Mark Twain (maybe)
Many avoid an unpleasant truth. They don’t like to hear about it, see it, think about it, or believe it. We must not make the mistake of thinking that truth-avoiders are stupid, though it’s ultimately hard to come up with a better name for those who think lies are preferable to truth.
What do people love more than truth? For most, the deepest love is a sense of peace, a degree of prosperity, comforting stability, an absence of confrontation, the feeling that we’re all getting along, and the belief that things are are, and will continue to be, improving. Things of that sort are generally thought to be more attractive than any sheer, unvarnished truth that would disrupt those feelings of comparative contentment. That’s why we don’t hear much, for instance, about invasions of illegals, organized, trained, and armed to subvert our societies and destroy us.
Chesterton once summed up the bizarre fantasies that make many men happy by pointing out that a member of an exclusive London club once described the high point of his day as having “a quiet chop” therein.
Except for the occasional Unibomber or Robinson Crusoe, most of us deal with many other people, with varying degrees of friendliness and co-operation. History’s most complicated means of global production and integration now force people to work with more disparate individuals. We are often separated by faiths, languages, continents, and oceans.
Each of us is a member of several groups. Most of us are in a family group, a work group, a neighbor group, a group of more distant relatives, a church group, a school group, a hobby group, a sports group, a play group, a political group, a social group, a networking group, and any number of associations that reflect our interests.
Most groups gravitate toward a pleasant degree of order and mutual co-operation. They will seek to remove any who are disruptive and uncooperative.
If we are to stand up for truth, we have to be ready to leave, in some degree, any group that might be offended by any truth we tell. We must discipline ourselves to value truth more than harmony. It will harm harmony to say “You are a thief.”, even to someone responsible for finances who’s been sticking fingers in the pie. But, that sort of truth is tolerable.
Groups are especially intolerant of truths that expose the flawed essence of the group. As we see in the Global Warming community, any truths about their great number of lies are viciously denied. Those who tell such truths are attacked with an unwarranted degree of virulence. Their responses to truth do not use greater truths, but insults and threats.
Sometimes, it is better to simply leave such a group and let them continue. Those in such groups would rather that everyone get along peaceably than be divided by someone who persists in telling unpleasant truths. So, in most groups, those most outraged about the lie are the first who are asked to leave.
But, there is an exception to “let’s just get along” in groups of political extremists . They judge each other only in terms of “moral purity”. Moderation becomes the enemy. The most extreme carry the day and continue to do so as the group shrinks. As it gets smaller, its power increases as it becomes more single-minded and fearful.
Among such personalities, not calling out the liar is often a a crime punishable by death. Many revolutionaries who were so moderate as to want to avoid needless death sentences were, themselves, sentenced to death by the Jacobins. Death sentences continue to be imposed by later Communists upon those who are not sufficiently enthusiastic in the search for extremist purity.
All this shows us that there’s something rare about The Roman Catholic Church. It is a group whose members are expected to seek, find, and tell the truth. Catholics are expected to love the truth, and not be bashful about telling it. They (we) suffer permanent punishment for avoiding, hiding, twisting, or ignoring truth. That is why The Church has outlasted so many other organizations.
