Last night, I went to see a production of Rashomon because a friend of mine was in it. The play, an adaptation of the Kurosawa film of the same name, tells the story of a rape and murder from 4 different perspectives (the raped, the murdered, the accused, the witness) and deals with the concept of perception v. truth.
Is there anyone out there who still believes that truth truly exists? And that people don't create their own reality by what they perceive? The whole post-modern/deconstructionist/Foucault/Derrida discussion is over. But it seems it gets brought out and paraded around when we as a country are in a time of war and discontent. It resurfaced and became trendy in the 80s under Reagan, again under the 1st Bush's Gulf War, and has come around again during the debacle that is our country's politics at the moment.
I think the connection is interesting in that people are searching to understand why others cannot understand them and when the judging of others is completely acceptable (Why won't my elected officials do what I want? Why doesn't my neighbor understand that he's just wrong?). When we as a society come to truly understand that people create their own realities, and that there is no actual truth, and that perception is everything, I have a sneaky suspicion people will be more tolerant. It'll probably never happen - people like being sheep too much to think for themselves and understand themselves enough to comprehend their own perceptions.
But until it does, I think I'm over the discussion.