Skip to main content

In Denial

There is a scene in the movie Denial where the judge presiding over a libel case asks the question - if a person actually believes the things he is claiming based on some deep prejudice is holds, then can he still be accused of lying. In this context it was about holocaust denial. It was a satisfying movie to watch but this particular question gave much food for thought given the times we live in.  

There are people who believe that the pandemic is a hoax and living their lives based on such belief. The source of the belief could have roots in political or other prejudice but the person holding it is likely not lying. To that end, if they go around asserting their views and trying to create more awareness of it they would not be propagating a lie but the harm they cause in the process is immense. This review of the movie makes a great point about the absurdity for needing to defend the patently obvious.

.. no one would dream of asking Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin to share a podium or TV studio with someone who believed the moon landings were faked.

Yet in reality the author had to fend off the libel lawsuit by a holocaust denier and it was not entirely given that she would prevail. Her legal team certainly did not take this casually. Made me think that giving up on people who believe in conspiracy and hoax theories can do a lot of damage if these views get to propagate unchecked in acquiescence to their right to free speech.  There could be some that are harmless and even amusing but there are those that could be much worse. Context matters as does impact. As the author says in the final scene of the movie in the press conference - all opinions are not equal. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more