{"id":354,"date":"2003-08-09T12:02:35","date_gmt":"2003-08-09T16:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2003\/08\/09\/truth-or-dare\/"},"modified":"2003-08-09T12:02:35","modified_gmt":"2003-08-09T16:02:35","slug":"truth-or-dare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2003\/08\/09\/truth-or-dare\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth or dare"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a325'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thinking about those last two entries (re. Pierson &amp; Dean) made me wish for a national &#8212; no, international &#8212; poll with the following question: <i>What&#8217;s more important: being a winner or telling the truth?<\/i><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iisg.nl\/~landsberger\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"250\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iisg.nl\/~landsberger\/images\/wy01.jpg\" width=\"320\" align=\"right\" border=\"2\"><\/a><br \/>\nFurther questions.  <i>Is it dangerous not to be a winner (i.e., to be a loser)?  Does one have to be a winner to have material security in the world?  Does one die sooner if one is a loser?  At what stage would you avoid telling the truth to <\/i>stay<i> a winner?  In winner-oriented America, does calling someone a loser amount to talismanic dismissal and outright censorship?  Have the terms become supernaturally charged with the ability to protect or damn, and has truth-telling, the foundation of the US, become another configuration, tolerated if it facilitates winning, but avoided in the face of loss?<\/i>  Many more questions follow, but think of the Hollywood described by Pierson: who is going to tell the truth there if it means financial ruin and getting run out of town?  Is telling the truth more possible in countries with a stronger social safety net, where being a loser doesn&#8217;t raise the threat of going begging on the streets (Europe) or do truth-tellers go to jail (totalitarian states)?  Does the notion that winners can&#8217;t tell the truth without risking loss of status help account for the boring sameness of US culture (movies, tv, pulp fiction), and is there greater variety of perspectives in some other countries, or not?<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIf truth is sacrificed to success, what&#8217;s the point of success?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thinking about those last two entries (re. Pierson &amp; Dean) made me wish for a national &#8212; no, international &#8212; poll with the following question: What&#8217;s more important: being a winner or telling the truth? Further questions. Is it dangerous not to be a winner (i.e., to be a loser)? Does one have to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}