Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Time and the Diffusion of Truth

The problem with didacticism is that it tends to diffuse and dissolve with time. Things as important as "don't scald yourself" or "don't lay under carts" become obvious, trivial and even humorous in their prominent evidence. These days advising someone to avoid scalding themselves on hot water is silly because of how so ingrained and incontrovertible it has become in our culture.

Another example of truth and logic being sepparated from useful information and becoming insignificant items of pointlessness is a story I had written earlier this year. It centers around a horrible event that took place long ago that destroyed an island. In my story it was several decades or even hundreds of years later and the ghostly remains of the island had become little more than a tourist trap. With no historical evidence of the event, it became all hearsay, and propigated itself as an unfounded rumor, rather than authentic fact. As with Atlantis, what could have been is not no more, and without propper literature placing the event in the real, we can only assume such places never existed outside human imagination.

No comments: