Watching Memento made me think of this phrase, and I then started to realize how this has been a recurring theme in the course. Cat’s Cradle is a perfect place to start. The dismal state of their nation was an inconvenient truth to San Lorenzans given the crashing economy, the general discord and failed attempts to salvage San Lorenzans out of their misery. In The Things They Carried, the inconvenient truth was the inability of the “happening truths,” the naked facts of O’Brien’s time served in Vietnam to convey the emotional truth of his war experience, and thus make the readers’ “stomach believe.”
The Man in the High Castle was an uncomfortable text to read too. The inconvenient truth was the very possibility of an alternative reality and the shifting notions of what’s authentic and what’s fake. Similarly, Kindred was unsettling because of the loss of linearity in time and the process of making uncomfortable discoveries about one’s roots. In Aura, Consuelo faced the inconvenient truth of losing her youth and reconciling with her inability to procreate while Felipe faced that of finding that Aura was merely an illusion. Through House of Danger, well, we ourselves started being aware of the inconvenient truth that we are constantly exposed to manipulations in our daily lives.
On that note, it seems relevant to notice that we are also exposed to several inconvenient truths in our daily lives. The phrase ‘an inconvenient truth’ itself was popularized by Al Gore’s documentary about global warming, the truth that is closing in on all inhabitants of this planet. In the various texts and movies we came across this semester, we saw the protagonists use lies, makeshift truths and illusions to reconcile with their inconvenient truths. What do we do? There are those of us who try to look for a remedy. There are campaigns being initiated and documentaries being made to hopefully find a way out. And then there are also those of us who choose not to believe it at all. If we Google ‘global warming,’ the first thing on ‘related searches’ list that comes up is the phrase ‘global warming hoax.’ There was one theory that claimed that man could maybe change the local climate, but that he’s not capable of changing the global climate as a whole, which sounds reasonable as well. It’s an ongoing debate and everyone must choose to independently prioritize the facts we have at hand. We could be like Leonard and pick the facts that give us a purpose in life. But it might as well be just an illusion of purpose. We could also be like San Lorenzans and live by harmless untruths that keep us happy. But then again not all untruths are harmless.
That being said, my biggest conclusion from the class is that everything is ultimately subject to our freewill. And the optimal use of freewill comes from being aware of our surrounding and our history and knowing that they’re all subject to manipulations.
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