Why Should We Care?

     The topic of this class was Truth, Lies and Literature, and the thesis was truth lies in literature. We all had the opportunity to enjoy the body of evidence, and decide whether or not we believe Professor Schwartz, the townie who taught us for a semester.
     So now for the conclusion, or the "why should I care?" To answer this, I am going to go back to an idea from beginning of the year: dynamic tension. There is a dynamic tension between truth and lies, exhibited in the literature that we read, that I think this class teaches us to see in every day life. It comes hand in hand with manipulation, and I think the joke, from the first day of class, that we were taught by a townie manipulating us (lying) into thinking that she was our professor is a good example of this.
    If this were the case, and we still aren't sure that it is not, the lie would be that the person teaching us had a PhD, or was employed by Hamilton College. The truth would be that we still learned everything this course taught us, regardless of who was teaching it. This class has taught us to examine the manipulations behind this, and decide whether we give more validation to the truth and the lie. We can now notice the conditioning that has convinced us that someone need not be a PhD-less townie in order for them to be a good professor, even though that may not be the case (this is not in any way meant to demean the hard work needed to get a PhD).
     As I have said previously, the real value of what this class teaches is that what we learn allows us to more clearly see the choices we make. In the end, we still must make those choices, but Truth, Lies and Literature lets us see them transparently, acknowledging the manipulations that are influencing us, and that is why we should care.