And so we come to the Tenth Lie that Killed Democracy: The denial of truth. It’s a timely subject— and an enormous one. So enormous in fact that we've decided to divide the chapter into 3 sections, each of which will be released over the course of the week for paid subscribers. For anyone interested in the destruction of truth in our universities, today’s offering is a must read.
Guerre and Shalom is a bargain at just £45/$60 a year. It will get you access to the 4 serialised chapters due to be released this week (3x Ten Lies, 1x Observations from the Kitchen) as well as retrospective access to Daniel Clarke-Serret’s PAX ARABICA. Today the preview before the paywall has been extended to encourage readers to sign up as paid.
CHAPTERS TO DATE (for paid subscribers):
Preface: The Ten Lies that killed Democracy // The First Lie: Liberalism //The Second Lie: Cosmopolitanism // The Third Lie: Progress // The Fourth Lie: Freedom and Liberty // The Fifth Lie: Justice // The Sixth Lie: Open-Mindedness // The Seventh Lie: Equality // The Eighth Lie: Power // The Ninth Lie: Diversity
THE TENTH LIE THAT KILLED DEMOCRACY: The Denial of Truth
by Ashok Panikkar
The Tenth Lie: There is no ONE Truth and all that passes as ‘truth’ is a social or political construct.
Chapter 10, PART 1: PROVING TRUTH
PROVING TRUTH
The Trinity Lyceum Boys School was reputed to be the best school in Kollam, Southern India, and I had the misfortune of studying there for a couple of depressing years from 1971 onwards.
Except for chain-smoking septuagenarian, Mr. Thariyan, who had retired from an elite public school in Singapore, the rest of the teachers were about as intellectually curious as us teenage neanderthals. While Thariyan could bring alive his first-person’s account of the siege of Singapore- and Japan’s sinking of HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales during World War 2- his colleagues might have struggled to even explain the ongoing war to liberate East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
A few weeks into the school year, I had slipped into the kind of stupor that could only be produced by the Indian educational system- or (and this is pure speculation) opium. I was spared a lifetime of cognitive dullness only because the Physics Master taught me an invaluable lesson in rank bad thinking. Yes, you read that right, just like the Victorians (whose educational system we aped) we called our teachers “Master”.
Now don’t get me wrong, bad thinking was not an alien concept to me. Apart from our fists, my friends and I were quite adept at using every logical fallacy known to humankind to score points, silence, and beat up on each other. The architecture of our simple world was built upon hundreds of unthinking assumptions (Of course, now that Venkat is back in the Indian cricket team, we will make mince meat out of the Aussies); misconceptions (India had absolutely no poverty until the British colonized us); gross exaggerations (The Indian HF-24 fighter aircraft is so advanced that each one can shoot dozens of Pakistan’s F-86 Sabres out of the sky); and faulty logic (Mrs. Gandhi cannot lead India in war because women are not fighters). Nor were our elders much better- their reasoning powers were best exemplified by irrefutable logic such as (“Because I told you so”).
But even with such a rich heritage of irrationality, what happened in that physics class was exceptional. Mr. Clement was teaching us about potential and kinetic energy, when Arif, who was neither religious nor studious, asked him, “Master, is God ‘energy’ or ‘matter’?” Mr. Clement, a devout Catholic, should have known that faith-based explorations were best conducted in private with one’s priest- or alone with God. Instead the poor man attempted to publicly reconcile his knowledge of science with his faith in full view of us heathens.
Perhaps he thought he could save some souls. Perhaps he imagined that could teach us about the larger questions of life. Or, as is most likely, for a fleeting and unfortunate moment the poor man had delusions of being more than a test-preparation machine.
In any case, Arif had already derailed the class by asking (what was universally known as) a “deadly” question- the kind that was guaranteed to hijack the class. So much for physics, for the duration of this class we would be discussing metaphysics- a topic that gave us license to engage in flights of exquisite nonsense.
Clement, no longer just a science teacher but a spiritual guide, started explaining how God was everything all at once- matter, energy, and logos. As he got more eloquent and dug himself deeper into the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, the questions kept coming- anything to keep him talking until the bell rang. When there were still fifteen minutes to go- and feeling that the conversation was flagging- Suresh, threw out his favorite Commie trope, “But Master, Marx said religion was nothing more than a comforting myth designed to keep people from questioning authority? What do you think?” Utterly unsuspecting (that’s what pride does to you), Clement put on his best apostolic face. He allowed that this was a natural misconception in a world that had forgotten the word of God. Hinduism and Islam, he averred, might be mythical. But Christianity based as it was on the word of God, as brought to us by his Son, was THE TRUTH.
As soon as the words escaped him, the Master knew that he’d crossed a line. Even in a secular nation, to suggest that India’s two major religions worshipped false gods was to throw a cow’s head into a temple (or if you so wish, a pigs entrails into a mosque). For a Christian to say this in a classroom was nothing short of explosive. It was at best an embarrassing error of judgment or worse a firing offense. But if word of this spilled onto the streets, it might almost certainly have started a violent riot.
Clement, poor man, now needed to desperately claw it back -the minutes were ticking. Now he told us that ALL Gods, not just the Christian one, were real. “Of course they are not mythical figures concocted by over-excited cavemen. And no, the priests didn’t create religion just to fleece believers.” Thankfully for him, his back tracking worked because us heathens were innocent of any political or religious agendas. All we cared about was avoiding homework.
However, Clement’s intellectual jujitsu had stirred some life into my stupor: “But can you PROVE that God exists?”.
