition of truth and thus, all of these statements can be true in some way. Truth changes from person to person, and is greatly influenced on facts, society, and humans’ own personal customs, morals, and beliefs.
Later that month, facts from the video began to arise. Even though these facts were now presented and could not be disputed, it did not present the truth of the whole event. This is because the video was taken after the African American man was killed. From this, a fact that could easily be presented would be that the man died;
Mrs. Moritz
Honors English 11
15 December 2014
The Not So Definite Definition Late one night, as I was sprawled out on my living rooms couch, I began to browse through my social media on my laptop. As I scrolled through Facebook, I noticed that a disturbing video continued to appear. The first time that I noticed it, I simply scrolled past, not interested enough to watch it, but the video would resurface seconds later. Eventually, I decided to click on it out of my growing curiosity. It displayed an African American man lying dead on the ground as policemen walked around the scene and talked to one another. As I watched, I thought it was disturbing that someone posted a video of some random man who, from what I assumed, was killed. Of course, at the time, I was not sure of anything that happened and was unsure of how I should have felt about the video.
After watching the clip, I began to read the comments below. I quickly found out that a vast amount of people had commented their opinion on the event. However, most of these statements varied greatly and almost all of the people that commented something were quick to add that they knew for certain that they were correct. Some would say that the African American died because of the color of his skin, while others said that it was because he was a criminal. Of course, not all of these statements could be the truth, right? In my opinion there is not a definite definition of truth and thus, all of these statements can be true in some way. Truth changes from person to person, and is greatly influenced on facts, society, and humans’ own personal customs, morals, and beliefs.
Later that month, facts from the video began to arise. Even though these facts were now presented and could not be disputed, it did not present the truth of the whole event. This is because the video was taken after the African American man was killed. From this, a fact that could easily be presented would be that the man died;
Cited: Heller, Joseph, and Brice Matthieussent. Catch 22. Paris: B. Grasset, 1985. Print. Tan, Amy. The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. New York: Putnam, 2003. Print. Wolff, Tobias. Old School. New York: Knopf, 2003. Print.