The Audacity of Hopefulness

Hi.

Sorry I've been away for a little while.

The other day I was getting dressed,

and I looked down at the books that were

 holding my bedroom door open,

and this one was on top:

Audacity/Wikipedia

Audacity/Amazon

That's right,

it's been holding my door open,

for nearly a year.

And as I saw it there, I felt a pang

of grief and regret,

because I really do believe that Barack Obama is both 

hopeful and audacious,

underneath it all,

and then I wrote the following post:

I want to live in the country where

Barack Obama is president, and nobody

criticizes him for not fixing

in two years

the mess made by all the presidents we've had

for thirty years

(give or take a decade or two)

I want to live in a place where people

are only held accountable for what 

they themselves have done, 

no more, no less,

and where

they are not judged for what they haven't done,

when they haven't finished the job

yet.

I want to live in a land

of reason and clarity

and truth,

not to mention a good sense of humour,

a place where, if someone lies,

their nose turns red,

or their hair falls out,

and everyone immediately knows

they are a liar.

Sometimes I think:

the worst offense that somone can commit

in civil society 

is to lie.

wikipedia

Nietzsche "On Truth & Lying in a Nonmoral Sense

I saw a movie a couple years ago, with Ricky Gervaise in it;

it was called The Invention of Lying.

The friend who was with me really didn't like it;

as many of the critics seem

to have not liked it; but

I did like it.

It treated the whole issue of lying

like a parable, and the end conclusion

appeared to be a few things:

a) people are gullible

b) you can tell people anything, and they'll 

believe you.

Of course, it also begins in a world

where all people are truthful; 

indeed, at the beginning of the film,

no one can even conceive of someone who lies.

And in this world of comical honesty,

a character discovers the power of 

falsehood.  If you live in a world

where people are honest, and you lie, well,

they'll believe you.

The liar in the movie becomes

famous and walthy, espeically when he

lies to his dying mother

and tells here there's a heaven,

when he really has no clue

what comes after this life.

The film really celebrates

the concept of 

"what you don't know won't

hurt you,"  and that's just fine

and dandy, as long as it's something simple

like the tooth fairy.

The film is correct

on many points:

people are fundamentally

gullible and truthful,

so you can indeed lie to them

and gain power of them

to varying degrees.

And for awhile, in the world of lies,

all is fine, while the lie

maintains the impression of a perfect world,

that is,

until the lie is revealed to be a lie.

And then he or she or those

who have been lied to

is shattered,

and may even start lying, too,

and society itself becomes a maze

of mirrors and poses where

pretense is the only way to survive.

And the only way to see the truth,

is by distorting it.

I'm sorry, but I"m here to declare,

we've reached 

- and bypassed -

our critical limit of lying.

Only the truth can set us free now.

mmwindowart

The biggest lie

you can tell

is the lie you tell

to your inner self,

and the lies you tell

to the ones who love you,

and whom you love,

too.

Start by telling the truth to them.