For the last few years I have been producing reality television shows, an interesting crossroads of storytelling, documentary, and mockumentary. A key component of all of these shows is the interview. Part confessional, part narrative device, partly real and partly scripted, the interview is the place where the real people playing themselves gets to clarify the inner monologue of the character they think they are portraying. In other words, the interview is where they get to tell you what REALLY happened, at least from the perspective of the role they think they play on the show.
Over the last few years I’ve conducted hundreds of these interviews over hundreds of hours, and one thing is clear - no two people ever remember an event happening the same way, no matter how quickly you interview them after the event occurs. People will disagree on everything from the time of day an event occurred, to the color of their friend’s shirt, to the most basic components of a conversation. Because I conduct the interviews based on a filmed version of the events (i.e. expert testimony) part of my job is to let the cast disagree about the essentials of the scene to counterpoint what the viewer sees “really” happening. However, sometimes I need a cast member to talk me through the events in a way that jibes with the filmed version, and it is amazing how infrequently anyone can remember the “accurate” version of events. I usually have to coach them through with gentle suggestions to get the play-by-play we need for the edit.
I also have found that after a certain period of time has elapsed, usually a few weeks, the more likely it is that the various cast members will have the same memory. This is the direct result of memory contamination in the form of shared discussion about an event. The more time that elapses, the more the memory becomes a shared or communal memory, rather than an individual memory. Influenced by other versions of the story, their own desire to be the hero of the story, and the biological limits of the human brain, the memory becomes tainted.
Whether applied to the mundane events of a reality show, or the stories that lead a nation into war, the simple truth is that there is no simple truth. There is no cross-roads where your truth intersects with mine. We may come to agree on a truth because of a need to belong to a group, or a desire to avoid conflict, or apathy, but this “communally shared truth” is nothing but another story we tell ourselves. All truth is filtered through the swamp of heredity, biology, personal and cultural mythology, time and distance. We might use words that seem to agree with each other, but there is simply no way that I can ever directly experience what you perceive as truth. So if a shared truth does not exist, where does that leave us when trying to agree on what reality really is?
I did not expect that working on reality television shows would bring me to this philosophical conundrum, but it has. As I have deepened my explorations of my own mind and Buddhism over the last year, I have started to understand that truth is that which exists in the present moment, and everything else is a post-truth labeling of that moment with varying degrees of accuracy.
If all of these “contaminants” of truth (heredity, biology, mythology, time and distance) are “me-centered” experiences - i.e. there is an “I” who experiences truth which is then subject to these contaminantsas I experience them - then it stands to reason that truth is something that exists separate from “I”. This is not meant as an argument for moral relativism, where everything is okay because nothing is real. On the contrary, the more I explore this idea the more I desire to move my own personal lower-case-t truth into the world of the upper-case-T Truth. In my fleeting, tantalizing glimpses of upper-case-T Truth, “I” shut up for a second (If I’m lucky) and stop telling myself stories, making plans, building defenses, and otherwise doing all the mental backflips that I do 99.9999% of the time, all of which I am doing to prove to myself that I still exist.
In those fleeting moments of capital-T Truth, I see that we do in fact share a communal Truth that is separate and distinct from biology, heredity, mythology, time and distance. In those moments, devoid of storytelling, my existence is not dependent on “me” being separate from everything else. I exist because everything else exists. And though the stories I tell myelf about who I am may be interesting - and even essential to making me “me” - ultimately they are beliefs, not truths, and should be subject to the same rigorous examination that my cast members sit through when I interview them.
