Thursday, June 8, 2023

This Title Is a Lie

 

Once upon a time, there was a "movement" that started in the realm of art that espoused the absence of meaning in everything it created. It was called "Dadaism".

"A state of mind rather than a literary or artistic movement, according to its spokesman the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara (1886-1963), Dada was anarchic, nihilistic, and disruptive. Dadaists mocked all established values, all traditional notions of good taste in art and literature, the culture symbols of a society based, they believed, on greed and materialism and now in its death agony. The name Dada -- a nonsense, baby-talk word -- means nothing, so was well suited to Dada's wholly negative nature. Dada even denied the value of art, hence its cult of non-art, and ended by negating itself. 'The true Dadaist is against Dada.'" [Hugh Honour and John Fleming, in The Visual Arts: A History]


The self-negating nature of Dadaism causes me to think about certain statements:

  • "There is no absolute truth." (So...is that absolutely true?)
  • "People have no right to judge one another." (Usually spoken by someone who has determined, i.e., judged, that someone was being judgy.)
  • "Nobody can be totally sure about anything." (Are you sure about that?)

And what about the title of this post: "This Title Is a Lie"? If that's true, then it's a lie, but then that would mean it was true by being a lie...but if it's a lie that would make it true, which would make it NOT a lie, which would make it a lie...

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Truth is...It's not that hard to confound a human's mind. Kinda makes it easy for me to believe Isaiah 55:8-9. “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."


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