Lies: The Universal Truth
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
It is so easy to turn a lie into a truth.
If we keep repeating a lie over and over again; eventually it will become true (since we begin to believe in that same lie). We cease knowing which one is which and then…we witness the birth of a whole new truth.
Consensual truth is a fine example of it.
A group of religious people (of any denomination) convenes and discusses several issues. Each party (or individual) offers its opinion, its own interpretation of sacred texts; its own version of the facts and then negotiations commence. After much deliberation, a consensus is reached and the intellectual fruit of their agreement (not necessarily true) is now considered a Truth.
And all members of the congregation are to learn and repeat it as if it were the absolute truth.
Governments gather and decide when the people should spend or save (i.e. they go to the television and repeat n times the same sentence “We are now in a recession!” [People start saving]; “We are now in recovery!” [People start spending]). They even decide when people should globally be concerned with environmental issues or not (ex: intelligence services had satellite images proving that the Arctic had been melting for years, but only now [now that nations want to develop green energies] they reveal these pictures…). Global warming was a “lie” before but now it is surely a universal truth.
Governmental lies can become universal truths, in such a fashion that wrong wars may end up being fought.
Marketing is the biggest lie-turned-into-truth industry in the world.
It decides when people need futile consumption goods that they don’t really need, and then fabricate lies in order to lead consumers to buy superfluous good (the latter, hypnotized by the machine of lies keeps repeating “It’s true; I do need it…I have to buy it!”).
The biggest example of a lie turned into a universal truth is the anti-cellulite creams: Lord Marketing says that creams will fight cellulite, but forgets to mention that for it to work one has to exercise, drink lots of water, eat healthily (McDonald’s, and alike, is the closest friend of peau d’orange [1]) and keep buying anti-cellulite creams for eternity…otherwise “Welcome back, lunar craters!”…
And then we have the most endearing party whose “lies” are a universal truth (in a sense that the people in this category behave the same way all over the world): I am talking about mothers.
When before danger or crises, the first thing mothers will say is “It’s all right! Everything is going to be all right!” (they can be dying with their heads cracked open and still they’ll say this).
Kids see that it is not true; nothing is all right; they even doubt things will ever be all right (specially when moms die) but in that moment, out of love, they take that lie for an absolute truth.
The absolute Universal Truth is: everybody lies.
I’d like to thank Alexys for having suggesting this wonderful theme: you know you rock, girl!
[1] Peau d’orange: cellulite (in French).
Image: The Astronomer (detail) by Johannes Vermeer












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