Name Worship

Name Worship and the Truth Teller's Paradox, Part VII

By John Taylor; 16 December, 2005

A lie has long been understood not to be natural or built in deception
but a linguistic ploy only possible for free agents using a full-scale
language. This was laid out as long ago as the 17th century by the
Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius,

"Words, or signs, importing the same meaning as words, are generally
taken for conceptions of the mind, yet it is no lie for any man to
utter a falsehood, which he believes to be true; but the propagation
of a truth, which any one believes to be false, in him amounts to a
lie. There must be in the use of the words therefore an intention to
deceive, in order to constitute a falsehood in the proper and common
acceptation." (On Law of War and Peace)

Lying, then, is an intention to deceive peculiar to those with free
will and the ability to talk. A striped or speckled animal whose skin
covering deceives the eye into thinking that it is a branch or pile of
leaves is not lying in any real sense. Such camouflage is its means of
survival among foreign organisms in an often hostile environment.

Human survival is based upon the opposite of deception, we build up an
artificial environment using language reliably in social interaction.
Truth is both root and fruit, our means of survival both individually
and collectively. In our world, deceptions and intentional ploys are
not survival mechanisms but the reverse, pathology. Aristotle wrote
that, "Falsehood is in itself mean and culpable, and truth noble and
full of praise." (Nic. Ethics, Book 4, Ch. 7) Truth and veracity have
positive worth that has often compared to the nutritive value of food.

"Does not the ear try words, even as the palate tastes its food?" (Job 12:11)

According to this metaphor, mistakes, errors and unintended deceptions
in speech act as bulk in the diet. As modern medicine has discovered,
bulk has no nutritive value in itself but in passing through the
digestive system it helps the body by carrying off its own toxic waste
products. A supposedly optimal diet without bulk leads in time to
morbidity, including cancers of the gut. Similarly, I suppose, a
healthy mind that constantly is sorting out truth from error in the
words it speaks and hears is exercising it faculties, eliminating
prejudices and errors. A healthy soul eliminates error by holding to
divine law, becoming aware mostly by examining its own speech of its
own inadequacy and imperfections, and this carries away sin.

"I hate and abhor lying: but thy law do I love." (Psa 119:163)

Mendacity is harmful, then, because far from carrying away the bulk of
mental misconceptions, it acts as a poison itself. Some poisons kill
immediately while others act slowly, building up toxicity over time.
The decline and perversion of slow poisoning is now called by medical
science an addictive reaction. According to this analogy, a mind
seduced by a slow acting lie or half-truth learns to mistake
withdrawal pains from the lie for error and the false highs of further
poisoning doses for pleasure. Falsity's insidious perverting process
of often pictured in Holy Writ as Satan. The devil,

"...was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth,
because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh
of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." (John 8:44)

An inert chemical can act as a slow poison in the soul but only a
person, depicted as a demon or devil, can symbolize a nefarious human
will. Hence the resonance of the character Satan, father of lies, in
both scripture and literature. A father of lies not only is embroiled
in untruths but like a double agent his will is "turned," it goes over
to the enemy and as it were spies upon and subverts the truth.

Gustave Flaubert depicts what is for me the most memorable example of
the moral decline of lying in his novel "Madame Bovary." Madame Bovary
marries a doctor, a promoter of a surgical technique that turns
semi-disabled patients into complete cripples; his harm, though real
and tragic, is "honest," an unintentional deception. Presumably
medical science learns from such mistakes even if he in his career
never did. Meanwhile only Bovary's reverential love for his wife
sustains him in the face of professional failure. Madame Bovary,
however, is addicted to intentional lies. She lies so much that if she
walks down the north side of the street she later makes it a point to
tell everybody that she walked down the south side of the street. Only
after her death does her grieving husband discover her secret diary
that documents her lifelong lies and infidelities.

The quack-by-mistake Bovary's emotional delicacy results from
ignorance and non-intentional errors in his medical practice but it is
intentional lies that push him over the edge. He is so shocked and
disillusioned by the truth of her falsity and the falsity of her truth
that he eventually commits suicide. A habitual liar's therapeutic
attempt to "get it out of her system" by writing a true diary acts as
a delayed reaction pill, poisoning her husband's shaky illusions.

Flaubert based his novel on the memoirs of a "fallen woman" whom he
had befriended, but when asked upon whom he had modeled this character
he gallantly and not wholly untruthfully replied, "Madame Bovary,
c'est moi." He could as easily have said that she is you too, a
wavering Eve or soul for the Adam that is everyman.

One would think that such an exquisite morality play would have won
acclaim, but quite the reverse. Flaubert was charged and taken to
court for "Madame Bovary" and came within an ace of being prosecuted
for spreading immorality. Clearly, lies had become so widespread in
Napoleon III's France that even morality plays were mistaken for
pornography. Here is some of what Baha'u'llah had to say to this
successor to Napoleon Bonaparte, from the concluding paragraph of His
1867 Tablet to that insincere reformer rightly judged the "first of
the modern dictators."

"We behold the generality of mankind worshipping names and exposing
themselves ... to dire perils in the mere hope of perpetuating their
names, whilst every perceiving soul testifieth that after death one's
name shall avail him nothing except insofar as it beareth a
relationship unto God, the Almighty, the All-Praised. Thus have their
vain imaginings taken hold of them in requital for that which their
hands have wrought. Consider the pettiness of men's minds. They seek
with utmost exertion that which profiteth them not, and yet wert thou
to ask of them: "Is there any advantage in that which ye desire?",
thou wouldst find them sorely perplexed. Were a fair-minded soul to be
found, he would reply: "Nay, by the Lord of the worlds!" Such is the
condition of the people and of that which they possess. Leave them in
their folly and turn thy sight unto God. This is in truth that which
beseemeth thee. Hearken then unto the counsel of thy Lord, and say:
Lauded art Thou, O God of all who are in heaven and on earth!"
(Baha'u'llah, Summons, 1.157, pp. 82-83)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com