This concludes the series of posts on Václav Havel’s consequential 1978 essay.
We have seen that in a totalitarian or “post-totalitarian” system, it is relatively easy for most people to conform to what those in power require of them.
Havel uses the example of a sign that private citizens are required to post every day. Even though they may not agree with or support the sentiment proclaimed by the sign, they nevertheless post it because they do not want to make waves, or they do not want to offend others, or they need their livelihood, or simply because “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient.”
Submission to lies goes to the point where millions are controlled by an ideology which they have accepted because it provides an explanation for or a “harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.”
So, they continue to post the sign knowing that between the ideology and the reality there is “a yawning abyss”. Furthermore, they cannot tolerate anyone who questions or denies the system or the ideology that undergirds it. To question or deny will cause the entire edifice to come tumbling down.
And so, they prefer to live within a lie; a life permeated with hypocrisy and falsehoods. It is a different sort of quiet desperation than suggested by Thoreau, but it is a desperation nonetheless.
And yet there remain many who yearn to live free and to walk in the Truth. They know — at least inchoately — that Truth and Liberty are integral.
But how can they walk in Truth if the entire ideology, narrative, and means of communications are consubstantial with the power structures that possess and enforce the system?
Well, truth is their power and that is what will enable them to walk as free men and women, albeit not necessarily without a price.
Havel observes that this weapon — Truth — is unique because it is in the breast of everyone, including those in power. A quick test of this is to simply tell the truth to anyone who would rather continue to walk in lies. The thoughtful, inquisitive response is rare. The usual reaction is mockery, shunning, denunciation, anger, even violence. They react thusly because they sense, correctly, that the lie they have chosen to live under is threatened.
And, since Truth also resides in the hearts of the power structure, when you invoke it, you strike at a critical center of lies.
I would urge you to parcel out the time to read the essay completely as Havel develops these thoughts much further than the woefully incomplete summaries I am able to give it here.
We will conclude this series of posts with something of a test. I will list several statements of fact regarding that which has consumed most of the “Free World” for the past 21 months. I will not develop these statements, but I can assure you that they are documented by published research and studies and sources: official and unofficial; professional and amateur; scholarly and nonacademic.
The purpose in listing the following is to enable each of us to examine our reactions with honesty:
Deaths by age: Covid cumulative vs. car accidents in one year (2019):
Ages 1-4: 71 vs 435
Ages 5-14: 202 vs 847
Ages 15-24: 1,965 vs 6,031
Mortality rates:
Ebola: 70%, all ages
Smallpox: 30%, all ages
The Great Influenza (“Spanish flu”): 10% – 20%, all ages
Covid: .05% – .01%, depending on age
Vaccine protection duration
Tetanus and diphtheria — Booster after 10 years
Measles and rubella — Life
Hepatitis A — 20 years or more
Hepatitis B — 30 years or more
Covid — A fraction of the above, depending on source
Danish randomized control trial on masks: “… masks did not reduce infection rate…”
CDC definitions have changed:
Vaccines (changed 4 times since 2012; twice in 2021)
Covid Deaths
Gain of function
Highest vaccination rates have highest case rates:
Countries
U. S. States
Covid deaths include:
Murder suicide in Grand County, Colorado
Motorcycle fatality in Travis County, Texas
Many more such examples throughout the country
Do not take my word for the above; look them up for yourselves (but do not use Google. Duckduckgo will work). If you find a gross error, please advise (rmbarnesr@gmail.com) and I will check and happily correct if proved wrong.
However, if you find them to be true, then determine to live within the Truth. Say what you really think. “Express solidarity with those whom [your] conscience commands you to support.”
“Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.”
