#38 The Weight Of Truth
I saw a post today on LinkedIn about Franz Kafka, famed writer of “The Metamorphosis” and “The Trial”. It was a story about how Kafka had…
This is post #38 of my #365 day series.
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I saw a post today on LinkedIn about Franz Kafka, famed writer of “The Metamorphosis” and “The Trial”. It was a story about how Kafka had helped a little girl cope with the loss of her doll and ended with a fantastic quote (purportedly from Kafka):
Every thing you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.
Normally I would’ve just enjoyed the quote and let it be, but having been a big fan of Kafka I needed to know how this story was found. A quick google search led me to this website: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/franz-kafka-doll-girl-story/. As I suspected, as with most things on social media, this is unsubstantiated but widely shared. This got me thinking of something that my friend Sam E. and I have been chatting about over the past few months — widespread misinformation and lack of journalistic integrity on the web and from pretty much every media outlet. Why? It’s easy for me to blame laziness. Every person that has posted the Kafka quote had the opportunity to do their own research, but instead of qualifying the quote they just decided to post it anyways, as if it was certainly attributed to Kafka.
The question I pose is why does this this have to be attributed to Kafka in the first place? Here’s where my skills from all the true crime documentaries I’ve watched start to take over and I’m looking for a motive. Does the attribution carry with it credibility? Does it carry more weight because it is attributed to some famous author? So does a statement carry a greater kernel of truth because it comes from a well known source? Does it matter if it was said by your great aunt Gerry? At the end of the day, is it the truth or is it the relative understanding that matters? It is the idea that people rally around. So if I said a thing that was untrue, people, being the complex computing machines that they are, regardless of the factual accuracy would all distill the words down to an idea. That idea is what people choose to be for or against, or indifferent about.
Now, more than ever, we need to understand the difference between a free floating idea versus a fact. A fact or statement of physical law is something like gravity. It is inescapable. An idea or opinion is that these jeans make me look fat. You don’t need to be a genius or specialist to be able to form the idea that these jeans make me look fat. However, observation of fundamental laws of physics and other laws of nature would seem to require some additional training or expertise. A person of science perhaps. A scientist. Not just free floating ideas (that’s how we were introduced to flat earthers). Science versus opinion/idea feels like something that is so lacking in today’s society. I say that, but the term witchhunt was coined so many centuries ago. Since the invention of language, humans have formed and shared his or her opinions, some of which are lies.
With something like the unsubstantiated Kafka quote, it is a wholesome message that is meant to support and be uplifting for others. Even if it is factually inaccurate, does it matter? Now, what if the quote was malicious and intended to be emotionally damaging? What weight does that bring?