by Marty Coleman | Aug 25, 2010 | Jewish Proverbs, Lying About The Truth - 2013 |
I think this is a great quote. What it says to me is that telling the truth is an art. It is within the realm of truth that you are allowed the greatest leeway. You can craft that truth in such a way that it is kinder or meaner, transparent or opaque, light-hearted or deadly serious.
Manipulating the truth is not the same as crafting the truth. Crafting it means you use your wisdom and knowledge to say something the best way you can. Manipulating the truth means you use your knowledge to make that truth sound like it is a different truth, a truth you want your rabid followers to hear for example, or that you tell to get money or attention. Those manipulated truths are half-truths, they are mutated truths. And those are lies.
You can see it in politicians but even more so you can see it in the mean-spirited demagogues who rule the airwaves. They aren’t interested in the truth, they are interested in manipulating people to do what they want. And what they want is to have adulation, power, prestige and money. It’s the most depressing thing I know about modern society at this time. It is an embarrassment and they should be ashamed. But they aren’t.
Drawing by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote is a Jewish proverb
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 24, 2010 | Anonymous, Lying About The Truth - 2013 |
The Half-Truth is an animal whose mother was a purebred Truth and whose father was a purebred Lie. They fooled around and next thing you know this creature was born. A Half-Truth can only breed with a Lie. It can’t breed with a purebred Truth. Each successive generation will be more and more like a purebred Lie.
It is a very sneaky creature. It lives among Truths by disguising itself to look like one. It usually gets away with this for a while but it always gives itself away by being angrier and more secretive than a Truth. The other Truths always can sniff out the Half-Truth after a while and usually kick it out of the clan. It will go off looking for another tribe of Truths but almost never can sneak in, since the original Truths have warned all the other tribes of his coming.
Catching a Half-Truth is very hard. It will bite you if you try to catch it from the front so it’s best to try to catch it’s tail. Of course if you catch it by the tail it will always quickly jerk around and bite you. It is not an easy task. The best advice is if you come across a Half-Truth it’s best to walk way out of its way. Don’t try to make friends with it, it will bite you. Don’t try to feed it, it will just get stronger and more ferocious. Don’t try to cage it unless you are very sure the cage is escape proof. Do remember, the Half-Truth is very slippery and can get out of even the smallest of openings.
The best thing to do is to keep the Truths and the Lies completely separate so no Half-Truths are born in the first place. Stay near the Truths’ den and don’t let any Lies come close. They will try to charm you and get you to let them go in, but if you allow it, they will try to take advantage of the Truth and breed with it.
Drawing by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Anonymous
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 23, 2010 | Lying About The Truth - 2013, Malcolm Muggeridge |
I said this post may be about truth. But I lied. It’s about lying.
What brain mechanism activates to allow us to believe something we actually know to be a lie? Whether it’s about ourselves, our parents and family history, about our nation or maybe about science and the social world, we don’t have to go very far to see us believing something we know to be false.
The next question is harder. What do we get out of doing that? Is it like a movie set? We know it to be just a facade with nothing but empty space behind it, but the facade is SO convincing, so alluring, we just fall into believing it’s got a whole building behind it.
I had a friend long ago, at least 20 years, who told me she was estranged from her father, hadn’t talked to him in many years. When she was asked about her family she told people that her father was dead. It saved her from having to explain why they were estranged. She told me that she never, ever mentioned her father in the present tense, even when talking to herself or her spouse, who was one of the few who knew the truth that her father was still alive and actually lived in the same city. Luckily it was a very big city so they didn’t cross paths.
She was so consistent about her verbalization of him in the past tense that she really, truly forgot at times that he was alive. It convinced her of the lie.
Why do we do that and what do we get out of it?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Malcolm Muggeridge, 1903-1990, English writer
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 22, 2010 | Sketchbook History Tour |
Today we travel to 1980
In 1980 we move to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan so I could attend graduate school at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. I started thinking about narrative ideas and images for our initial assignment in the printmaking department. We had to do a suite of 10 prints in an edition of 10. We had to use all four printmaking processes (intaglio, lithography, serigraph, and woodcut). We also had to create a collophon title page using a typesetting press and a portfolio for the prints to be kept in. We had 2 weeks to complete the assignment.
This was in my sketchbook as one possible direction to go. I eventually chose to do a series of images surrounding my having been burned over 70% of my body 7 years earlier instead.
Drawing by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 20, 2010 | Back to School - 2010, H. Jackson Brown, Jr., James Charlton |
Day #5 of ‘Back to School’ week at The Napkin Dad Daily
I love doing home improvement project, but one of the down sides of doing them is that I am an amateur. I don’t have 20 years experience building fences or putting up guttering or cleaning carburators on lawn mowers (all things I have done this summer). I am learning as I go. I try to follow directions. but I can’t know all what I need to know to make the job absolutely perfect because I don’t have the education of the trade. I might know some secrets a guy a Lowe’s tells me, but they hardly ever are where I have my problems. I have my problems in the average details of doing the work.
The same is true in non-manual labor fields. Whether you are studying Neuroscience and have to write five papers or studying Apparel Design and have to make five garments, the knowledge of the trade comes from the doing everyday.
There is a well known quote, I think by the artist Phillip Pearlstein, that says ‘if you want to be an artist, first find a studio and paint 10 hours a day every day for 7 years, then decide if that is what you want to do.’ Exaggerated as that is, it has a kernal of truth to it. The knowing is in the doing.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote attributed to both James Charlton and H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 19, 2010 | Albert Einstein, Back to School - 2010 |
Day #4 of ‘Back to School’ week at The Napkin Dad Daily
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| Can you find the ‘mistake’ that made this drawing come to fruition? What do you think it is? |
Teachers, do you say no a lot? Parents, do you? Double check when and why you say it just to make sure you aren’t doing it simply to make your life easier instead of making your child safer.
The ‘no’ that is quick, that is angry, that is frustrated, that is fearful…that is the ‘no’ that stomps on creativity and curiosity.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German/Swiss Physicist.
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 18, 2010 | Back to School - 2010, Walker Percy |
Day #3 of ‘Back to School’ week at The Napkin Dad Daily
I saw a story in the news yesterday about a single father of two young girls who was being tried on bank robbery charges. He now is serving a life sentence. His reason for robbing banks? To ‘feed’ his daughters. By ‘feed’ he meant keep them in the lifestyle to which they had grown accustom. An upper middle class lifestyle. He was a stock day trader and he made a lot of money. When the stock market and economy tanked he lost it all. He started robbing banks and did so for a year before getting caught.
When the daughters were interviewed after his arrest they called him a Robin Hood. Now, years later, after the sentencing, they were being interviewed again. The interviewer asked if they had a different take on it now that they were older. One of the daughters said yes, but added this: ‘But really, what did you expect him to do, take his upper middle class family to a homeless shelter?’.
My answer is YES, that is EXACTLY what he was suppose to do. That or move in with a brother or cousin or parent or live in a truck. He was not suppose to rob banks. He failed in the one thing he was there to do, and that wasn’t to give his daughters an upper middle class life. It was to teach his daughters how to be good and honorable humans in the world. How to pass life, not flunk it.
So, not only did he fail his own life but now he gets to watch his daughters saying to the world that he was right to rob banks so they wouldn’t have to go without stone washed jeans and a private school.
Of course they rationalize this attitude by saying it is their father really caring about them and being completely dedicated to them. But it’s not. It’s their father being a selfish, scared and shallow jerk with no moral compass.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Walker Percy, 1916-1990, American author.
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 17, 2010 | Abraham Lincoln, Back to School - 2010 |
Day #2 of ‘Back To School’ week at The Napkin Dad Daily
I think this is a very insightful opinion. What was your generation taught and how did that come into our lives years later via government philosophies and programs. What is the predominant philosophy in the schoolroom now and what will that make the government look like in 20-30 years?
Drawing and questions by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th US President
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 16, 2010 | Back to School - 2010, Henry Ford |
In honor of all the kids going back to school this month it’s ‘Back To School’ week at The Napkin Dad Daily
Then again, where can you learn that? Nowhere. But what you can teach in school and home is how to deal with the fact that life is unpredictable. Teaching young people how to adapt, think critically, and to expect and be aware of changes is a great gift you can give them.
Without that training kids become adults who will either avoid the reality of the unexpected life or freak out when they come across it. Either way it does them no favors to not train them in reality.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Henry Ford, 1863-1947, founder of Ford Motor Company.
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 13, 2010 | Death - 2001-2011, G. K. Chesterton |
Day #5 of Religion Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
Here are three questions:
- Throughout history up until the present day, why do so many people talk, argue, hate and kill over theology, doctrine, creed, denominations, interpretations, canons, divinity, hagiography, dogma, faith, communion, baptism, history, piety, revelation, orthodoxy, sacraments, sacredness, ritual, liturgy, relics, veneration, saints, martyrdom, and history?
- Why is the world obsessed with the most shallow of pursuits as seen in popular culture?
- Is there any real difference between the first two questions?
I have the same answer to both the first and second questions.
- Because it’s easier than loving your neighbor.
That answer gives me the answer to my third question.
What are your answers and why?
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Drawing and questions by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English Writer
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