John Frontczak Period 8 Senior Sem.

Mr. Clover 12/09/10 -[09/11/10]

Morris' Absolute Truth Rashomon

(why we lie, when we tell the truth, an Essay)

[Revised... ever so slightly]

The human mind is a complex entity, with many nuances and oddities that have yet to

be mapped, which leads the human being (the machine in which the human brain pilots) to

have decisive and varied yet not necessarily unpredictable responses. Take the movie

Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, for example; many people have developed almost as

many 'answers' to the movie as there are people that have watched it. Two such people, Ebert

and Morris, have developed very distinct opinions and ideas about the movie Rashomon and

what the truth is, and from their arguments I agree with Morris' opinion more than that of

Ebert. Morris goes with the idea the movie is not about different truths, but rather different

perspectives.

Someone's word can be taken as truth in and of itself, generally, through no fault of the

individual; simply because the word of a single person can be wrong, due to the individual not

really knowing what happened or did not see everything clearly, thus the problem with eye

witness testimony and the reason behind one of Morris' points. The main issue Morris has with

eye witness testimony (using what someone who supposedly saw the event, says, as evidence),

and the reason he does not look at them alone, is that the concept of taking it for truth is

flawed. One of the biggest problems is that the person may not be telling the truth, whether

they know it or not, which generally they do not. Which is a point Morris tries to make; if

someone tells a lie, that lie does not then become truth. Even if they think they are telling the

truth, they may not be recounting what they actually saw. Every time we call upon a memory,

we are drawing upon compressed ideas from many different places that we had of the event

combined with our ideas of the nature of the world and reality and how it works in order to

reconstruct said event, and many details could be added or lost in this process as the event is

perceived differently then when you first experienced it. In order to recall the event perfectly,

you would need to relive the event exactly; which is impossible, and presents the same

limitation as with any mental or physical model we construct.

Human perception is faulty, with our information being filtered through our sense and

our minds before being stored, making everything we perceive a possible fallibility. Perception

is a fickle thing, with a lot going on before what we perceive becomes what we conceptualize,

and an even greater process between what an individual 'knows' about something and what

that something actual is. The nature of how we perceive events is limited and restricted by our

mind, so we can't perceive everything around us, we do not even perceive most of what

happens to us. In order for the human mind to save and process information, it is selective; we

notice what we want to notice, and remember what we consider important. However, we are

not even aware of most of this process, and thus do not generally even register our own faulty

perception. For instance, none of the 'witness' mentioned the amount of breaths someone

took, because it was unimportant to them (and to most other people), and thus would neither

recount it or remember that information. Not to mention, just as with our memories and what

we can recall, what we notice can be affected by our emotions noticing everything that is black

if you are depressed or noticing every pregnant women if you are pregnant. There is no way

that we can possible perceive everything, which leads to the pre-mentioned problem with

memory. This causes there to be a difference in perceived memory between the bandit, the

wife, and the woodcutter in the movie, not a difference in reality.

According to a great deal of the human population, Morris included, you cannot change

reality. Thus Petito Pricipii, or begging the question is brought up: the fallacy that demonstrating

a conclusion by means of a premises that assume that conclusion; by saying something is true, that does

not make it true. There is only one truth, just because someone says that a cube is an apple, that

does not change reality so that the cube is now an apple; in this way, what no matter what we

think, it does not change what has actually happened in the world. In the end, Morris says that

it does not matter what someone thinks happened, some event did happen, and certain

aspects about that event can be brushed away. The husband, samurai, died; this cannot be

disputed, nor can the fact that he was stabbed. Morris finds the idea that something else

happened, "that there is no reality, that truth is up for grabs, or that truth is subjective" based

on other people's ideas of what happened is "foolish and unappetizing". He further states that

there is only what happened, absolute truth, and that lying is a prospect of language, not

reality; people can lie, the very nature of the world cannot. The fact remains that someone did

kill the women's husband, and it does not matter if they or no one else remembers he or she

did, he or she still did kill him.

With the accumulation of these few points Morris presents about the nature of the

movie, I find Morris' opinion much more agreeable than that of Ebert's. Memory and

perception is selective and faulty by nature, and thus cannot be taken as no matter how

earnest the person is. Nor is what is the truth 'up for grabs' something happened regardless of

everyone's fallibly memories, ideas, and senses. After all, how can something be both dead and

alive at the same time? How can someone have killed you, and not killed you at the same time?

Sources:

Ebert, Roger. "Roger Ebert: Rashomon Review." Roger Ebert. Chicago Sun-Times, 14 Oct. 2009.

web. 10 Sept. 2010. < http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/>

Lagemaat, Richard van de. "Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma." Cambridge, 2006. Print.

Morris, Errol. "Interview with The Beliver." Errol Morris Official Site. April 2004. web. 10 Sept.

2010. <http://www.errolmorris.com/content/interview/believer0404.html>

"Rashomon." Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Daiei, 1950. 9 Sept. 2010.