"I want to dedicate the next three years of my life... to THIS?!"

Here's a nebulous little rant that I would like to turn into a dissertation. Any and all input would be greatly appreciated. Especially if any of this makes you think, "Hey, that sounds like [insert reputable author here]!" I'd like to flesh out the literary merits of this project, you see, and not drive myself mad in the process.

The Nebulous Truth Project: or, Why humans are definitively incapable of telling the truth.
When an event occurs, the subjectivity of the observer is a point of interest. Perhaps the observer is the recipient of the action of another or indirectly related to the recipient, but never the individual taking the action (the one perpetrating the action is aware on some level of his or her motives, despite the level of self-honesty and engagement with motive), but the action is still something that happens to, the victimization is already inherent. If the observer is removed, the witnessing and relay of victimization follows with perception. [Insert Kant here.] This perception, prior to reception, is the starting point.
In that first second when seeing something startling, one does not immediately process the images and sounds with language—there is a moment of thought without words, and this is as close as we as humans with human language can get to the truth of the experience. [Insert Sartre here, garden reflection from “Nausea”] The instant we begin to think about what we are seeing, hearing around us, we do so in a two-dimensional language which mauls and limits meaning and experience to its death. [Insert Blanchot here.] Language distances us from the truth of experience but imposing limits and creating a space for rationalization, reflection and interpretation. When we choose words to relate the experience, even in striving for honesty, we give only our interpretation through word choice and only our (by definition) individual point of view. Did the man “run” down the street? Did he “hurry”? Or maybe “race”? The subtle connotations of these variants for what may be a unitary action is the main point of this third turn of distancing, the first being seen with our two fixed eyes and hearing with our limited range, the second being thinking in language, the third the choosing of specific language. [Truth Commissions here?—the closest they can get is step three.]
The reception to these words (note: not perception—there is no truthful input, only hearsay) is effected by the style of delivery, the environment, prior bias of the receptor, all this on top of the distance from the truth already established in steps one through three, and is step four (step zero being the happening-truth, the absolute truth of what really happened—ground zero you might say). [O’Brien and “The Things They Carried” goes in here somewhere]
Perhaps this account, this witnessing is heard by someone who has been trained in the production of literature, someone who knows about foreshadowing, character development, alliteration and so on—and they are the willing receptor of the story, and from it create in deliberately literary and chosen language the story. Maybe they even call it fiction. With the production of a document, we are now at step seven (four is the witnessing, five the second reception, six the thinking in the writer’s brain, and seven the writing out) if not step eight due to the input of an editor. Then, if the book is read by anyone, it is received a third time, and we’re now eight or nine steps from the truth. Is there any truth left in it at this point? The steps continue if a report is generated from the witnessing, and then later a fiction is created by a word smith, and at every turn more steps are added—the stage adaptation, the film script, the eventual interpretive dance and new age symphonic movement in the event’s memory. But by this point, the event is nearly unrecognizable.
Those not feeling the blow or seeing it land have little to do wit the truth of it. We assume the suffering of others, we take on their pseudo-experience and hijack their story—is this ethical? Perhaps more constructive—is it useful? By the time an event becomes literature, we have (by definition) interpreted it and drained the happening-truth out of it. What takes its place in the void? Is it only the falsehood, the lie left by the removal of the primary truth, or is there something to the literary-truth which gives literature its worth and universal truth which may be exhibited in particular with happening-truth manifestations but exists outside of that? We cannot know the truth of an event, even large-scale events, and history is littered with others wrongful assumptions and assimilations, and while contemplation on the great events of the human past may prove of some small use, the overall certainty of anything is impossible. [Insert Tolstoy’s epilogue to “War & Peace” here]
If one accepts that truth and beauty are inherently linked [Insert Aristotle and Plato here] then the beautiful works of art, of literature which are representations, interpretations, must have their own truth. [Insert Heidegger “Origin of the Work of Art” and Benjamin “Art in the Age of Reproduction”] This is the story-truth, not the happening-truth. [Reintroduce O’Brien to the argument] Through literature, worlds we have never known become more real than the far side of town [Blanchot] and what is essential in truth is called to the fore/ [Insert Heidegger here—a lot of Heidegger, “Poetry, Language, Thought” etc.] The removed experiences of others, admittedly fictional or not, enable us to vicariously experience with none of the bodily risks, and allow us to access truths perhaps otherwise unavailable. [Insert Sontag here, mostly “The Pain of Others”]
So, what does all of this mean? What is it worth?
Beats the hell out of me.
Please, help.