How does the Cronon article complicate our discussion and our own thinking about truth?

[Ilana]

Cronon writes that the mere fact of a chronology having a beginning and ending changes it from a mere chronology into a narrative. He also suggests that a true chronology includes every single thing that happened; all equally important. Thus, once you give something a beginning or an ending, once you begin to edit a piece and make some things more important than others, it is no longer real happening-truth: it now has a point and a theme, thus it is now narrative; story-truth.
I had thought that the definition of narrative was much more narrow--the chronology had to be one-sided or have a definite bias. Cronon's essay definitely widened my definition. But I also think that it's almost impossible, in the case of what he's saying, to make a true chronology, since it's almost impossible to record everything that happened over a certain period of time, without beginning or ending. There must be some amount of subjectivity in everything.

[Hillary]

Another interesting point I found in Cronon's article was about an author's choice of content. An author may choose to exclude information that is true in a general sense, but is not true or relevant within the context of the specific story. I found it very interesting to see how authors often eliminate details that would completely change the meaning of a particular story. That being said, I think the process of distinguishing truth (within a story) seems very complicated. Within a story, each author's bias will be reflected. This bias will make the truth, for the reader, much harder to discern.

[Ling]

I agree that there's subjectivity in everything. We have seen by the Great Plains list example that such a list without any bias whatsoever is impossible to be used to convey meaning.
When I was reading 1984 and TCCC I thought there is a clear distinction between truth and story. However, Cronon's article showed otherwise. He showed that everything, even history, which is known as facts, are filled with human biases. Biases are inseparable from any kind of written records, or anything that is man-made. However, these biases are necessary. They get us to care about what is being written; they give the record life and meaning.

[Rachel]

Way to go Ilana, starting a new topic ☺

Also, I completely agree with you. What you’re saying is reminding me of a widely known saying “history is told by the victors.” The account of everything we have – stories, narratives, novels, or tales of legend, have all been told by the people who survived to tell these stories (hence the “victor” aspect of the saying) or deemed them important enough to recount. Therefore, using Cronon’s ideology, every account of anything we have ever grasped is not entirely “true.” Even things we don’t think are subjective are. Math, for example, is a widely objective course opposed to an English class. However, by learning the topics we are taught, and being told “two is two” because some people believe it, and those are the people we listen to, math has some subjectivity as well. By obeying the laws of math or science, we just take them to be true, because that is what our teachers tell us is true. It’s unnerving to think about, but it all goes back to our unit question and the answer we came to as a class: We don’t know what “true” really is.

[Catie]

I mentioned in class that there are at least 3 sides to every story. There is person A's side, person B's side and the truth. As long as a human being is telling the story, you will never have the truth. We are imperfect beings. To tell something that is completely true, we would need to be near perfect if not perfect. We are not capable of not putting our biases into the stories we tell.
Last year in my history class we had two textbooks. There were major differences between the two books even though they were talking about the same time periods and events. Sometimes one textbook would have an event that the other did not, sometimes there would be a bias toward one particular group in history and there were so many other differences. History is one of the things that is believed to be objective and not subjective. But right there is an example of how it is not possible for us as humans to write or tell something in a completely objective way.

[Arielle]

I really like how Catie phrases that there are three sides to every story. I found this article to be a tad dull and fairly repetitive, but the one thing I found very interesting was the author's take on crticism. I found this part personally satisfying, because I hate any criticism and I don't take it well! But, at least I can admit it. Anyway, I think this passage can also be looked at in a
hypocritical light, because it is stated
that stories are our means of
communication. Thus, aren't one's
criticisms just a means of further communication?

[Rachel]

I'd like to answer Arielle's question. I think that all types of storytelling, fables, historical novels, and even pieces of criticism are all types of communication for humans. I also agree with Catie, there are always three sides to one story and if a human is telling the story, we don't receive the complete truth. If that is true, (and we obviously don't have an un-biased machine that can tell stories for us,) then we will NEVER be able to identify a particular story as real truth. Now, if what I just stated is true, then I think it's completely unnecessary to try to arrive at this "complete" truth because we are constantly affected by human imperfection. Does anyone agree or disagree that we can find complete truth? Does anyone agree or disagree that it is pointless to attempt to find complete truth?

[Ada]

Cronon's essay also widened my definition of truth. And I had a similar experience to Ling's as I was reading TTTC. I mentioned in class that as I was reading the book, I saw the happening truth to be the historical aspect, and the story truth to be the emotional and subject aspect. In other words, I thought that these two spheres were completely incompatible. However, Cronon's essay made me realize that the opposite is true. It is, in fact, almost impossible to separate the two. As soon as something becomes part of history, it is automatically subjected to bias. Cronon's essay also made me realize that bias isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes I think we assume that there is a negative connotation to the word "bias." However, human subjectivity allows us to make connections between historical events, and determine cause and effect. Sometimes objectivity isn't better than subjectivity.

[Alon]

I have always believed in two forms of history: the actual and the relative. The actual form of history is the one unique way in which time and space unfolded to create a certain event. This form of history is absolute and indisputable because it is objective and exists regardless of whether or not we humans can perceive it. The relative form of history is all we humans know: our narratives, our biased accounts of how events occurred and which ones are important. This form is subjective, and is not necessarily factually correct.
In this light, I view TTTC and Cronon's essay as examples of the relative form of history. TTTC reveals to us that truth cannot be absolute, that emotions are sometimes true than words, that story-truth is more real than happening-truth Cronon's essay agrees with the distinction I have created; because humans are a product of their environment and background, it is impossible for any one human to explain actual history or absolute truth.

[David]

I think tttc and Cronon state a different perspective about truth than 1984 and George Orwell's essay. Our previous novel, 1984, strongly criticized the government's manipulation of literature in order to indoctrinate proles with certain relative truths. Orwell continued to comment on his essay that such destruction of truth is extremely detrimental to humanity's natural rights and freedom.
tttc and Cronon seemed to say the same thing: that human beings cannot define absolute truth in any way. However, the two literatures didn't really criticize or warn readers that manipulated truth is necessarily dangerous to individuality and freedom. In fact, O'Brien and Cronon almost seem to encourage subjective narration and bias accounts as seen in tttc.

[Randie]

Cronon's article and TTTC just proved to me that truth is relative. By determining the difference between story truth and happening truth, we have shown that there are multiples shades of truth, and nothing is in black in white. Truth can be how something makes you feel, or it can be something that actually occured. Similarly, the Cronon article further displays different shades of truth by stating that historians often decide for themselves what to discuss and write about and what to leave out, and this paints very differents picture of the truth.

[Shigeto]

Cronon said that there are two arguements to history. One is that relative truth has blinded people, and that many peices of history are innacurate due to these stories. He says that "we force our stories on a world that doesn't fit them".
On the other hand, relative truth is "fundamental to the way we humans organise our experiences". It doesn't matter if O'Brien got shot. His experience with the war, which is equivalent to getting shot, should be enough. Finally, he states that the experiences are much more important than what really happened.
I agree with Randie, and also am convinced by these two sources. Relative truth makes humans unique from robots or computers. It shows how beautiful the mind works, whereas an robot can only respond unbiasedly. In addition, since relative truth can only be attained in this world, why not exploit its advantages?