Look. What did you see? Did you witness the existence of something or did something happen? Are you satisfied that it was a fact?
Is the factual perforce the truth? When I see a film of an execution, where the condemned has his hands firmly tied behind his back and he is led by several soldiers to a wooden post and thereupon tied to the post with ropes, and a moment later those soldiers receive orders to raise their weapons and fire and they do so and the victim’s body sags tellingly, have we witnessed a fact? Did what we saw really happen?
Yes, it did. And, generally speaking, our satisfaction on this question suffices for us that a pristine, indisputable truth is equally evident. But what we’ve seen may be a deception. Not that it did not happen! It did! But we err in not deducing the cavernous difference between the truth and the fact!
What did we see in the execution? Punishment? Maybe. Death? Absolutely! Consider however that when we see a specific person, we always see more than that, for a person is many things at once. One ordinary person is for example a woman, an adult, a mother, a daughter, an ex-Olympian athlete, a lawyer, a citizen, a voter, and a taxpayer. (And there is no point here in listing all she is; such a litany only serves to bore the reader.) Importantly, what we saw in the execution but failed to comprehend was that the condemned held additional titles too, as many as the ex-Olympian athlete. Does his acquiring the label ‘condemned criminal’ bring the result that he does not have blood relatives, and thus veracity cannot extend to him the label “brother”? Does his criminal conviction yield for us the conviction that he had no athletic background and thus no “ex-” in that respect, and does his alleged crime mean that he can no longer be “an ex-footballer?” Married and condemned, is he no longer a husband? He can have been many things, of course. And similarly, the execution itself can have been many things at once. If it were one person killed, it can be called singular, or at least sundry; if it occurred at night, it might warrant the designation “evening”, as in “an evening execution;” if the executioners were paid, the execution was an expense; if it set a precedent of some sort, it could earn that noun identity.
If a human being, by the elemental actuality of that biological heritage, always kept some small or large something of dignity or worth, either extant or potential, with him no matter where he went and no matter what he consented to, then this would present an enormous obstacle to the notion that his execution was, as it was fact, an example and attainment of veritable truth. And this is because the dignity of the person is treated precisely the way he himself has been treated. It cannot be otherwise. If the human were different from the housefly, then logically the death of the human would be different than the death of the housefly. And also, the extent of difference between one and the other logically corresponds exactly to the extent of difference between the death of one and the death of the other.
The fact of the execution afforded it no truth at all – unless, of course we agree that the human being and the housefly are identical. We do not. The execution of the human being contained in it the most salient elements of the lie, for the human – with all her aspects and aspirations and rightful claims to dignity – ought never to be the equivalent of an ill-fated housefly. In the execution we saw human life sullied, humaneness and mercy and praiseworthy hope vitiated. Dictionaries are not partisans… we saw violation! The obscenely violative amounts to a subversive untruth: the notion that human dignity is a term without meaning.
Further, humaneness and praiseworthy hope are ideas, are they not? And are they not ideas that abide inherently and most meaningfully in cognition, in human cognition? Do these ideas abide in the human and the stone? In the human and the tree? In the human and the worm? If it is true that killing the mother (by execution or not… it makes no difference) is killing her also as “sister” and “ex-Olympian” and any other identities, then it is certainly true that when anyone is killed his or her ideation is killed too. The deceased are never in the enjoyment of praiseworthy hope. And hence a killing of any human being in any circumstance can never fully free itself from the damning accusation that the killing (again, in an execution or common murder… it makes no difference whatever!) also destroyed the feasible manufacture of hope, the aspiration to dignity.
If I ask you whether human dignity is at all important, your ready answer is, “Yes! Certainly!” And you answer this way because you believe this tersely articulated value esteems you and comports with a compelling rationale for your own continuing welfare. If you’re asked to support in the abstract the proposition that the human person is valueless and unworthy of any consideration whatever, the literal equal of the worm, you find yourself piqued at the very suggestion. And this is because a default valuation of human dignity, and by insinuation the human person (yourself included), is necessary to your own personal expectation of not being sorely transgressed, violated and frustrated in your attempts at happiness and fulfillment.
Ought I extend to you greater regard than the worm, I ask in all seriousness?
If I were to step on you and crush out your life the way the worm’s life is so routinely crushed out, it would count an offense against nature if it were calculated or done in spite. You steadfastly claim that you are more worthy than the worm. And I take you at your word that you are. And importantly, it must be acknowledged that this worthiness you claim cannot have been gained by any merit, no creditable action on your part. No! For if merit were the requirement, you’d be faced as a day-old baby with the impossible task of earning each successive dose of mother’s milk, and how exactly is that ever accomplished? You did not earn (by articulable deed) life by the remotest temporal merit, if the word “earn” is to maintain its meaning. This universe, I feel compelled to inform you, does not allow of such absurdities! You rank above the worm not because of any position you’ve held, nor because of any appreciable contribution you’ve made; no, not because of what magnificent things you’ve done, but because (quite fortunately) your person and mine remain ever integrals of natural, evolutionary, and civilizational coherence. Any claim of status or deservingness above and distinct from that of the worm also gains to the extent that the claimant claims; the continuing lack of claims from worms is predictive of the worms’ indignities.
When you see an execution, or any other violence, you always observe a mendacity: the degradation of human dignity. And, as truth will distinguish itself from its inferior shadow, its semblance, mere verisimilitude, we must task ourselves with the noble object of distinguishing truth from the adroitly clever magic of crudest fact. Every violent act that achieves the base status of being definite and evident cannot so being approach the fine rectitude of that which has not been at all compromised or corrupted. We are in error if we claim that violence carries or brings with it the full import of truth. It doesn’t. Mahatma Gandhi asserted, “God is Truth.” Relevantly then, With what Godliness have we become acquainted in the observance of one of our species reduced to the hapless worm? With what high truth? The American poet Walt Whitman once wrote, “Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.” How long, how thoroughly, how honorably and comfortably has the soul been satisfied in the witness of violence? Violence does proactively disable wantonness and most vulgar indecency, but is it an avowed and well-considered policy decision? Or is it an animal reflex, a responding to emergent circumstances? Violence deceives in pretending to “satisfy the soul;” for the most decent and responsible among us, it satisfies only the direst and most pressing necessity, or it satisfies bitter profligacy. Following this sense, is violence, in its very most persuasive attempted acquittal, itself corroborated and sanctioned, an achievement of mere expediency?
Fear reaches for the gun, and desperation pulls the trigger, while august Truth (as it remains so enduringly with ideals) wafts among indeterminate ether, wanting and looking about, but in an excess predilection of patience, to light.
That something is certain and extant does not raise it to the rarefied air of incorruptible Truth. Ours is a cosmos vast and mysterious but devoid of essential mind. Still, we are blessed with a sentience-allegiance. May we convene in that cradle-sky where hope receives its irreducible nourishment, and yields judicious discernment: let us accept that we are subjects of Truth, and only incidental victims (of fact).
Let us not give ourselves so obligingly to that which attains only to common actuality. The real and the really worthy have no natural relationship. Violence of every sort is detraction. Violence and debasement, willy-nilly causation and tragedy are facts too. The wisest do not give their fullest trust to the merely common and identifiable. This life is, far more often than we may feel comfortable confessing, attempted blitheness and chronic, base vulnerability… a trek across trials, disappointments, degradations and ordeals.
Look, but in civilized discrimination, look askance. We are more than mindless fact; we are people. And we the people are, each of us, a lot of things not especially known or appreciated. Even though we are here discussing ourselves, we must confess too that we are as individuals poorly understood. And how we are understood as individuals is inseparable from what we can expect as a collection of people, as humankind.
We are wise to regard a far superior dignity-reality that does not participate in reduction. Such is Truth. Careful reflection reveals that we are justified in affording less regard to fact, which amounts to an ugly, unworthy doppelganger.
Surely, Truth is our guide, our method, and our hope.
And that’s the Truth.