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LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) – 9 December 2007 Issue

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”, German politician and Adolf Hitler’s propagandist, Paul Joseph Goebbels, once said. Consistent with this idea, he was also quoted in saying that – “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Obviously, the prescription is scheming and shrewd.

Since the beginning of mankind, there has been a constant conflict between truth and lies.

Although there seems to be no single definition of truth, the term is understood in ordinary parlance as a fact that has been verified, or something that conforms to reality or actuality, or something that approximates either of them. Classical theories hold that the truthfulness or falsity of a representation is determined solely by how it relates to or describes a reality undistorted or unaffected by emotions or personal bias.

A lie, on the other hand, is simply the opposite being a statement or a representation that deviates from the truth.

Theoretically, it is easy to say or discern that truth is good and lies are bad because like day and night the distinction appears objective and unperturbed. But in the real world, many truths are blurred and subtle. Ironically, many lies are perceived as truth. And the resulting confusion may be readily understood because it is instinctive of human nature to retreat from unpleasant realities. Perhaps, the biggest lie that a person can make is to claim not having resorted to it not even once in his or her lifetime. Truth to tell, everyone did without any exception.

Because truth is idyllic, many lies would have to hide under its cover. To succeed in this effort, lies must bear the perception of truth. And to create and stimulate the perception, prevaricators need to resort to propaganda. Some may call it media hype, promotion or even advertising.

With the advancement in mass media technology, the battle between truth and lies has even gained more momentum these days. The consequence of course is confusion and in many instances, disagreements and divisions.

But, except maybe for pure science or those considered as so-called demonstrated truths, is not truth relative or really just a matter of perception? 

German philosopher and sociologist, Jürgen Habermas, for instance, believes in the consensus theory, or that the truth is whatever is agreed upon. Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico is best known for his verum ipsum factum principle, or that truth itself is socially created by human norms and experience. American philosophers, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, concede on the pragmatic theory as a version of truth, or that truth is affirmed by the results of putting concepts into practice. Italian Saint Thomas Aquinas put truth as “the conformity of the intellect to the things”. Another German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, thinks that “The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment… The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding…”

If truth then is just a matter of perception, how could it set human beings free as the Bible has put it?

The answer lies in the prudent exercise of the inherent gift of discernment that every human being is endowed with. And the validity of that discernment is ultimately put to test by one’s conscience. The truth is – one’s conscience never lies.

Every individual then who honestly believes that something is true with a clear and clean conscience holds the truth, even if others disagree. In that sense, the truth will set a person free.

LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 4 November 2007 Issue

The month of November begins with the commemoration of the departed.

Sooner or later those who remember would also have their time to be remembered.  True enough because “No One Here Gets Out Alive”, so goes the title of the book written by journalist Jerry Hopkins on the life of James “Jim” Morrison, a charismatic and iconic American rock singer.

Death has been defined as the permanent end of life of a biological organism. Medically, death can be ‘clinical’, or the moment when the individual stops to breathe and his or her heart ceases to beat. Or it can also be ‘biological’, or when the electrical activity in the brain stops indicating a permanent end of consciousness. 

Modern science has found a way to revive back to life clinical deaths through defibrillation, life support devices, artificial pacemakers and even organ transplants. In brain or ‘biological’ death, getting back to life would almost be a miracle because it normally involves the irreversible loss of the person’s cognitive functions inclusive of the human thought and personality.

In America, the death of a person is legally determined following “The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA)”, a draft state law that was approved in 1980 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, in cooperation with the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, and the President’s Commission on Medical Ethics, and widely adopted by most US states to provide a comprehensive and medically sound basis for determining death in all situations.

The three-section Act provides: “An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.”

In 2005, the case of Theresa Marie “Terri” Schiavo of Florida, who for fifteen years of persistent vegetative state became dependent on a artificial life sustenance after suffering from severe brain damage due to a respiratory and cardiac arrest in 1990, hugged international limelight. Whether or not Terri should be allowed to die or kept to live became of the center of a unique political and judicial controversy in the United States.

Eventually, the decision of Judge George W. Greer of the Pinellas-Pasco County Circuit Court in Clearwater, Florida to have the feeding tubes of Terri removed prevailed. And apparently, the court’s decision was anchored on Terri’s wish not to continue with her life-prolonging measures.  But for pro-life advocates, Terri’s death was a case of ‘judicial murder’.

Coincidentally, Judge Greer and rock star Jim Morrison were for a time roommates while studying at the Florida State University.

The sufferings of Terri and all others who are terminally ill could provide the legal justification that the right to die is as much an option and deserves respect as the right to life. 

But regardless of the legal, moral, scientific and philosophical dimensions, death would always remain to be mystical event in human existence. Despite the continuing advancement in medical science, no one knows for sure when death will come, how one’s life will end and what exactly happens after life. Death is as mysterious as the origin of life. As they say, it is like a thief in the night.

Death is also the end of one’s human drama. “Life is a stage and all of us are mere players upon it”, said William Shakespeare. Every individual can rightfully choose to close his or her curtain on a happy or a sad note. But the choice should be done during one’s lifetime because that is how the departed would be remembered in times like All Soul’s Day.