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As an octogenarian, the iconic filmmaker is considered a cultural icon who functions entirely on his own terms. Much like his strange and enchanting films, the director's newest volume ignores standard structures of narrative, blurring the lines between truth and invention while exploring the very nature of truth itself.

A Brief Publication on Authenticity in a Tech-Driven Era

The brief volume presents the director's opinions on truth in an time flooded by digitally-created deceptions. The thoughts resemble an elaboration of his earlier manifesto from the late 90s, featuring strong, cryptic viewpoints that include criticizing cinéma vérité for hiding more than it clarifies to unexpected declarations such as "choose mortality before a wig".

Central Concepts of Herzog's Authenticity

Several fundamental principles form Herzog's vision of truth. Primarily is the belief that pursuing truth is more valuable than actually finding it. In his words puts it, "the journey alone, drawing us toward the hidden truth, enables us to participate in something essentially elusive, which is truth". Furthermore is the idea that plain information deliver little more than a uninspiring "bookkeeper's reality" that is less valuable than what he calls "rapturous reality" in helping people grasp existence's true nature.

If anyone else had written The Future of Truth, I believe they would receive severe judgment for taking the piss out of the reader

Sicily's Swine: An Allegorical Tale

Going through the book is similar to hearing a campfire speech from an engaging uncle. Included in numerous fascinating narratives, the strangest and most striking is the account of the Palermo pig. In the author, long ago a pig became stuck in a straight-sided drain pipe in the Italian town, the Italian island. The creature remained stuck there for a long time, living on bits of nourishment dropped to it. Over time the animal developed the shape of its pipe, becoming a kind of translucent cube, "ethereally white ... unstable as a great hunk of Jello", receiving nourishment from aboveground and eliminating excrement beneath.

From Sewers to Space

Herzog utilizes this story as an symbol, relating the Sicilian swine to the perils of prolonged interstellar travel. Should humankind embark on a voyage to our closest habitable world, it would take centuries. Over this duration Herzog envisions the courageous travelers would be obliged to reproduce within the group, becoming "genetically altered beings" with no understanding of their mission's purpose. In time the astronauts would morph into whitish, worm-like beings rather like the Sicilian swine, equipped of little more than consuming and shitting.

Exhilarating Authenticity vs Accountant's Truth

The unsettlingly interesting and accidentally funny shift from Sicilian sewers to cosmic aberrations provides a example in Herzog's notion of rapturous reality. As followers might find to their surprise after endeavoring to verify this captivating and biologically implausible square pig, the Italian hog appears to be fictional. The search for the miserly "literal veracity", a situation rooted in simple data, misses the meaning. How did it concern us whether an incarcerated Italian livestock actually turned into a shaking square jelly? The true point of Herzog's story unexpectedly is revealed: restricting animals in limited areas for extended periods is foolish and creates monsters.

Herzogian Mindfarts and Critical Reception

If a different author had authored The Future of Truth, they might face severe judgment for strange composition decisions, digressive comments, contradictory ideas, and, frankly speaking, mocking from the public. In the end, Herzog dedicates multiple pages to the theatrical plot of an opera just to demonstrate that when creative works feature concentrated feeling, we "invest this ridiculous essence with the full array of our own emotion, so that it appears strangely real". Yet, as this book is a compilation of distinctively Herzogian musings, it resists severe panning. The brilliant and inventive translation from the native tongue – where a crypto-zoologist is characterized as "not the sharpest tool in the shed" – in some way makes the author more Herzog in approach.

Deepfakes and Modern Truth

Although much of The Future of Truth will be known from his earlier publications, films and interviews, one somewhat fresh component is his contemplation on digitally manipulated media. The author refers repeatedly to an algorithm-produced continuous dialogue between fake sound reproductions of himself and a fellow philosopher in digital space. Since his own techniques of reaching ecstatic truth have included creating quotes by well-known personalities and casting artists in his non-fiction films, there is a potential of double standards. The separation, he contends, is that an thinking person would be reasonably capable to discern {lies|false