Essay On Multiple Truths

The idea of multiple truths can be seen often throughout society. The concept can also be broken down into four subcategories - factual or forensic truths, personal and narrative truths, social or dialogic truths, and healing and restorative truths - as discussed in Dr. Robert Kraft’s Violent Accounts: Understanding the Psychology of Perpetrators through South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These different types of multiple truths can be seen often between perpetrators and victims, especially throughout court trials. Although these subdivisions of multiple truths aid in the retrieval of information, it is also common if they contradict one another, as seen in parallax truth. These contradictions rely heavily on the relation of

This particular truth deals with hard evidence and it answers the questions of who, what, when, where, and how. The second subdivision is personal and narrative truth. This truth is concerned with relaying information by telling stories, personal experiences, and perceptions. Personal truth is very important, but it also often conflicts with other people’s personal truths. The third type of multiple truth is social or dialogic truth, which deals with interactions between the court officials, the perpetrators, and advocates, and the victims. The fourth, and final, is healing and restorative truth. This encompasses the perpetrators acknowledging the suffering their victims have experienced. These four subdivisions of multiple truths are all important and are all often touched upon in testimonies during court trials, such as the Benzien

For example, multiple truths are seen daily during police reports. If someone’s car was stolen, for instance, they would go through the process of the four types of truths. They would give factual evidence concerning the situation, they would give a narrative explaining their experience of the incident, and they would tell the officer the social aspect by stating with which who they interacted. The healing aspect would most likely be present later when trying to understand why someone had stolen their car and while trying to acknowledge their own suffering. Another example is if someone gets in a fight. Not only would the four truths be present, but parallax truth could also be present. If someone was injured during the fight, it may seem that the other person attacked the person who was injured, while the attacker may have injured the other person out of self defense. The situations do not necessarily even need to be violent - it may be as simple as telling your professor that you lost your homework, or forget to study for their exam. There are many everyday situations that contain multiple