This past week during English class, we discussed something rather interesting to me: lying. Billy Collins had written about a history teacher "trying to protect his students' innocence" by lying to them about real life events. We were then asked, "when is lying considered lying"? To me, this is all a matter of perspective. One man's truth may be another man's lie.
Of course I had to tie this to my conure somehow. As I thought about how this could apply for a little creature like him, I heard a sudden racket and turned to see my conure Yoshi fighting with my two smaller parakeets. It hit me right then. Although I obviously know that the three birds are two different species, do they know that? Most of the time, they seem to get along fine, like members of the same species would. Yoshi also loves to be around my family and me, a whole other species. Perhaps Yoshi thinks that everyone in the house is the same species, just maybe with slightly different colors and patterns. However, if we were somehow teleported to an alternate dimension where Yoshi could understand English, would I tell him that we weren't the same? Would he even believe me? He may be so used to thinking we were all the same species, he would think he was the one who knew the truth, not the other way around. That brings me back to my main point. Is it right to say that someone is lying even if they thought they were 100% speaking the truth? I guess this is just another one of those subjects that have many answers, with none being the only correct one.
I like how you managed to tie your bird with the lesson's theme. But my question is you are assuming your bird won't believe what you say, or the truth. In the case of "The History Teacher", as a student, there isn't any any particular reason to not believe the teacher. Majority will believe what the teachers say, but there are exceptions too. Although whether it is the truth or a lie is based on perspective, but is it right to give the students false information? The history teacher probably know the past events very well, in the same perspective, the history teacher knows that he is lying too.
ReplyDeleteI like the sentence, "One man's truth may be another man's lie." I've never really thought of it that way before, but it's true that lying and belief are based on the same factors. Maybe they are a lot more similar than we think.
ReplyDeleteThis post is well written, I agree that perspective is such an important factor in the 'truth'. I think that it would be interesting to see Yoshi's perspective on us as a different species. I think a lot of perspective comes from what is taught as a younger individual because that becomes the basis for every other opinion and perspective in the future.
ReplyDeleteWoah this blog post was super cool, and I loved the connection you made with your birds to stick with your theme! You make a really interesting point about perspective and lying. I never thought about how some people could say things without even knowing it’s lying but that’s very true. To add on to your thoughts, I think it’s also important that no only does everyone have a different outlook on lying, but everyone also has a different definition of lying. To some, it isn’t simply just a matter of telling the truth or not, but the factors of degree and intent also play a role (like what we talked about in class)
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