During the Spring semester of 2020, twelve students came together from different corners of Wake Forest University to pilot an unusual experiment in learning: Truth and Authenticity Lab. Our goal was to investigate what happens when we combine two distinct forms of inquiry—philosophical reflection and multimedia storytelling—in order to explore what it means to tell the truth.
We quickly discovered, however, that telling the truth is more complicated, and more intimidating, than we might have thought. It's relatively easy to state facts, but when it comes to the complex, real-world issues we care about, it can be painfully unclear how to communicate what is most essential and important.
Then COVID-19 changed our direction.
Our original plan was to create films and write philosophical papers about issues facing the Winston-Salem community. But when the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to stay home, we decided to turn our focus inward. Meeting via Zoom for six weeks, pouring over texts, and exchanging drafts and rough cuts, we helped one another summon the courage to examine our own most intimate relationships—relationships with our families, the spaces around us, and ourselves.
As the selections below demonstrate, the results are absolutely breathtaking. In an age where we often strive to present a perfect, "Instagram-ready" image of ourselves—a compulsion that leaves us all feeling disconnected and stressed out—these students' projects offer us lifelines to reality.
We quickly discovered, however, that telling the truth is more complicated, and more intimidating, than we might have thought. It's relatively easy to state facts, but when it comes to the complex, real-world issues we care about, it can be painfully unclear how to communicate what is most essential and important.
Then COVID-19 changed our direction.
Our original plan was to create films and write philosophical papers about issues facing the Winston-Salem community. But when the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to stay home, we decided to turn our focus inward. Meeting via Zoom for six weeks, pouring over texts, and exchanging drafts and rough cuts, we helped one another summon the courage to examine our own most intimate relationships—relationships with our families, the spaces around us, and ourselves.
As the selections below demonstrate, the results are absolutely breathtaking. In an age where we often strive to present a perfect, "Instagram-ready" image of ourselves—a compulsion that leaves us all feeling disconnected and stressed out—these students' projects offer us lifelines to reality.
showcase of selected projects
Max Stainton
Film: "Graveside Sonata" Essay: "Necromortality: A New Mode of Being in Heideggerian Phenomenology" Dying may seem like an event that each of us must face alone. In his project, however, Max reflects on his own near-death experience, as well as on the many ways that death shapes and even contributes to people's lives, to suggest that dying is not as final or isolating as it seems. |
https://vimeo.com/423445112/1e797c3e3e
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"Our lives should be lived knowing that, when we die, our actions and influences on the world are not magically wiped away," he says. "Although we live in an individualistic, self-interested world, we must understand that much of what we do will leave a Legacy and Memory that could affect humanity until its extinction. When we recognize our interdependence, our inseparable connection to world and other, and our integral role in the history of humanity, we are forced to view death and life not as individual experiences but as communal unifiers, as a reason to live for and with others."
https://vimeo.com/423450872/2f1e3aadb6
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Lilian Nassif
Film: "mil y una noches" Essay: "Being-Within-Worlds" How does having a multiracial, multicultural, multilingual background affect a person's identity and their ability to feel at home in the world? Lilian's project begins with observation that for many people, their identity is constructed within a relatively stable world. |
In contrast, she says, "Wherever I go, I struggle to find comfort and connectivity between my Saudi, Venezuelan, and American identities." This can give rise to the sense of having multiple identities—identities that are sometimes in conflict. "In order for me to feel internal harmony," Lilian notes, "I will often catch myself rejecting, and disembodying the relevance of one world when I am in another." But it also reveals a deeper, world-independent dimension of the self: "Despite me navigating individual worlds, my experience transcends my contextualization, as my recall of my multiplicity permeates within me no matter where I am. I wonder then...am I forever attached to the context in which I exist? Can existential angst, in the way it harbors what factors within a world I choose to harbor, or reject, give me true independence from the world?"
Michael Soraci
Film: "For Everyone Else" Essay: "Recent Years in the Heideggerian Lens" Chronic pain is a world unto itself, a world beset by struggles that are as existential as they are physical. In his project, Michael examines his three-year struggle with pain that has prevented him from living in the ways he otherwise would. |
https://vimeo.com/423441788/e9fb817f07
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His project aims to think through the question of what it means to "be true to yourself" when circumstances arise that impose a radical divergence between a person's self-image—their values and aspirations—and their lived reality. The process leads Michael to a profound insight: "my experience [with pain] has allowed me to actualize a more authentic, meaningful way of existing in the world. When I remind myself of this, it helps me to reverse my growing indifference and re-approach my situation with a new sense of positive resolve."
https://vimeo.com/423379921/5133b67f8d
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Addie Griffin
Film: "Old Friends" Essay: "Heidegger and Authenticity" What gives some people the courage to come out as gay, despite the risk of being rejected by the people in one's community and even one's own family? In her project, Addie looks back on a time when she and her friend Jordan were struggling together with deep questions of identity and authenticity. |
Addie examines Heidegger's claim that it is the confrontation with one's own mortality that gives people the motivation to resist the pressure to conform to social norms and take ownership of their own life. She concludes, however, that "the motivation to be authentic is not exclusively from death," because the "drive towards authenticity can also come from a will to live."
Thanks to everyone who participated in the inaugural run of the Truth and Authenticity Lab. It was an honor to be on this adventure with you!