#truth-telling — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #truth-telling, aggregated by home.social.
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🚬 "Breaking News: The New York Times discovers the art of truth-telling that isn't. 🧐 Dive into the thrilling world of how to dance around the truth like a seasoned politician, all while pointing fingers at nicotine vapes for problems they didn't cause. But hey, who needs facts when you've got a Pulitzer to chase? 🏆"
https://gwern.net/vaping #BreakingNews #TruthTelling #NicotineVapes #MediaCritique #PulitzerChase #PoliticianDance #HackerNews #ngated -
Sontag’s Two Doors, Campbell’s Underworld
In a television interview that has circulated for years, Susan Sontag offers a small theory of storytelling. She points out that the English word “story” carries a double valence. We say “tell me the real story” to demand truth, and we say “that’s only a story” to dismiss invention. Stories, she argues, face two directions at once, toward fact and toward fantasy, and this doubleness sits at the center of what stories do.
The observation is correct as far as it travels, and the format of a televised exchange does not give a thinker of Sontag’s caliber room to develop the qualifications she would have written into print. Sontag is reliable on the surface phenomena. The deathbed scene she describes, where family secrets surface around mortality, is psychologically accurate. Her returning voyager who brings news from elsewhere is one of the oldest functions of narrative, traceable from Odysseus through Marco Polo and Mary Kingsley to the embedded war correspondent. We are also gripped, as Sontag says, by stories precisely because they describe what cannot happen. Readers of Kafka know Gregor Samsa did not wake as an insect, and that knowledge intensifies the story’s force.
Where Sontag falters is in locating this doubleness at “the very center of the whole enterprise of storytelling.” The tension she identifies is a feature of post-Enlightenment English usage. Other languages partition the territory differently. German separates Geschichte from Erzählung, the chronicle from the tale. Ancient Greek separates mythos from logos and historia. Sanskrit holds itihasa, the account of what happened, distinct from purana, the ancient telling. Yoruba oral tradition separates itan, the sacred and ancestral narrative, from àló, the entertaining household tale. The ambiguity Sontag treats as constitutive is partly an artifact of English vocabulary collapsing distinctions that other tongues hold apart. To say storytelling faces two directions, truth and lie, is to inherit a Cartesian frame that pre-modern peoples would have found alien to the question.
This is exactly where Joseph Campbell would intervene. For Campbell, the truth-versus-fiction axis was a symptom of modern literalism, useful for tracking what one cultural moment had lost but useless for explaining how myth operates. Drawing on Jung and on comparative anthropology, he argued that stories carry psychological reality independent of historical reality. The hero’s descent to the underworld, the dying and rising god, the trickster who exposes the king, these belong to a third register that Sontag’s binary cannot accommodate. They register as neither historical claim nor fantasy opposed to fact. As Campbell argued throughout his career, mythology is what we call other people’s religion, and he was pointing at the failure of the truth/lie axis to capture what religious narrative does for those who live inside it.
Campbell would likely call Sontag’s voyager model one motif among several, including myths of descent, metamorphosis, cosmogony, and trickster disruption, while also insisting that the voyager holds special centrality because it externalizes the interior process by which the soul ventures into the unconscious and returns with knowledge. He traced this structure from the shamanic vision quest through Joyce’s Ulysses into the popular cinema of his late life, and his reading of Star Wars as a contemporary monomyth was either his most generous gift to popular culture or his most embarrassing capitulation to it, depending on which scholar you read. Maureen Murdock’s challenge to the male hero’s quest, developed in The Heroine’s Journey in 1990, sharpened the critique that Campbell’s pattern was less universal than his rhetoric implied. Robert Ellwood in The Politics of Myth and Brendan Gill in The New York Review of Books raised harder questions about Campbell’s politics and his unguarded private writings, and those critiques have not been resolved by his admirers so much as set aside.
Even granting those qualifications, Campbell’s instinct about register stands. He saw that stories carry meaning along a vertical axis, downward into the unconscious and upward into shared cultural reference, and the truth/lie binary slices that axis horizontally and loses the depth.
Saul Kripke offers a second escape from Sontag’s binary, arriving from a tradition Campbell never engaged. In his John Locke Lectures delivered at Oxford in 1973 and published as Reference and Existence in 2013, Kripke extended the rigid-designator theory of his Naming and Necessity to fictional and mythological names, arguing that such names refer to abstract objects brought into existence by the storytelling act itself. The name “Odysseus” refers, in Kripke’s account, to a fictional character: an abstract artifact created by Homeric composition and sustained by every subsequent reader and translator who has carried that reference forward. Kripke gives storytelling a creative-ontological power Sontag’s truth/fiction frame cannot register. Two traditions sharing almost no methodological vocabulary, depth psychology and analytic philosophy of language, arrive at the same conclusion: the truth/lie axis fails because storytelling produces a third class of object the axis cannot measure.
There is a temperamental and political difference between Sontag and Campbell worth naming directly. Sontag wrote in the long aftermath of the Holocaust and the Cold War, suspicious of any totalizing narrative. She had watched fascism weaponize national myth in Germany and Italy, and her caution reflects that experience honestly. Campbell was an American comparativist working in the wake of Frazer and Jung, drawn to pattern across cultures, and his posthumously published journals raised real questions about his political instincts. Sontag’s suspicion functions as a corrective against political weaponization. Campbell’s pattern recognition functions as recognition of common structure across cultures that have never met. The disagreement between them is genuine and should not be smoothed over for the comfort of synthesis.
My position is partial agreement with Sontag and deeper agreement with the Campbell answer she did not stay alive long enough to receive. The truth/fiction ambiguity she describes belongs to modern Western reading habits and shows up wherever those habits travel. The deeper question of what narrative does across cultures requires a different lens. Campbell goes closer to the bone when he asks what stories do across human societies, treating function as the proper unit of analysis, which lets him see patterns Sontag’s frame keeps hidden. Stories organize experience, transmit pattern across generations, rehearse mortality, model possible selves, and bind communities through shared reference. Whether the events “really happened” is a question that stories themselves typically dissolve, which is why we still read Homer and the Book of Job long after their cosmologies have been falsified.
The synthesis Sontag misses, Campbell only gestures toward, and Kripke names from a third direction is that stories operate at multiple registers simultaneously: as durable structures of consciousness, as historically situated cultural artifacts, and as creators of abstract reference objects that take on real life within communities who carry the names forward. The Odyssey is psychologically accurate about return and recognition, it is a specific Bronze Age Greek text carrying specific class and gender assumptions, and it brought “Odysseus” into existence as a name that refers to something real, even if not historical. Collapsing any of these registers into another impoverishes the reading. Sontag’s caution prevents the first kind of collapse, where myth becomes a timeless template that erases the particular hands that made the particular text. Campbell’s depth prevents the second kind of collapse, where a poem becomes a museum object emptied of the psychological force it still exerts on readers who pick it up. Kripke prevents a third collapse altogether, the one in which storytelling is denied its world-making authority and reduced to description of things that already exist. None of the three alone reaches the full target.
What Sontag could not see from the angle of her camera is that the voyager she names as one model among many is the externalization of the tension she places at the center of storytelling. The voyager who returns with news is also the dreamer who returns from the underworld. The bringer of facts and the bringer of vision occupy the same archetypal position, which is why storytelling moves along a single descending axis with truth and invention braided together at the bottom of the well. Sontag stopped at the doorway. Campbell walked down the stairs.
#books #campbell #comparision #culture #knowing #kripke #lies #meaning #myth #naming #sontag #stories #storytelling #truthtelling #voyager -
"I’m a journalist now, but I grew up loving #comedy because it was one of the first places I saw #truthtelling as an art form. Jokes that punched up, that slipped past defenses, that revealed something deeper while still making you laugh."
The 'In Living Color' Effect
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/03/in-living-color-televisions-boldest-bet/686500/
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Priti Patel and the Double Standards Behind #Britain’s Response to Black Lives Matter
Priti Patel’s stance on Black Lives Matter exposes deeper questions about racism, colonial history, and Britain’s moral responsibility to Africa.
#PritiPatel #BlackLivesMatter #UKPolitics #BritishGovernment, #RacismInBritain #ColonialHistory #AfricanHistory #HumanRights #SocialJustice #TruthTelling #AntiRacism
https://juskosave.blogspot.com/2020/06/priti-patel-how-sincere-is-british.html -
@Kels_316
Be kind of you to give classes - for the people pleasers among… but probably more of a watch & learn thing. -
Truth-telling and justice
* “I can understand how Corowa is now known as the place where we have 40 neo-Nazis march up and down our main street on a Saturday morning. Now we’re starting to remove flags. I can understand how someone can see it cascading.”
A regional NSW council voted to remove the Aboriginal flag to promote ‘unity’ – it did the opposite >>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/26/a-regional-nsw-council-voted-to-remove-the-aboriginal-flag-to-promote-unity-it-did-the-opposite* "The rise in voting support for One Nation, which mirrors the success of populist politicians in the United States and United Kingdom, provides further evidence of the rise of a more hardline, right-wing populism, which often celebrates rather than questions the history of European imperialism.”
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Opposition to moving Australia Day from January 26 is hardening: new research
https://theconversation.com/opposition-to-moving-australia-day-from-january-26-is-hardening-new-research-273795* "People don't understand that the current policies are still embedded in their colonial roots.” >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-25/truth-telling-closing-the-gap-indigenous-affairs-agenda-2026/106260862#PostReferendum #zeitgeist #SettlerSociety #FirstNationsPeoples #WhitePrivilege #WhiteSupremacy #EuropeanColonialism #FarRight #EthnoNationalism #dehumanisation #Empire #Australia #equality #governance #NSW #TruthTelling
Image: NSW North Coast tribal boundaries, Tindale's map 1974
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Reading “Truth Telling” by Henry Reynolds. First Nations claims of unceded sovereignty have far more international law legitimacy than most Australians realise. #Truthtelling #alwayswasalwayswillbe
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May our truths be spoken kindly, and tended well.
#lifeboatacademy #truthtelling #earthwisdom #relationallearning #farmastery #slowrevolution #ecopedagogy #honestwork #goatwisdom -
But here’s the truth, our work has always been about liberation, not saving whiteness from itself.
Our survival is not your safety net.
And our rest is resistance…because without it, there is no future beyond the myth of white supremacy.
#Mediocre #IjeomaOluo #MythOfWhiteSupremacy #BlackLiberation #SystemicRacism #RacialJustice #Exploitation #BlackHistory #CollectivePower #TruthTelling #ProfitWithoutOppression #KimCrayton
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CW: links to article with bluntly racist content #StrayanHistory
#AustralianHistory #TruthTelling #WesternAustralianHistory
“settler” used code in his diaries to record killings of Indigenous people. presumably cos he feared consequences for himself, not cos he thought he shouldn’t murder people in the first place 🤔
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A ‘thoroughly white’ novel of national mythmaking: Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang at 25
"Published at the dawn of the new millennium, True History of the Kelly Gang could be read as reinstating a victimised and innocent white settler subjectivity that was well past its use-by date. It is a thoroughly white story. The almost complete absence of Indigenous characters – except as feared, shadowy figures on the periphery – and the boldness with which Carey’s Kelly claims stolen land as his own through recourse to Irish history and myth obfuscates the fact that the country Carey claims for Kelly was already deeply storied."
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https://theconversation.com/a-thoroughly-white-novel-of-national-mythmaking-peter-careys-true-history-of-the-kelly-gang-at-25-252924
#SettlerMythscape #literature #books #EthnoNationalism #WhiteNationalism #SettlerSociety #heroism #PostHeroicSocieties #TruthTelling #justice #IndigenousPeoples #Australia -
A quotation from Josh Billings
To lie about a man never hurts him, but to tell the truth about him sumtimes duz.
[To lie about a man never hurts him, but to tell the truth about him sometimes does.]Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1875-10 (1875 ed.)More info about this quote: wist.info/billings-josh/78857/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #joshbillings #candor #defamation #libel #lie #lying #revelation #secret #slander #truth #truthtelling
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Curious about what your pals *really* think? 🕵️♂️ Share your Tellonym thoughts with me (anonymously, of course) — every “Tell” goes straight to my inbox until I decide to share it! 👀
Ask away: https://tellonym.me/kaeseafour#AskMeAnything #Tellonym #FediverseNotes #AskMeAnything #Tellonym #AnonymousThoughts #SocialMedia #OpenConversation #Curiosity #Secrets #TruthTelling #Anonymous #OnlineInteraction #CommunityEngagement #FediverseNotes #SocialNetworking #Transparency #Dialogue
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“Black, a Bidjara and Ghungalu man, is here most afternoons, enthusiastically telling tourists about the area’s Aboriginal history. He shows them artefacts he’s found in the mountains: axe heads, grinding stones, crude but effective knives chipped from stone – all rattling around in a Coles shopping basket on the back seat of his LandCruiser.
“I’ll tell you the real story – the one that’s not in the history books,” he says.”Another #TruthTelling from the Guardian’s The Descendants Series.
“Cullin-la-ringo was a turning point in Queensland’s history, paving the way for “warfare” between First Nations peoples and the settlers over control of the state’s north. It would claim the lives of tens of thousands of Indigenous people over the decades that followed. Some groups, including the Gayiri, never recovered.”
Nothing I can type here will do justice to history and the need to get it out in the open. Best you read the article(s) in this series yourself and bear witness to thie Continent’s recent past.
Read more:
#Makaratta #IVotedYes #FirstNationsHistory #NativePolice #NorhtQLD #1890s
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A quotation from Teddy Roosevelt
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him in so far as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth — whether about the President or about any one else.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Essay (1918-05), “Lincoln and Free Speech,” Metropolitan Magazine, Vol. 47, No. 6Sourcing, notes: wist.info/roosevelt-theodore/3…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #teddyroosevelt #theodoreroosevelt #country #criticism #government #loyalty #nationalinterest #patriotism #president #publicofficial #publicservice #truthtopower #truthtelling #truth
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"The history of terror and colonial massacre seared into the landscape."
"For there is no single crime to solve in The Leap. No killer to track down. Just a vast colonial and contemporary crime scene involving countless offences against race, gender and social function. The scene – the whole district, the town and its stranger-than-fiction name – is the crime. Everyone knows who the offenders are – now and back when."
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/27/the-leap-book-novel-australia-continent-crime-scene
#landscape #Australia #narratives #IndigenousPeoples #violence #dehumanisation #TruthTelling #books -
We lay blame and fault on the government, because we can't control the capitalists, until the capitalists become the government, and then it is too late.
#Capitalism #PoliticalCorruption #PowerAndControl #SystemicInjustice #TruthTelling
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This is the paradox of truth-telling in community building and in defining/establishing cultural norms: it’s liberating, but it’s not always comfortable. And yet, once you see the full picture, you can’t, and shouldn’t, look away.
#Leadership #LiberatoryEducation #Mentorship #TruthTelling #SystemicChange #ProfitWithoutOppression #TraumaInformed #HealingJustice #EquityInAction #UnlearningToRebuild
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If you’re feeling the same way, if you’ve been questioning what’s real, what’s right, and what’s worth rebuilding, join us inside the Profit Without Oppression (PWO) community.
This is not just a learning space. It’s a doing space. A place for people ready to lead differently, live more fully, and divest from the lie that profit requires harm.
Link in Bio
#History #MediaLiteracy #Unlearning #TruthTelling #Disinformation #CommunityMatters #PWO #ProfitWithoutOppression #LiberationWork
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"that politics failed and we wound up in the Civil War, from which we still haven’t recovered.… Being a Southerner informed me about what happens when a society closes the wagons around itself, when it doesn’t tolerate good journalism or prophecy in the pulpit or truth-telling in the classroom."
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Alterman quotes an interview Moyers did with Salon in 2003:
"I think my life, and certainly my career in journalism, have been informed by two things. One was being a Southerner. Whenever you learned about Southern life, you realize that when we drove the truth-tellers out of the pulpits, out of the editorial rooms and out of the classrooms—people who were telling the truth about slavery—"
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Eric Alterman offers a touching reminiscence of his friend journalist Bill Moyers, noting:
"This ordained Baptist minister from a little town called Marshall, Texas, somehow became, for most practical purposes, my rabbi."
Alterman asks where Moyers got the fortitude to stick to his difficult and solitary path when he was very much a voice crying in the wilderness, especially in his native South.
#BillMoyers #courage #TruthTelling #journalism
/1https://newrepublic.com/article/197400/bill-moyers-dead-obituary-three-careers-excelled
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The #Israeli Plot to Extinguish the #Journalists Documenting #Genocide
By Neha Madhira, July 3, 2025
Ibrahim Abu Ghazaleh: “In Gaza, a camera is a threat. When you witness the truth, you become a target.”
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2025/07/03/israel-palestine-journalists-killing-gaza/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/FluyZ#Israel #IsRealHell #IsraeliWarCrimes #BibiIsAWarCriminal #Genocide #Journalism #TruthTelling
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Inquiry finds #British committed #genocide on #IndigenousAustralians
by Lana Lam
BBC News"British #colonists committed genocide against Australia's #Indigenous population in Victoria, a landmark Aboriginal-led inquiry has found.
"The #YoorrookJusticeCommission found violence and disease reduced the local Indigenous population by three quarters in the 20 years after the state was colonised, in the early 1830s.
"Its report included 100 recommendations to 'redress' harm caused by '#invasion and #occupation' - though several of the authors disagreed with unspecified 'key findings'.
"The Commission was set up in 2021 as Australia's first formal '#TruthTelling' inquiry, and tasked with examining past and ongoing 'systemic injustices' suffered by the Indigenous people in the state."
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So it took four years to confirm what we already knew. Welcome to Australia, ma-aate!!! #YoorookJusticeCommission #FirstNations #Treaty #TruthTelling #blak_sovereign_movement #indigenous_rights #genocide #Australia #auspol https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-02/yoorrook-justice-inquiry-key-findings-takeaways/105483168