“Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
From My Childhood
One of the stories I remember from my childhood is The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I am sure you remember the story. A young boy bored perhaps because of having too much idle time, cried out in false alarm, ” a wolf, a wolf is coming.” The townspeople all came to protect him. They discovered there was no wolf just a young boy laughing at all the silly people who heard his cry for help. They acted out of compassion and concern for this one life.
Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay
Later that day, the boy still bored and slightly amused at the effect his words had cried out again, “a wolf, a wolf is coming.” Once again the townspeople came to rescue the young boy. Still no wolf. The boy just laughed. To the young boy, this was fun, this was a game. As you might expect, later that day the boy cried out once again, “a wolf, the wolf is coming.” This time no one responded. The young boy was eaten by a voracious wolf.
The Lesson
My parents would make certain I understood the story. If one tells too many lies, no one believes the lies anymore. They stop caring what words you might be screaming. “Don’t tell lies,” my mother admonished me, “people will stop listening to you if they think you are lying to them.” She continued, “you won’t be trusted if you lie to people. If people can’t trust your word, they will cease to respond to anything you say.”
I have sadly stopped listening to the cries I hear. COVID, election fraud, justice for all, global warming, on and on. I have heard so many cries with so little evidence of a real presence, that I have chosen to stop trusting, I have chosen to stop responding. I simply do not trust them anymore.
I suppose there are cries I have heard that might be authenticated and “proved.” But I just don’t feel like spending the energy to pursue the veracity of the cries I keep hearing. If I tried to uncover the truth of all the cries I hear, I would never have time to live and enjoy those things that still have proven to be true.
Are there things you know to be true, that are not affected by others shouting random words all the while trying to convince you of some horrible hurt about to befall them and by extension to hurt you? Do you trust? Why?
Emerson wrote the quote above decades ago. The health of human society has been being attacked for countless years in countless ways. Every day, the truth falls victim to some little boy’s voice who, for his own pleasure or amusement, cries out to get a reaction. And then, he sits back at laughs at the commotion he has created. The liar cannot remain whole, he commits a sort of suicide every time he attempts to get a reaction from his victims. He has diminished himself and ultimately will suffer the consequences of his behavior.
The Same Lesson Learned
So I keep hearing the cries. The wolves have come but instead of the liar being devoured I have become the victim. I trusted for far too long. If the truth is lost it’s because, like me, we all get too tired to sort out the truth from the lies and the fiction.
You and I are victims of those false cries for help. We run to be of assistance and we are laughed at. When we stop listening to the cries, we are lost. But when we run towards the cries we find a silly little boy, bored and alone. When will he be devoured? When will the lies stop? Is it still our moral obligation to save him?
We are slowing dying as a society because we have stopped demanding the truth. To paraphrase the “motto” of a well know college in New England there is a voice crying in the wilderness. If only we valued the truth. If only we let those telling the lies to be devoured. But then we become as vicious as the little liar. We allow him to suffer a slow death. We allow ourselves to suffer the same little death.
As a person whose purpose is to ease the suffering of others, I am lost in my inability to demand the truth. The little boy sits and laughs at me and cries and cries. And suffering increases. I/we have been overtaken by falsehoods and misrepresentations.
Help me. Help all who mourn the loss we have allowed as truth dies in uncaring shrieks from a little boy. Save him. Save ourselves.
Some of my best days are days in which I struggle. Sometimes the struggle is physical, sometimes spiritual, but always the struggle screws with my understanding of myself and others.
“In quarreling, the truth is always lost.” (Publilius Syrus, first century, B.C.)