Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
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February 18, 2025
Tags: Dostoevsky, lies, truth
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February 13, 2025
We live in a world that has facts and lies. The facts can be verified but the lies, whether intentional or not, prove to be lies because they cannot be verified. What does it mean to verify? It means to question the fact, weigh it, turn it upside down, find its source and question why it may be a lie, and if so, who or what the lie would serve. The quality behind this work of verifying is truth which is a quality of knowing or wishing to know. Truth is a term from carpentry where it means to true something by establishing that it is straight and fit for purpose. The world outside of us is fact while truth is the inner quality of being that discerns meaning and value.
There is no human capacity more important than this: the capacity for verifying what is true. Truth knows because the thing that it examines is either clear and straight or it is obscure and crooked. We are born with the capacity for verifying truth. Accepting lies without question because they require less effort and provide more comfort is how truth is lost. Every lie told, every lie lived out, tarnishes the most important of our human abilities.
