True Lies

“... Don't forget that few people are likely to tell more than a small part of the truth: no one tells much of the truth, let alone the whole truth...When people talk they reveal themselves, whether they’re lying or telling the truth... Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity… ” - Halldor Laxness, in Under The Glacier*

What are we to make of all the things we hear in a day? Things spoken by friends are more easily accepted (even if we understand that they may be less than honest) than that which we hear from strangers. Things spoken (or written) in mass media are generally given little credence at all, regardless of the source. Have we come to a condition of humanity that everything uttered has so little worth that it is essentially meaningless? Orwell's ‘Newspeak’ seems to be the order of the day. This blog itself, of course, is somewhat based on the idea that “It ain't necessarily so”, and that examining things from their antipodes has just as much validity as the thing itself. The suspension of belief, for a short time any way, is the only check we have on ‘Truths’ and ‘Lies’.

*translated by Magnus Magnusson