Mark Twain once quipped that “a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” If he were alive today, I imagine he would update that observation to account for the speed of social media: “A lie can travel around the world sixty-three thousand and seven times before truth has even thought about finding its shoes.”
But no matter its speed, a lie always has the same result. It destroys community. When we use words to deceive, we erode the basic bonds of trust that hold communities together.
That’s one of the reasons I despise much of the rhetoric that bombards us daily. So many words call to us, and some of them are dangerous because they hold no truth. Instead, they seek to deceive us or convince us or manipulate us into believing that they are trustworthy and true when they are anything but that.
While that has always been a part of political culture, and while no party or politician is blameless, the blatant lies told in recent weeks threaten to sever whatever ties still bind us. The non-alternative fact is that we are living in a culture of lies, and it’s time for that to end.[bctt tweet=”The non-alternative fact is that we are living in a culture of lies, and it’s time for that to end.” via=”no”]
That’s why I decided to revisit a book by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre that I first read several years ago, and that I have returned to several times in the years since. Her book is called Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. I first read it, and kept returning to it, because of the first part of its title. I love words and long to care for them. But this time, I returned to McEntyre’s book because of that second part. I live in a culture of lies.
In recent days I have flipped through the first three chapters of Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. Its pages bear the signs of my prior readings, sentences and phrases underlined in black pen, just waiting for me to discover them anew. McEntyre’s case, while always convincing, is now even more compelling in light of the lies so prevalent today.
Comparing language to other shared resources, McEntyre invites her readers to become stewards of words. “Like any other life-sustaining resource,” she writes, “language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded, and filled with artificial stimulants.” She then provides “stewardship strategies” to employ as we care for the words that hold us together.
Three of the stewardship strategies McEntyre commends to would-be caretakers of our language stand above the rest for me today. They suggest a place to begin the work to dismantle our culture of lies.
- Love Words. The proper care of language begins in relishing the pure joy that “the graceful sentence” evokes. As we make our way through life, McEntyre bids us to notice words and phrases that delight us. As we share their beauty with those around us, we somehow connect people to the truest parts of their humanity, and we help them to discover how words have power to touch the heart. Our task, then, is to cherish language “for its beauty, precision, power to enhance understanding, power to name, power to heal. And it means using words as instruments of love.”
- Tell the truth. Reflecting on Emily Dickinson’s admonition to “tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” McEntyre attempts to reframe our understanding of how perspective works. “We have no choice but to tell the truth ‘slant,’” she writes. She goes on to show why we should not equate “slant” with “bias,” arguing that our having a firmly held opinion is the best we can do until some new evidence requires us to modify it. But for that to work, we must view our opinions not as selling points or sticking points or places to stop, but rather as “points of departure from which one takes stock before embarking on further investigation or reflection.” Even then, however, telling the truth won’t always be easy. Among truth’s distinguishing characteristics are its elusiveness, its resistance to institutional control, its tendency to flicker, and the stunning recognition that it doesn’t always “test well.” But in order to dismantle our culture of lies, we must tell the truth.
- Don’t tolerate lies. McEntyre ratchets up her argument here. If we only notice lies but do nothing about them, then we are part of the problem. She notes that we are more than willing to tolerate lies, especially the ones that “comfort, insulate, legitimate, and provide ready excuses for inaction.” But rather than just shrug our shoulders at the volume of lies that assault us, McEntyre calls us to take up arms, to mount a resistance. She writes, “It seems to me that the call to be stewards of words requires of us some willingness to call liars to account—particularly when their lies threaten the welfare of the community.” That last line rings true, because lies are hurting people in our community today. That’s why we simply must hold our politicians to account by “clarifying when there is confusion; naming where there is evasion; correcting where there is error; fine-tuning where there is imprecision; satirizing where there is folly; changing terms when the terms falsify.” Dismantling our culture of lies requires this from us.
So that’s what I’m committing to do: To show my love by for words by using them only as “bearers of truth and as instruments of love;” to tell the truth from where I stand, with as much humility as I can muster as I search for evidence that might require me to reconsider; and to find courage to call out liars by telling them what my counselor once suggested I say when I knew someone was lying to me: “I don’t believe that.” And for the worst liars, I’ll add the final phrase, “And I don’t even believe that you believe that.”
That’s the kind of truth that just might set us free.
Olivia
Thank you John. Wonderful thoughts and words to live by.
John P. Leggett
Thanks, Olivia. I appreciate your taking the time to not only read, but also comment! Thanks for all the words you write and share as well.
Betsy Atkins
I have struggled with a gracious, non-confrontational way to call someone out. Thank you (and Marilyn Chandler McIntyre) for the phrase ‘I don’t believe that’.
John P. Leggett
Thanks, Betsy. Your words mean a great deal. Wish we could all sit down for lunch again!