Fun And Games With The Truth
Posted on 13 June 2010
It seems to me that there’s something quite clear about lies. First of all – they really work. Look at all the great advertising, for instance – people make fortunes from playing with the truth People live in beautiful homes because of these kinds of truth games. They have views of the ocean off Long Island or Malibu or Spain.
Truth games have gotten thousands of people elected to office. Lies or half lies or quarter lies are a staple of some of the finest pieces of diplomacy. Mathematics is a kind of lie or an agreement to accept certain things even when they’re not – that the number “one” actually exists, for example.
Civilization has functioned incredible well with lies (or rather) untruths or truth games The world is flat. The King is descended from God. The SAT score is an excellent way to judge intelligence. An Ivy League school is the best system for creating leaders…
But then there just are the real facts. Real truths. No games with the truth at all The world isn’t flat. (Nor is it exactly round – it’s some variation on round. An approximation.)One plus one doesn’t really exactly, you know, exist. When you get down to below the molecular level, for instance, there’s probably nothing the same. Probably. I think. But it doesn’t matter, really what I think. I can think anything I want, because there really is a truth and I’ll either find out about it or I won’t.
For instance the amount of oil spewing into the ocean. BP, Obama, me…we can all say whatever we want is the amount. It can appear in the New York Times, in the Guardian, Wikipedia. We can add and subtract gallons per minute. People can get elected, unelected, even fired over how this oil thing is spun or unspun or advertised or unadvertised.
Then there is the exact amount, down to the molecular level, the amount that sinks into ocean floor, that swirls around fish, birds etc, that demolishes species and sucks up oxygen, etc. There’s a real amount whatever we think, feel or spin.
And, in the end, that’s the amount we’re truthfully going to have to live with (and those of our loved ones who are going to live afterwards are going to haven to live with).
And the truth – most of the time now – it isn’t all that much fun to live with (Wall Street, CEO’s salaries, banks deal making, global warming, BP, Obama, the Tea Party, etc) but it is what it is, that is…it just is….
12 responses to Fun And Games With The Truth
The problem is who is going to pay for this?
Does money pay for this?
Is there a possible calculable amount of money that would bring back the life of every single creature that is dying because of it? Is there a good lie, a good half truth to be told so the ocean will now stop turning to black?
It’s sad.
“La Vida es Sueño”…
Funny how when it comes to the earth, to the ocean — the problem crosses all barriers, effects all of us beyond even words…and the animals, the fish, the air, the fauna…
Fauna … yes especially us humans who bear the burden of guilt.
Your tweets on the ocean turning black read like a poem in the making.
The ocean is the ultimate leveller. As the cancerous blackness spreads through the waters, elsewhere the oceans have turned red again with innocent blood.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/u-s-israel-capable-of-conducting-impartial-gaza-flotilla-probe-1.296177
And we hear echoes of the old familiar chant from yet another US government,
“They have, in fact, in the past, intercepted ships that were carrying weapons and armaments that have been used to threaten the Israeli people.”
Humanity bears collective responsibility and the more we try to shake it off, the more it comes back and sticks to us. This truly feels like The End. Maybe we could dip into mythology for a solution and ask Shiva to swallow the black sludge?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samudra_manthan#Halahal_.28Also_called_.27kalakuta.27.29
I doubt though, that any remedy will work for guilt-stained hands. I’m reminded of Macbeth -
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”
Life is a Dream…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_is_a_Dream
I love this. I’m new to the work and the author but the title instantly drew me and as I read the wiki page I got sucked in by the ideas. Yes life is a dream from which only death awakens us. Or more broadly, illusion and reality are interchangeable.
“What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
A shadow, a fiction,
And the greatest profit is small;
For all of life is a dream,
And dreams, are nothing but dreams.”
As someone in whose psyche this interchangeability of illusion/reality is embedded by virtue of heritage, the below fact doesn’t surprise me of course!
“This legend itself a derivation of the story of the early years of Siddharta Gautama, which modern spectators may know from the film Little Buddha that illustrates so the Hindu-Buddhist concept of reality as illusion.”
It’s wonderful to revisit these concepts in our contemporary context.
Thanks so much for posting the link. I learnt a lot.
Yes. It may be an illusion. A dream. But I have found dreams to at times be more solid than concrete, more dangerous than a rifle, more precise than a surgeons knife sharpened to a razor. I’ve found that nightmares rough you up worse than a mobster and a dream of warmth, love and a blue sky gets you up and running in the morning with glee.
So what do we mean by illusion? And isn’t BPs oil (illusory on one level, sure, but) on another level tell that to a fish that swims into its hell. A bird sitting on his/her now soaked beach.
Illusion.
And sure, pain, passion, hatred — illusions, maybe — but you can’t erase consequence in dreams, in the ocean. In our minds. There is more pain, consequence and real danger in these currents of existence — for instance our poor beleagured CEO of BP will have to wake up to his life in his lovely mansion with mirrors for the rest of his life.
He may want to take some corporately created little pill to ease the whatever it is he sees in the mirror or sees when he looks at his fingers growing older.
He may be able to sail in his yacht or purr past the London streets in his limo…but he’s going to have deal with the “illusion” that’s inside his head, just like all the rest of us.
I with him luck.
I wish us all luck.
Do we not all bear collective responsibility for this mess with our incessant unquenchable thirst for oil, driving our cars, air conditioning our homes, living in big houses, consuming petroleum based products, and so on? Yes, we can blame BP, the government, all of the oil companies, but they are responding to our on-going demands of more, more, more. What a mess we are leaving our children and future generations who will be doomed to inhabit an earth quite different from the one in which members of our generation grew up. It’s nice to talk about dreams and poetry, but the fact is we all need to change our behaviors and invest in the future, and take a hard look at our own endless consumption.
So Carol, shall we just turn off the lights, tv’s, radios, throw all our keys away? Shall we return to our beginnings, reinvent the wheel and the carving tools, back to where they started? Shall we stop flying in planes and taking vacations to Mexico and Fiji? Shall we stop the fervor for imports, kardashiens and viagra? Or are my words here just dreams and poetry too?
I am curious as to what you mean specifically in your cries and admonishments about our “consumptions”
We consume what we are supplied with, and that consumption varies in that some can afford to consume more than others.
When suppliers bully the variety out, we are left with one thing to consume. This is the real heart of the matter.
To allow these bully suppliers to manipulate guilt by telling you that you are the over consumer/ the addicted one, (to oil for example), is sheer folly and it saddens me that you might have fallen for it.
Without dreams and poetry we get nowhere, and the world really does become flat.
Peace and dreams and poetry to you
Theda/Dede
Wow that really struck a nerve.! Of course I don’t disparage poetry and dreams, as someone who both reads and writes poetry, who dreams and encourages others to do the same, and one who has loved Stephen’s poetry from the start.
I don’t know where you live, but I live in the NYC area and live among McMansions occupied by three people, see others driving huge SUV gas guzzlers, people driving when they could be walking or taking public transportation. Consuming far more than we each need. I also work with kids who come from homes that are so poor and lacking that many of them have one meal a day- the one supplied by their school, who own exactly one set off clothes, who resort to stealing sneakers because the media tells them that to be cool they must have the latest and greatest. I work on an NGO Committee for the UN and stand alongside ministers from countries such as Tanzania where there are about 100 mental health professionals for an entire country because they are too poor to afford more.
Today there was a feature article in the NY Times about our lack of self-regulation and the need for excess and immediate gratification.
This is what I am talking about. We can make our own choices. So yes we need poetry, as you may have seen my student “Christopher’s Rap Poem” here on this Blog, which is the result of an angel arising from the ashes.
Thank you for your wish for peace and dreams and poetry- we all need as much as we can get. Peace to you also.
Hi Carol! I live in Seattle, Wa and I know what you mean about living amongst the underoccupied mansions, gas guzzlers, people driving when they could walk, etc, and I totally hear you. I myself have no car by choice, I live in a small one bedroom apartment, am not into having loads of possessions, (I see them as the ultimate delusion.) I like living small and frugally, it’s easy, and non binding! So I think we are really on the same page about this.
Your work sounds fascinating and rewarding and I applaud you for doing what you do.
I work for the State, assisting with federal disability cases, sorting out who is eligible and who isn’t. I see so many people, who are poor, with no healthcare, and with disabilities that prevent them from working. The majority are homeless and they are American citizens.
Like you, I come in contact with poverty and hunger on a daily basis and it frustrates me too, to see so much excess going on at the same time.
Dreams and poetry help me cope. Stephen’s poetry often does this.
Thank you for telling me more about yourself. I think we have alot in common. Very nice to meet you!
Again, Peace to you, and to us all!
Theda/Dede
Hi Theda, Yes, we are definitely on the same page, if on different coasts of the country. It is so frustrating, esp. if one sees this and works with these folks on a daily basis, as you and I both do. We have to find a better way, I especially connect with the kids because these are al of our children, even if we have not personally given birth to them. I really love them, esp. the teenagers with Autism Spectrum Disorder as they are sos genuine and often see more clearly than most of us adults do. Keep up the good work. My job is to make sure these kids don’t end up homeless when they transistion to adulthood. Stephen has provided a wonderful forum for all of us to voice our feelings and observations and enjoy his poetry.