Once upon a time wise men would ask, “what is the truth?”. Later, a man rather famously asked, “what is truth?”. These days, many assert “there is no truth”. It seems to me that we have fallen very low in the desire for truth.
A century ago G. K. Chesterton, in his What’s Wrong With the World? noted this problem – our continual desire to hide from truth. To explain it away, some times but much more often our desire to pretend it isn’t even there. One of the things Chesterton wrote about was the fact that the execution of criminals had been moved from the public square to behind prison walls.
There was, in that, none of the acknowledgment that we, the people, are doing certain things. It was all a matter for the police and none of us need sully our hands with it – but, the fact is, that even when we hide our corporate actions away from sight, we are still responsible for them. Today, we’re even worse at it – when we do gingerly decide to kill, we do it in a hospital-like room, and use a needle, rather than a noose.
Not, of course, that executions are the highest action of Man – in fact, as readers know, I’d rather see no executions, at all. But I would like us to be a lot more honest about what we’re doing – and what the effects are.
If we are to kill, then we shouldn’t be shy about it. Don’t send a man to a hospital room – ride him out in a tumbril and hang him in front of city hall. Don’t send a drone to blow an enemy to smithereens – send in troops to kill him, man to man. There would at least be honor in such killings – a clean fight, or at least an acknowledgment that we definitely want a particular person dead, and are taking our responsibility for the death.
Our dishonesty doesn’t stop at such grim things as killing – it extends right through our lives down to the smallest things. There is a conspiracy of falsehood and we all engage in it. All, that is, save a few saints and an even fewer number of hardened sinners who are at least honest about themselves.
The first task in a real reform is to start acknowledging the truth. The second task it to stop worrying about offending liars. People present to us things we know are false and yet out of fear for hurt feelings, we pretend that they didn’t lie to us.
Life can be brutal, but it doesn’t have to be inhuman. It is brutal that some of our brothers and sisters go to bed hungry. It is inhuman, however, that we don’t admit that some of them go to bed hungry because they simply didn’t bestir themselves to take the responsibility of earning their daily bread. It is brutal that some are born in to desperate circumstances. It is inhuman that we then excuse their bad behavior as if they hadn’t the wit to realize that a bad mother and poverty don’t excuse mayhem.
In all of our lies there is this ultimate result – brutality is turned in to inhumanity, and we cap off our lies by turning black in to white and claiming that our inhumanity is the most humane thing to do. We absurdly say that it is more humane to inject chemicals in to a man’s body than to very swiftly and nearly painlessly kill him by hanging him. Its more humane to allow a street person to wallow in filth than to take him up, even against his will, and force him to live in decency.
If we are to make a world suited to men and women – rather than a world of cheaply bought slaves – then we must start being truthful. When something is bad, we must say that it is so. When someone is doing wrong, we must call them wrong-doers (even, and especially, when the wrong-doer is the man in the mirror). Better a thousand sins acknowledged than one excused.
Better, that is, to hear the truth and act upon it than to hide from the truth and act upon lies.
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