The Death of Truth
Truth died—not in a shootout at the OK Corral with its archenemy the Lie! Truth died—not in a major battle with Hitler’s propaganda machine or the Communist Manifesto. Truth died from the wounds of a friend. Not by opposition, but by redefinition. Post-modern communication theorists, friendly with the concept of truth, posited that the meaning of a message did not depend on the intention of the source. Rather, they said, meaning depended on the interpretation of the receiver. Not what a person said, but what people thought they heard, was the real truth. The theory seemed sound. After all, we communicate not just with words, but with gestures, facial expression, and tone of voice. Messages could be, and often were, misunderstood. However, once the misunderstanding became the message—truth died. Where literary interpretation had once been the desire to identify the intended message in the mind of an author, it now became a search for whatever interpretation a rea