A gentle reflection: The deception couched in truths may be the most powerful thing that language can produce. In its own way, it is more powerful than the truths themselves (or the Truth, if such a thing is attainable); because truths are beyond control. They are what they are, regardless of what you desire them to be. But a deception couched in truths—which may be just a way of indicating an interpretation of truths that one embraces with too great a hermeneutical ease—is always what you want it to be. It controls truths, weaving them into the narrative you prefer. This deception is so powerful that it often draws the deceiver into itself, eventually leading him to believe his fiction is equivalent to reality, or at least that his interpretation of truths is reality without remainder. The mantra is: Only a fool would think differently than I do. How do I know this? I don’t really. But it seems feasible to me, because I would wager that just about everyone reading this little thought of mine is thinking about how it applies to someone else—some other person who has taken solace in a deception couched in truths. Perhaps you’re thinking about the neighbor who disagrees with you; the ideologue whose ideology is the opposite of your own; the group that thinks differently than you do. But I suspect that next to no one is thinking of themselves. I know I wouldn’t be. I suppose that makes sense. After all, why would you accept something as true (whether it is or not) if you didn’t accept it fully? That may be just the problem, though. We hold our narratives too tightly, confusing them with the truths in which we plant them. The solution isn’t absolute relativism. I think rather it’s what Gianni Vattimo refers to as “weak thought” or, less radical, a robust “critical realism.” Perhaps we need to hold our narratives weakly, believing them, defending them, but never confidently confusing them with absolute truth (even if they may happen to coincide with such truth). Such is the root of what I might call genuine dialogue, not to be confused with conversations in which one person doesn’t really listen to the other because, after all, that one person has the truth without remainder. Ironically, then, the best defense against the most powerful (and perhaps most dangerous) thing in language is the recognition of a weakness—the embrace of our own finitude and the limitations implied therein. In a final analysis, it may be that the greatest deception couched in truths is the belief that we can confidently claim absolute truth without deceiving ourselves. And we may all be a bit guilty of this deception. Just a thought, and a weak one at that.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 01:47:22 +0000
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