There Is a War

 

Ethical monkeys.

Truth is a thing of infinite value. It is also very rare. Our social lives are precariously suspended on a web of lies.

As an example of the usual social morality, consider the Rotary "Four Way Test":

Is it the TRUTH?

Is it FAIR to all concerned?

Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

While that sounds honourable, note that the truth is to be limited to what will preserve general goodwill and social relationships. One should tell the truth, but not the whole truth.

Lines from Emily Dickenson have long troubled my imagination:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

The truth of which she speaks is something frightening—like lightning to a child.

Why are so many afraid of truth?

Possibly relevant: Jesus said he was the truth, and the truth would set us free. Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?” and crucified him.

These are perhaps the two warring sides defined.

Every now and again, someone arises who speaks the truth publicly, and it is electrifying—at least to me, but I think to others as well. This is what prophecy is, and prophets keep arising. 

“Prophets, in the modern sense of the word, have never existed. Jonah was no prophet in the modern sense, for his prophecy of Nineveh failed. Every honest man is a Prophet; he utters his opinion both of private & public matters.” – William Blake

When I first read Milton Friedman, I got that sense: the shock of truth. The simple logic of what he said contrasted so clearly with the improbable convolutions of Keynesianism. Truth is straight, simple, and drawn in clear lines; lies are serpentine, nuanced, sophisticated, vague. John the Baptist arose to “make the paths straight.”

I got that shock of truth again from Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae. The world, including most Christian denominations, had surrendered to the idea of free sex and even abortion. Everyone expected the prevaricator, Paul, to add his seal of approval. Instead he stood up and said what no one wanted to hear, those who wanted the reassuring rationalization that children did not matter, the marriage bond did not matter, and the foetus was not a human life.

I got the same shock of truth from reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as sanctioned by John Paul II and primarily composed by Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI.

Sadly, I get the opposite from their successor, Francis. Everything he says seems deliberately vague and ambiguous.

For a time, I trusted The Economist to speak truth; that is, while of course not infallible, to represent a consistently principled liberal view; to speak truth as they perceived it. I miss that illusion. I stopped reading  when they referred to Jean-Marie LePen, previously always “that thug,” as “that wily ex-paratrooper.” He had qualified for the run-off; he stood a real chance of being elected French president. It was time to prevaricate. The Economist was playing politics and spinning narratives like everyone else. Truth was to be honoured only as it served self-interest.

Of course, this illness has long infected the rest of the press. In the old days, when journalists only graduated from high school, they were there because they were prophets, determined to find the truth. Now it's a job, a career.

The secret to the fierce loyalty to Donald Trump among his supporters is that he, unlike practiced politicians, speaks the blunt truth. He tweets whatever he thinks. 

He is, perversely, most often accused by his opponents of lying: the very opposite thing. Trump, like John the Baptist, is blunt and undiplomatic. This, if perhaps not always desirable, is the reverse of lying.

And whom do the anti-Trumpers rally behind as a result? Joe Biden. Not just any politician, but probably the most consistently untruthful active politician in America. The personified stereotype of the gladhanding glib talker who will say anything to get elected. That obviously puts the lie to their lie; the ultimate lie, but the automatic, spontaneous lie used by habitual liars, is to declare truth itself a lie.

Who else, in our times, is a voice for the truth?

The two people I have known personally who seemed most honest, most sincere, were Larry F. and Kathy M. Larry F soon after I met him committed suicide. Kathy M. was schizophrenic.

Someone had convinced them that truth itself was a lie. So where were they to go?

Emily Dickenson, for her part, was obviously mentally ill, by the standards of her time or ours—“melancholic.” She lived most of her life in her bedroom, pursuing truth.

So was Leonard Cohen, of whom those who knew him well will say he was the most honest person they had ever met. 

This seems to be a common theme with many artists. They seem trusting and naïve, unable to play social politics, and deeply sincere.

George Orwell was another obviously depressive artist. He wrote:

“Intellectual honesty is a crime in any totalitarian country; but even in England it is not exactly profitable to speak and write the truth.”

Just as it has recently become unprofitable and a career risk to speak or write the truth in Canada or the USA.

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

But telling people anything they do not want to hear is now a criminal offense, a “hate crime.”

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”

So the open hatred for Trump; this explains “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

The entire culture is now in deep denial, and the deeper they go into denial, and the closer anyone comes to speaking the truth, the more violently they are liable to react; up to the point of crucifixion.

Orwell believed that his one true talent was the ability to face the truth when all others were in such denial.

The same might be said of Churchill, who credited his own ability to see the gathering storm of Nazism in the 1930s to his depression. Depression sees truth that most deny. “Depressive realism” is even recognized by the psychologists; it has been measured. Far from being deluded, the depressed are generally in closer contact with reality than the rest of us. It is the rest of us who are insane. 

Churchill is credited with the remark

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”

One might posit that there are two kinds of people in the world: people who hunger and thirst after truth, and people in open rebellion against it. These are the sheep and the goats.

Those in denial, those who flee from truth, and who hate those who speak it, do so because they are conscious of having sinned—and are unrepentant.

John 3: 19-21:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

… To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

Although it sets them free, those who have sinned fear truth. They will call anyone who speaks truth a liar, or insane. If they fear exposure, they can become violent. They can behead or crucify.

Dickenson’s solution is to tell the truth “slant.” It is a tactic used by Jesus too. It is, he explains, why he speaks in parables. One does not cast pearls before swine: they will turn on you and tear you apart. This is the charter of the artist.

The problem with this approach is that parables and slanted tellings are easily misinterpreted and misunderstood. They can actually be used to reinforce the lies.

Perhaps the best response for the truth tellers is to tell the truth loudly, as the prophets do: to let their light shine. 

There are no easy options here. But we are at war, a war of good and evil. If you are in the trenches, you will draw fire.