Determining Personal Truth Essay Example

There is a thin line that separates truth from a lie. The thin line depends on what different people think what truth is and what defines it.

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In most cases people believe in what they mostly see and partly hear. In their book, Truth and Lies: What People Are Thinking, Bowden and Thomson 267, demonstrates how people's conclusion on language signs and other non-verbal cues could be so wrong. The book insightfully analyses the non-verbal communication and its role in lie detection. This book opens up our eyes not only in the communication field but other aspects of our lives.

Bowden and Thomson book on Truth and Lies: What People Are Thinking that was published in the mid-2018, captures most of the current events associated with communication and how people respond to them. With modern technology, there are a lot of social media platforms that are used to pass and receive information. It has, therefore, become hard to know how the other person responds to a particular information because you are not seeing them. However, even before technology, people were still making mistakes in interpreting the non-verbal cues.

The reason behind the wrong interpretation is due to the notion that people have that 'you believe what you see' and that you cannot go against what you believe. In other words, what you believe is the truth. The technological factor in this era can further influence this notion. New technologies such as the use of smartphones that has emotional emoji that portray our feeling associated with specific messages from the sender in which the receiver might not get it all wrong, and the receiver might have exaggerated the information.

Like mentioned, the above truth is determined by what we see and hear. As such, the information that is fed to us and what we set our eyes on, forms the basis of the truth. From the Bowden and Thomas book, the non-verbal portrayed by people around us are registered in our minds, and we use our judgments to categorize whether it is a lie or truth. When we consider hearing as a determinant of our knowledge of truth or lie, we put into consideration the things that people like the doctrines tell us we learn from our religions and our past histories.

For instance, the repeated history of US and the Japanese (textbook spin) depicted from an extract from the book Psychology and Human Motivation, of the nuclear bomb warfare that left many people dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the long term side effects of the atomic bomb that had on people (Ariely, and Simon 40). From an extract from the same article, the Japanese could only surrender and stop bombing places in a condition that the Emperor be permitted to remain on the throne. The Japanese wanted to keep the truth that they had an emperor who should be at the throne, and they would fight them at all cost. Histories and past information that we hear from either narrative or read from books appear to determine our judgment on whether an event is right or a lie.

There is no justification that what we see, and continually do in our daily lives are true. The influencing factors, that is, the technological, historical or religious do not always determine the right judgment. Like mentioned earlier, there is only a very tinny difference between a truth and a lie. Besides, we cannot still conclude our judgments to be right through what we see. Just like Bowden and Thomson, in their studies about Lie and Truth: What People Are Thinking people make a lot of mistakes when interpreting what they see from people using non-verbal clues Shah (Nishi 443). From the above book, there is a possibility of an unrealistic judgment that people make since they assume what other people could be thinking hence making mistakes. This does not only apply to the communication field but also many more other aspects of life. Ward and Stephen, 86 assert that hearing from narrators, especially the third person narrative which may be distorted may even contain some lies. Descriptions such as historical stories that are specially told or read, do not necessarily represent the truth. Truth cannot be perceived as what people see, hear or do. The truth is that which one believes that it is regardless of the time place and time. The truth and line are separated by a single track called a rightful consciousness. The external factors may influence the detention of truth and lie, but it should guide be a guide to judging the environment-friendly.

Conclusion

In summary, the difference between truth and lie only when the facts are justified as right or wrong. If the facts meet the proper criteria, then it is declared. The opposite of that is that if the state doesn't match the required standards, then the information is not maintained as wring, but then it is referred to as wrong.

Works cited

Bowden, Thomson. 'Truth and Lies: What people are thinking'? (2018) HarperCollins Publishers (392)

Shah, Nishi. "How truth governs belief." The Philosophical Review 112.4 (2003): 447-482.

Ariely, Dan, and Simon Jones. The (honest) truth about dishonesty: How we lie to everyone--especially ourselves. Vol. 336. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012.

Ward, Stephen JA. "Truth and objectivity." The handbook of mass media ethics. Routledge, 2008. 85-97.