Truth and Perspective

So in the documentary about documentaries, the subject about absolute and relative truth came up and one of the guys mentioned how the idea of relative truth just does not work. I completely agree with this. Truth is something that always stays the same. I think he used the example of being at a crime scene. At it, only one thing happened. A different thing did not happen for each person there. The only thing that is different is each person’s perspective. While the same thing happened for everyone, the way the each person views the events will be different.

I think a lot of people get this idea of truth and perspective mixed up. Some people will think that because everyone has different perspectives on the truth that means there is no absolute truth. On the other hand, there are some people who think that because there is absolute truth that means that their perspective on it is the complete truth. You need to understand that truth is absolute but that it’s very hard to get past one’s perspective of it and look at the truth objectively.

However, all this does not mean we should not try to get as objective of a look as we can at the truth. Documentary filmmakers are supposed to try to do this. Although they know they’re never going to have a 100% objective view of the truth in their films, they still strive to do it as much as they can. And really, I think that’s what everyone should be doing. We all should be searching for the truth and be trying to understand it as objectively as we possibly can, while realizing that we are each going to come at things from a different perspective.