Metaphor Vs. Truth
Recommended Reading: An excellent Rolling Stone article here on Scientology.
One thing that the article mentions is the super secret OT-III creation story (as dramatized on South Park) involving DC-8 looking spacecraft, volcanoes, and trillions of alien life forms.
What I’m thinking is that, taken as a metaphor, this creation story is just as strange and valid as the creation stories of any other religion. So if you take it as a metaphor and use its concepts to better your life, what’s the problem?
Apparently the article states that, like fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, once a Scientologist makes it to OT-III, the creation story has to be accepted as literal truth and not a metaphor. You have to believe in its absolute validity.
So the question is this: Can a metaphor be as powerful and meaningful as the truth? Does something have to be literally true for its meaning to be be valid?
Rick has said that he still likes James Frey’s much attacked book A Million Little Pieces. Even if it’s not true, it still affected him.
I haven’t read it, but I know that before the fiction/autobiography scandal broke out, a lot of people were pretty touched by it. But was it because it had the weight of “the truth” behind it back then? Or was it a good piece of work on its own?
I know that books like Catcher in the Rye, Huck Finn, plays by Neil Simon, Paul Auster novels, these things have touched me profoundly. None of them were “true”, but the meanings of them were.
Were they as powerful as the truth? Yes, because their message was true to me.
Like a much wiser Indian said in one of Sherman Alexie’s short stories, “If it’s fiction, it had better be true.”
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5 Comments
Well, it says something when Frey originally tried to unsuccessfully sell the book as fiction and eventually had to push it as non-fiction to get publishers interested.
I think in Frey’s case especially, what that much wiser Indian said definitely fits.
At its core, the book was true. Frey was a drug addict and he spent time in rehab. Did he have a root canal without anesthesia? Probably not. Parts of the story are more dramatic and have a greater impact on the reader if they are believed to be true. The book was a gripping, intense story that I believed was true. It’s hard to say now whether I would have enjoyed it as much if I knew it was fictionalized. And while I don’t condone misrepresentation, I know that there must be other authors who have told untruths in their own memoirs or autobiographies, but their books didn’t sell as well…
Yea, I like it more when a work of fiction “feels autobiographical” because it’s so detailed and authentic. I get that feeling from The Kite Runner.
Maybe the thing to do is to tell big fish stories that are so absurd that the truth is never called into question.
its like that one Play in Everybody Dies，ｈｕｈ？ it may not be true，but its relevant