Two truths and a lie

Truth 1: I did try out Prof. Sexson's challenge and lied to a loved one.  I am the world's worst liar, so I spent three hours setting up the stage for the lie, making Joe think there was something weighty on my mind that I had to tell him.  The lie itself didn't really compare to the three hours of him thinking something was seriously wrong.  He's not terribly pleased with this class.

Truth 2: I was reading Sarah's blog about truth and lies, and I thought it was kind of neat that she brought up the Matrix, and how people escape from a dream world to a reality, because I was thinking about the same thing, but in an inverse kind of way-- I was actually wondering if dreams are the true reality we aspire to reach. When we did our debate, I thought lies are good for the day, but truth is for the night.  Hedvig is the baby troll sneaked into the human nest, raised as their own. Her existence is the lie; but the lies in the house are merry ones.  They are happy with an attic full of wild game, grandfather, son/wife, daughter.  Maybe it is what they always dreamed of having or desired to have.  Their dreams are their lies.

Lie: Fiction. I just finished Nafisi's book- she uses it a debating ground for the purpose and use of fiction.  The Iranian government thought it should mainly be used as a vehicle for propaganda, but that seemed like such a literal and narrow minded view of the word.  Nafisi thought fiction existed to make us question the "fragile unreality" we live in.  Or not question really, but challenge?  "We speak of facts, yet facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and feelings.  To me it seemed as if we had not really existed, or only half existed, because we could not imaginatively realize ourselves and communicate to the world."  So "reality" isn't really real until we challenge it, rehash it, relive it and own it.  We take what we see and re-create it into a kind of fiction.

I'd agree with Sarah that you can't truly peel truth from lies.  Those ideas are interconnected by imagination; even if you try to crack that nut with every scientific discipline, with tons of facts, I just don't think you could really separate them.