You CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
♥ Tuesday, February 12, 2008
ersatz \AIR-sahts; UR-sats\, adjective:
Being a substitute or imitation, usually an inferior one.What does it mean to lie? Hiding the truth? That would be an omission to tell the truth, a non action. Telling a lie is a verb- a positive action. A lie is simply this- a replacing of a false reality in replacement of the actual one. A lie is an ersatz truth. For purposes of this discussion, i will not dwell so much on the varying half-truths or whole lies, i will discuss instead on the reason behind such lies. And the aftermaths. You will soon come to discover that points 1 to 3 are all related. REASONS:
1) Why a person lies is perhaps the same in some sense as to why a person steals- he cant afford. He cant afford seeing that truth straight in the eye, he cant stand the scrutiny of such weight truths tend to have and he cant bear to see his castles-in-the-air crumble.A parent tells a child that he is not the reason behind their divorce; a general tells a soldier that the road is shorter than it looks; a husband tells his wife his heart longs only for her; a brother tells a sister that their deceased parents moved to another country...there are simply tonnes of examples to show why and how people have been lying. And the common thread that runs through all these examples is quite simply this: lies are the beautification of a hideous reality. A leper's masquerade.2) Life works on the premises of such lies. That unfortunately, is the truth. A religious minister goes up to the pulpit to speak about his convictions- can he also express his own doubts in the search of his truth? The myanmmar oppression of education and press shows one thing- we dont want the truths in our face. Truth had such a bloody history- the truth of communism as a possible means to end suffering gave rise to huge revolutions, the truth of sunnis oppressing shiites resulted in enormous civil unrest, the truth of tutsis and hutus in Rwanda gave rise to the genocide, the truths about hurricane katrina lead to a furore against the Bush administration, as did the truth of the Iraq war. Truths just doesnt bring peace. Truths simply antagonise. The newspapers, the tabloids, any form of magazines portray "90 percent bulls***" according to Denzel Washington in Training Day (obviously not the best authority to cite), and the sensationalizing of a story takes precedence over the reality of the matter. Tact is considered over candour, form is preferred over substance, lies matter more than truth. 3) Lies are a necessity - We need them like we need our home and our stability, our comfort and security. We live by lies! We tell ourselves things we want to hear, we read the books which put our realities in an infinitesimally insignificant manner and we hang out with people who play up every falsehood possible. We indulge in things that take us away- the books, the movies, the friends, the fun. When you were small you must have had superheroes- they were the lies you took up to make yourself invulnerable. When you are older, you take on the persona of another character- a person you admire? a person you love? And that mask that you put on at parties when you entertain all and actually feel like you want to be left alone? All that arent truths. Those are positive actions done as ersatz truths.And relationships. We start with lies, we end maybe because of them. We start with the lie that this person, that place, this particular community is perfect. The illusion that goes over our eyes is a result of a certain transaction- the audience wants to be fooled, and the performer wants to fool. What the hell do i mean? I mean that the boyfriend wants to look perfect, the girlfriend wants to believe he is. The lone desperate teenager wants to look up to an ideal community, the community wants to portray its infallibility. Its a butter trade really. The fools wants to be fooled. CONSEQUENCES:Sadly, when lies give way to reveal not truths, but half-truths, the consequences are devastating. We build our lives on such shaky premises all the while keeping our fingers crossed that these foundations dont give way. When they do, they take away...well, everything. A child whose image of his dad is unattainably ideal is destroyed on learning he was adopted. A child who has her mother as her role model crumbles on learning she was a drug addict. A spouse discovers to her horror that her husband is half as ambitious as she thought he was. We live by lies to lie. Is it too simplistic to suggest that life is but a lie? That life's purpose is to lie? I do not think so. I think in fact that when Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men replied in all vehemence, "you cant handle the truth!" he was voicing out a timeless eternal reality. The reality behind a lie.
