Truth and Consequence

Tasting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I view the story of Eden as a koan - something to reflect upon and use as a tool to help me understand human behavior better. I feel that maybe that was the story's original purpose - a seemingly simple story that centers on a number of remarkably complex relationships to be studied. One of those relationships is between humans and knowledge. Not just any knowledge, but a specific kind of knowledge; that of Good and Evil. Implicit in this is that any other kind of knowledge is kosher, but the good versus evil kind is taboo. There are three different directions I'm tempted, haha, to take this: 1) The hazards of in-group out-group toxicity caused by labeling the in as good and the out as evil. 2) Contemplating what knowledge wasn't forbidden and how this might be related to the 2nd Commandment. A god that is only a word and idea would be threatened by animism and idolatry of nature - what is truly real is not the reality you live in. 3) How we determine the truth. I suppose this is tied to the second option, but I'm hoping to look at it a little differently. That said, I choose number 3.

My thinking has been strongly influenced recently by Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death". I think it is safe to say that those who first told the story of Eden weren't scripting it for TV. I imagine it was part of a long oral tradition, passed on through generations by skilled storytellers, enacting, dramatizing, seeking audience participation, singing, dancing. I wonder what the storytelling economy looked like in the beginning and how it evolved with time - how much of it was for amusement and how much for education? Lacking ways to write things down would have, I think, made the sharing of information a more valued commodity. But, can we be certain that the stories that got passed down to us were the most important? What exactly was the currency of importance? Were they the stories that got the most laughs? The ones that had the best lessons? The ones that were most scandalous? I will propose this: Whatever was passed orally was valued as a source of truth and its value is born out in the survival of humans.

I have no way of proving my assertion. I have this inkling that scholars of oral tradition have some good evidence based on recent cultures that maintain oral traditions in lieu of written histories. I wonder how our current moment of social-media and influence-culture and vast harvesting of personal information will be evaluated in the future. Will it help us survive?

So, what is the source of truth? To go back to Postman, if I rely on TV to provide me with a way to interpret reality, what are the implications? He asserts that the currency of truth shifts to amusement, something that rings true on many fronts. Just look at how much of the US government is presenting as spectacle in 2025: Sitcom, reality-show, true-crime, villains as heroes and more. Also, it has been something like 50 years since he wrote his book and many things have changed. When I think about the ways I gather knowledge - the books and websites and sources I trust, all of them are flawed, yet I use them as my source of truth. Why do I trust my sources of truth, and how much?

Here's how we get back to Eden. Eve has been told that eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil will kill her. Her god is her source of truth. She's curious and is open to another opinion - maybe her god wants all the fruit for himself and has lied to her. The story is spun to blame her for her curiosity, but the truth is that she didn't die. There's more to this story of speaking truth to power that I'll reserve for another day. What did Eve do wrong exactly? She fact-checked something she'd held as truth and learned she'd been misled. She's the one who was deceived and she gets blamed for being disloyal and questioning authority. Here's the evil: building one's authority on deceit and then blaming another for exposing your deceit. Obviously, we haven't learned that lesson, assuming we're empathizing with Eve and not her oppressor. There are plenty of lessons to be learned with respect to relationships between those with all the power and those with none, but that's not the point I want to end on.

Let's assume for a moment that the lie about dying from eating the fruit isn't the only lie Eve has believed as truth. Maybe the entirety of Eden is just a fantastical story that could have included dragons and unicorns. In an oral tradition, the story is truth, except when it isn't. Is the story of Eve and Eden a cautionary tale of how a story can be an illusion of truth - how a fiction can be spun for ulterior motives, propagandized, by those seeking to exploit? The magic that breaks the spell and shatters the illusion of this wonderland for Eve is a healthy snack. The moral of the story? Don't take stories as truths without testing them, tasting, touching, listening to the physical. In scientific terms: Treat every story as a hypothesis, including the stories you are told, or tell yourself, about the evidence you find.