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mercy_angel_09There's another quote that says that there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.
I call it The Obi-Wan Principle.
It comes from, of course, the scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke confronts Obi-Wan about the truth of his father. Having heard it from Vader and confirmed by Yoda, Luke demands to know why Obi-Wan skewed the truth in this following exchange:
Luke: Ben! Why didn't you tell me? You told me that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.
Obi-Wan: Your father... was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and "became" Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true... from a certain point of view.
Luke: A certain point of view?
Obi-Wan: Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
The rest of the dialogue is Obi-Wan lamenting his inability to train Anakin properly, to keep him away from the Dark Side. But that is irrelevant to this post. Moving on.
I find that this is being forgotten in this age of Twitter and Facebook, where someone can instantaneously upload what's going on RIGHT NOW. The problem with that is often the reports are skewed. Yes, it's the truth. From a certain point of view.
Gone are the days where we had to wait for the main stream media to sift through ALL of the facts to find the story, going over every point of view to paint a relatively objective picture that reported the facts, presenting both sides of the conflict. Instead MSM has scramble to keep up with the Twitter feeds and Facebook posts, attempt to find out what actually happened and what is a gross exaggeration, and then post a coherent story before it ceases to be relevant. Honestly, I don't envy anyone who works in media right now. Your jobs must be hell.
Any more I am highly skeptical of blogs and anything else that might be written in a knee jerk response to a report of something. For example, take the reports that Siri, Apple's voice assistance application that's only two months into beta testing, is pro-life. In a matter of hours, blogs were decrying Apple's apparently lack of care for women's rights and that apparently Apple was trying to push some sort of agenda on its users. However further research proved that it was not Apple trying to push some sort of pro-life agenda, but that the search engine of choice turned up poor results, but with a little prompting and asking for specific places, like Planned Parenthood, turned up multiple results. Okay, yes, that's something that should be worked on and since Siri is still technically in its beta testing phase, will probably be addressed by Apple, who might just have to suck it up and start using Google for their search engine, or else make sure that the search engine they use can come up with the desired results.
I've also been wary of any and all reports from the Occupy movement. A lot of what I see retweeted is from the official feeds, which only present one point of view. Hey, you've got the first amendment on your side and that's great. But just because you have the first amendment on your side does not mean that you are somehow outside the law. You can assemble and protest within the limits of the law, but as soon as you break the law, be it occupying a place beyond operating hours or posing a hazard to the public, you can no longer wave the first amendment around like it's some sort of "get out of jail free" card. You've broken the law and must face the consequences of those actions. But guess what, you have the fifth and sixth amendments on your side now, isn't that great? (And, of course, for those of you convicted during the process of the fifth and sixth amendments, you have the eighth amendment on your side as well.)
Before I condemn one side or another, I'm going to listen to both sides and then try to determine what really happened before I make any sort of judgement.
And so I leave you with this tidbit from Winston Churchill:
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
I call it The Obi-Wan Principle.
It comes from, of course, the scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke confronts Obi-Wan about the truth of his father. Having heard it from Vader and confirmed by Yoda, Luke demands to know why Obi-Wan skewed the truth in this following exchange:
Luke: Ben! Why didn't you tell me? You told me that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.
Obi-Wan: Your father... was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and "became" Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true... from a certain point of view.
Luke: A certain point of view?
Obi-Wan: Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
The rest of the dialogue is Obi-Wan lamenting his inability to train Anakin properly, to keep him away from the Dark Side. But that is irrelevant to this post. Moving on.
I find that this is being forgotten in this age of Twitter and Facebook, where someone can instantaneously upload what's going on RIGHT NOW. The problem with that is often the reports are skewed. Yes, it's the truth. From a certain point of view.
Gone are the days where we had to wait for the main stream media to sift through ALL of the facts to find the story, going over every point of view to paint a relatively objective picture that reported the facts, presenting both sides of the conflict. Instead MSM has scramble to keep up with the Twitter feeds and Facebook posts, attempt to find out what actually happened and what is a gross exaggeration, and then post a coherent story before it ceases to be relevant. Honestly, I don't envy anyone who works in media right now. Your jobs must be hell.
Any more I am highly skeptical of blogs and anything else that might be written in a knee jerk response to a report of something. For example, take the reports that Siri, Apple's voice assistance application that's only two months into beta testing, is pro-life. In a matter of hours, blogs were decrying Apple's apparently lack of care for women's rights and that apparently Apple was trying to push some sort of agenda on its users. However further research proved that it was not Apple trying to push some sort of pro-life agenda, but that the search engine of choice turned up poor results, but with a little prompting and asking for specific places, like Planned Parenthood, turned up multiple results. Okay, yes, that's something that should be worked on and since Siri is still technically in its beta testing phase, will probably be addressed by Apple, who might just have to suck it up and start using Google for their search engine, or else make sure that the search engine they use can come up with the desired results.
I've also been wary of any and all reports from the Occupy movement. A lot of what I see retweeted is from the official feeds, which only present one point of view. Hey, you've got the first amendment on your side and that's great. But just because you have the first amendment on your side does not mean that you are somehow outside the law. You can assemble and protest within the limits of the law, but as soon as you break the law, be it occupying a place beyond operating hours or posing a hazard to the public, you can no longer wave the first amendment around like it's some sort of "get out of jail free" card. You've broken the law and must face the consequences of those actions. But guess what, you have the fifth and sixth amendments on your side now, isn't that great? (And, of course, for those of you convicted during the process of the fifth and sixth amendments, you have the eighth amendment on your side as well.)
Before I condemn one side or another, I'm going to listen to both sides and then try to determine what really happened before I make any sort of judgement.
And so I leave you with this tidbit from Winston Churchill:
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
