# Writing Excercise

## Are we telling ourselves lies about the world?

1. What’s happening in this sentence? What’s "wrong"?

Who are we? Whose world is being referred to? What is a lie, what is truth, and who is allowed to define what truth/a lie is?
How could the sentence be phrased differently in order to be less prblematic?
The phrase lacks context: who, what, why, by/for who?

2. Has anybody experienced a problem connected to 1.) in a personal situation/context?

3. Why is that? What larger issues are “responsible” for 2.)? (Why does the problem exists? Get down to root causes. Who benefits from the status quo? How do our personal stories fit into the larger socio-economic, political context?)

4. What can you do against it? What are others doing about it? What has worked with similar ?

Diego – and his very opinionated thoughts :)
To speak about the truth is to negotiate. Negotiations are part of the construction of how a community perceives what is true and what is false.

For that it is necessary to have a set of rules. Like in any programming language, whether HTML, JAVA or whatever coding language, a set of rules is necessary in order to interpret meaning –semantics and or even more general symbolisms, signs (aka semiotics).

These negotiations are very malleable. In the end is all about perception and how a certain thing in question is processed and accepted or rejected. I wouldn’t go all the way to ontological or metaphysical questions about our reality, existence or just to seek the truth. Fortunately, I believe this is more a question of hermeneutics, as I feel that it is only possible to know or establish a (the) truth within the context and origin of whatever is surrounding this “truth”.

So, I may sound pragmatic but... when it comes to discussing the truth of whatever context, negotiations between at least two parties have to be established. It can be a reader who will interpret the reasons of an author. And in order for the reader (interpreter) to understand the work (truth) of the author, the reader must familiarize with the context in which the author is publishing her thoughts.

So it is not that we (I refer to “we” as anyone interested in a particular discussion or negotiation) are telling ourselves lies about the world. It is just that in the first place “we” come from different cultural contexts, different views and “we” most likely do not share the same lenses to regard or relate to a (the) truth in the first place. In that case, a lie is still equal to a truth. The imbalance [between the truth and the lie] would come whenever the “we” comes to an agreement in how the rules are meant to be set up, in other words… there should be a balance between the “we” and their methodology of interpretations before judging if there is such a thing as truth or lie.

Finally, to answer the question: “Are we telling ourselves lies about the world?”...

I think it depends. It depends on who are the ones involved in a given discussion and about what, why and for whom these negotiations happen in a given scenario, context... or let’s call it “world”. I think this depends on the methodologies or sets of rules employed to judge if the sayings and doings about that particular “world” are lies or are all very truthful.

Émilie - and some thoughts
The question here cannot be seen as right or wrong, as it is written in an idiosyncratic way.
Then again, what is not idiosyncratic in languages ?
Hence, we can ask this other question : can the notions of right and wrong be recognised as realities ?
The use of the pronoun « we » also poses a problem in the idea that it considers all individual human beings as a collective. We could imagine that it is a possibility, that all human beings (and more precisely all human beings that have ever existed) are interconnected within the net, the spider web of what we call « humanity ».
But is it so simple ? Can we reduce the infinite individualities into one entity, one concept, one line of thought ?

Eleni >> An illustration of thoughts on our discussion against the background of own experience.
We and We
The market emailed me last night and said “We thought long and hard about your wishing list. It’s not going to work. We can always sit down and have a conversation. A quick answer to put you at ease, we do know how to steer that heavy wheel called future. We are definitely getting out of this mess. We are very happy that we sorted this out!”

When I was 14 years old my dad said; read this book.

It was a slow summer vacation in Croatia and he was presumably tired from entertaining his three grown daughters all week. The book was an Oliver Sacks book “the man who mistook his wife for a hat.” It was back in the day when my dad thought that maybe I’d still be persuadable to follow in his footsteps and study medicine. Disclaimer, I was not.

But something about the book intrigued me non the less. I guess I really did want to know how this man came to mistake his wife for a hat when wives and hats seem so absurdly and undisputedly easy to differentiate.

And so I arrived at a passage in which Mr. Sacks discusses a study relating to memory. In the study people are asked about a memory of being lost in a mall around the age of 6/8, in which an elderly couple helps them find their parents. The questions are asked in a way that presumes the existence of this memory, which although highly plausible, is not an experience many people share. At the end of the study 82% of the participants where absolutely certain that the completely fabricated story of the mall had indeed happened to them. Even after being confronted with the fact that it had not. By the end of it many had even colored the memory with extreme detail, from the blue and green striped shirt they were wearing to how utterly cold it had been that day, all non-existing conjured up details.

Although I barely remember a thing about Croatia, the content of this book has proofed to stick. I still find it to be extremely interesting; How malleable, soft and porous our truths are. How much a single conversation can change. So many of our memories altered and modified; Added to and subtracted from, by conversation and thought.

From that day on, those 82%, they really have been lost in a mall between the age of 6 to 8. Any lie detector would say so. They know it happened. And so it did.

Who’s to say what truth is a lie and which lie is a truth.

Matteo-
When institutions come to define societies - seen as cosmologies - with ground rules, a sense of collectiveness pushes to the definition of a "we", an unconditional "us" which generalize over the individuals and exclude the pure selfless. By taking part in this cosmos, We accept the rules, We submit to a common "we", We allow a _pluralis maiestatis_: /plu·rà·lis ma·ie·stà·tis, the first person plural, used in official speeches by important personalities. But, Who are We? Why are We part of this world? Society? Cosmology? Is it possible to rephrase being unaware of the context we are in?
I am experiencing a problem now. Why? I'm questioning it. A solution might be superficial at the moment. A solution to the solution? Keep on questioning!

Underlying,
an undercurrent
running through individual waters.
A rip tide
serene on the surface yet
having the ability to pull down
suddenly. Drowning.
Now more apparent,
harder to hide
Yet is now illness in one form no longer a weakness?
A global truth?
Wearing the effects like medals
to share a consequence of our time?
And then
the innate, the instinctual
Or is it?
‘Spreading misinformation’
Feels so shocking
when my doubts are so real.
How can our relations intertwine
in this ‘global reality’
how can my truths still be mine?

“The immune system is also thought to be behind sex-specific responses to vaccines: women develop higher antibody responses and have more frequent and severe adverse reactions to vaccines…” (From Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez)


This is a campaign the city of Zurich launched back in March when the Swiss Federal Council enacted a nation wide lockdown. These posters were distributed throughout the city of Zurich as well as on police cars. The posters address everyone.

“Stay at home. Please. Everyone.”

Everyone?

Or everyone who has access to a place they can call home?

Back in April an unidentified group reacted to this campaign by squatting 5 houses and attaching the following posters to the facades or the fences.


Translation:

For everyone. A home.

Today we squatted for houses in Zürich-Altstetten. As from today these houses are homes – a symbol against forgetting people.

Solidarity for everyone!