Last class, we spent some time talking about truths and a little bit about personal opinions and beliefs. This got me thinking about "The Invention of Lying". Since an opinion is something that we think as one person and is something that we do not share with everyone else in the world, we do not consider it fact, and some people go far enough to say that they are directly against someones opinion. But in the movie, people in the world cannot distinguish fact from fiction so if i had the ability to lie, i could just say, i am the sexiest man alive and i could instantly be with any women i wanted to be with, i could then go to the bank and withdraw a million dollars, because as long as i say i have a million dollars, they believe. This idea further pushes my question to something deeper; can an idea override and overpower biology? For example, let's say that one of my friends greatly dislikes orange juice. That is something that cannot really be changed, you cannot just flip a switch between liking something and not. But if i were to tell him, "You love orange juice, it is your favorite drink." would that instantly change him and his personality just because i said it. An even more extreme example of this would be if someone had a physical deformation or had permanent damage to their body like a bad leg that they had since birth and will always have. If i said,"Your leg is now completely cured and are able to walk completely normal for the rest of your life." would that person miraculously be cured of the bad leg?
In the end, no one can really know and have any answers to these questions, but we do see some of these things on a much smaller scale. For example, i have been told that if i am feeling sick i should just tell myself that i am feeling fine and will no longer be sick. I have tried this and it has worked, whether it is a legitimate way of changing biology of not, i can't say.
I understand your point of view here, but I think you blew it out of proportion at the end. I mean the movie wasn't social critique on how lying can affects us, the movie is about how lying is sometimes good for us, and we cant really live without it, its part of our society and culture, and life is a little bit more enjoyable when we have the ability to lie even if it's a bad thing to do, thats what the movie is all about. The psychological effect of lying to yourself is impressive, but that's what we call confidence, but then we can even go deeper presuming that we all talk to ourselves can we assume that lying to others originates from lying to yourself? or is it the opposite? nature vs nurture? is lying bad or helpful? As you said these questions have no true answer.
ReplyDeleteVery good post, Juan. I can see that you are getting the hang of this kind of response, using a film you watched as an access point to questions about knowledge. Nice work. I thought maybe you would bring in something from IB psych about the Pygmalion effect when you were talking about influencing people. there are often really good links between Psych and Tok, especially when talking about causes of behavior.Anyway, I appreciate that you ask questions here, but also try to answer, or at least shape them.
ReplyDelete