On Truth...
Truth is Dead….?
Nietzsche once exclaimed: “God is dead!” In his parable of the Madman, he tells the story of a madman who is looking for God. The madman, with his piercing glances, cries out:
"Where has God gone?" he cried.
"I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
More recently, we have also killed the Truth….
Make no mistake: this did not happen abruptly or unexpectedly. It was not a sudden death as a result of a cold and speedy bullet. It was not the sharp blade of a knife that ripped the chest of the Truth. Nor was it a push over the cliff led Truth to fall for their death. Neither was internet the murderer, as some claimed it…
No…
It was a much more sinister and portentous process….
Truth’s death was a slow and painful one of toxins administered over the course of centuries that nibbled away each and every fiber of their being under the guises of philosophy, science, religion, morality and many more… Laid on the Table on Truth
Today, we lament the end of the story of Truth…
No longer can we convince the others of Truth!!!!
No more facts, no more certainties and no more games...
We are now all exposed…
Our baneful affair with power, our naked greed, and our shameless conceit is no longer obscured behind our sham rhetoric of self righteousness.
We have now entered a new era of what Tolstoy called ‘Epidemic suggestion,’ – a kind of mass hypnosis that no force can counter.
This is the moment of ‘perjury & mendacity’…
This is the moment of ‘yes & no,’ ‘past & present,’ ‘here & there and everywhere,’
This is the moment of ‘fantasy and illusion’.
But did Truth really exist?
Perhaps Truth was killed a long-long time ago and we were duped by an imposter.
Perhaps we were fooled by an idea of Truth: created by those who wanted to subdue us, control us and manipulate us.
Perhaps Truth was:
“A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”
On truth and lie in an extra-moral sense,' The Viking Portable Nietzsche, p.46-7, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Perhaps Truth was a coy seductress, luring us into a trap of nonexistent certitudes.
Perhaps, Truth was a reflection of our own soul...
“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
Perhaps, Truth it self was a figment of our imagination in order for us to believe in our own existence…
The truth of Truth no longer matters!!!! In a world without Truth, we have to find a new way of being, a new way of relating and a new ways of creating.
But first, we shall lift a glass, and sing and dance for the passing of Truth, because:
“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” ― Pablo Picasso
