Looking for Truth in a World of Falsehood

At this desperate stage of the 21st century, a mere third of the way through 2022, when we are bedeviled by an ongoing pandemic that appears to have no end other than the harsh likelihood of our destruction, it is increasingly evident that we are thoroughly surrounded by an abundance of lies. Those few of us who are determined to perceive things as they actually are, who prefer the strong light of honesty to the comfortable darkness of deceit, have dedicated our minds to a formidable challenge: looking for truth in a world of falsehood.

Day by day, the tangle of falsehood around us grows taller and thicker. Falsehood from our leaders, falsehood from all outlets of the media, falsehood from wealthy corporations, falsehood from family, friends, and neighbors. Spreading falsehood has become the usual way of life for most people. We have entered a perverse age of collective deception, a degraded period of history in which truthful discourse is feared as a sinister enemy of general prosperity, as a dangerous foe of collective happiness, as something to be disparaged and discouraged.

The rise of brazen falsehood is mainly a result of capitalism's stranglehold on our lives. Capitalism relentlessly promotes lies, because its ugly priorities require that the truth should always be kept hidden from the eyes of those who are subject to capitalism's tyranny. The masses do not value honesty, and so fail to understand that unless they demand the truth in every instance, it will regularly be withheld from them. Thus is falsehood allowed to prevail in all situations, presenting a prospect of despair to anyone who hungers for truth.

A life that is grounded in falsehood is a life of self-delusion. Lies might be appealing in the short term, and might prove useful as a means of furthering oneself in the dirty realm of capitalist ambition, but they inevitably lead to corruption of the soul. Although the full truth of human matters can be difficult to discern, and even more difficult to accept, it is only through actively seeking to uncover the truth of motives and actions that we can defy the rampant evil of falsehood, and in doing so, strive to achieve a more honest purpose for ourselves.