Truth is inclusive, neither black nor white, nor a shade of grey. Indeed truth is multicolored spectrum, a beautiful hologram. - Peter Shepherd 

Inspired by 'The Tell Your Story Series' from @the-alien, I started to wonder how a storyteller (the point of origin) was actually able to put a story in a complete different perspective, thus create a complete different reality.

Is there more than one truth? And if it´s the case, which is the one to follow? 

The concept of 'truth' 

We can define truth as a statement about the way the world actually is. 

The concept of truth assumes that there is an absolute answer to a given question. One truth for all. 

Regardless, truth is a statement - based on beliefs - about how the world could be. The more belief systems, the more realities evolve. Most people go about their lives with an incomplete knowledge of the world. We actually have a short life full of questions without any absolute answer. Truth eliminates question marks and provides stability. That´s why we pursue and need to know THE truth. 

The question is: how many of them are there? 

Changing the 'Vantage Point' 

Do you know the movie 'Vantage Point' (US, 2008)? If not, you´ve missed a really good one. The story perfectly shows how variable the concept of reality actually is.  

During an historic counter-terrorism summit in Spain, the President of the United States is struck down by an assassin's bullet. Eight strangers have a perfect view of the kill. The all-dominant quesion is: What did they really see? 

Since the minutes leading up to the mortal shot are replayed through the eyes of each witness, the reality of the assassination takes shape. Just when you think you know the answer, the shattering final truth is revealed.  

The Official Trailer (2:30 minutes worth watching): 

Why we love (need) crime 

Crime is fascinating, because most of us don’t commit it. But the popularity of that genre has little to do with crime per se. It is rather the essence of how storytelling works. Crime fiction shows one of the fundamental rules of storytelling: cause and effect.  

The whole universe depends on the law of cause and effect. Planet Earth supposedly was created like that. Cause and effect is part of our essence. 

We all know that phenomenon: we constantly try to attribute causes to almost everything we experience (why does a person behave like that? why do we feel like this?). Most of that is speculation. 

We seek agency. We look for the agent (the cause, the person or thing responsible) of any actions we perceive or experience. 

In real life, our judgments are often mistaken: we expect far more agency than there actually is. The reason is a natural safety mechanism. 

It is safer for us to suppose that there is a specific threat (a burglar in the cellar) than to believe that the agent of a phenomenon might be so general as to be meaningless (the cat caused the noise in the cellar). 

Stories teach us to seek the cause. In books and movies we become used to find out who the agent of a phenomenon was - and nowhere more so than in a crime story. 

The whole plot is built around discovering who committed the crime. Crime stories with particular efficiency teach us something that will help us to survive - the are the perfect mirror of the evolutionary theory. 

The importance of truth before the law
'Justice is truth in action.' - Benjamin Disraeli 

The question is: which one of these truths? 

There is an endless number of mysterious and dramatic court procedures that became history. Their protagonists who were accused of having killed somebody and whose innocence could never really proved, will be memorized forever. 

Our inner need to know what really happend will be never fulfilled and we´ll remember their faces stamped with a big question mark.

OSCAR PISTORIUS: Did he suffer or regret?

AMANDA KNOX: Did she know more than we did? 

Maybe the value of truth before the law depends on these two factors: How good is the story sold and do we buy (believe) it. 

Robert Frost, an American poet (1874 - 1963) said once: 'A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.'  

And here´s another critical one: 

It seems that both truth and justice are relative. In theory we are all equal before the law. Even though, legal equality depends on our possibilities to convince others of our concept of truth.    

This leads us to another point: if truth depended on how many believing followers we had, it would be defined by the most popular, thus the most powerful. 

Conspiracy theories, fake news and post-truth:
Is our modern reality managed by the most powerful?  

'People that say facts are facts - they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way - it’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not truth. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.' *

*30th of Nov 2016: CNNs Scottie Nell Hughes at the Diane Rehm Show talking about the US election 

It seems that in our today´s society facts are now opinions and there is no such achievement as objective truth anymore.  

That would mean that the colour was whatever we said it was, when shouted loud enough or repeated over and again. Eventually, people might believe these market criers. 

This, we are told, is the new 'post-truth' world, where things are not always what they seem, and you neither have to mean what you say nor say what you mean. 

Final thoughts:
It seems that there is no absolute answer to how the world actually is.
By changing the vantage point, truth can be perceived in different shades. Furthermore, our today´s attention world tends to create their own reality, using a powerful network to make us believe what they want us to believe in. The disappearance of our old concept of truth, the inability to classify our world into good and evil, innocent and guilty, will lead us to one thing:
uncertainty. Thus: instability. 

Fortunately, we still have crime fiction where the guilty one will be found, where good beats evil,  and where there is only one valid truth.

I hope you enjoyed the read.
Marly -  

Picture sources:
Title: http://more-sky.com/group/sherlock-holmes-movie-wallpaper/
Man with hat: https://static.pexels.com/photos/
Oscar Pistorius: http://www.breakingnews.ie/
Amanda Knox: http://www.huffpost.com/
Jury quote: http://img.picturequotes.com/
Justice quote: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/
William Wilderforce quote: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/
Mark Twain quote: http://cdn.doublequotes.net/mark-twain-quotes/