Tuesday, March 3, 2009

In Vino Veritas?

Last night, Lindsey and I discussed the legitimacy of the theory that we (people in general) are more truthful--that more truth is revealed, when we are drunk. Our conclusion (I think we agreed) was that while more things are said when drunk, and that everything that is said (ever) comes from somewhere (a real emotion or thought), it is not always more truthful. There is a deep and serious honesty to our inhibitions, possibly more prevalent than the "truth" inherent in the things we say and do when our inhibitions are diluted or eliminated outright.

What is the significance of this? I guess it is that there is no real truth or real honesty or real simple black-and-white way of knowing what is and what isn't about somebody. It reminds me of a great Virginia Woolf quote:

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous
halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of
consciousness to the end.
We'll never pinpoint anything, about each other or about ourselves. I guess that's probably the fun in life, isn't it? We have to live it, together, constantly, in order to try to clarify what resides within these halos.
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1 comment:

  1. utopiyummyMarch 3, 2009 at 2:48 PM

    This is also the same line of thought that made me change my preferred superpower. It was always mind-reading, until I realized that even I disagree with myself a good 75% of the time, and think things that, even as I am thinking them, find totally ridiculous or disgusting. If I were not me, and I were spying into my brain from an objective standpoint, I would probably be horrified. In short, I think that uninhibited stream of consciousness thought is also a really terrible indicator of what kind of person anyone really is. I also ask that you not try to put too much thought into what I must be thinking that is so awful all the time, because I might've exaggerated a little bit. Really.

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