Spectacle Excerpt

Migrated from The Writing Spectacle. Originally posted December 14th, 2006.

This excerpt from my first novel dovetails nicely into what I have been blogging, so I thought I would share it. Enjoy.

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“From what I understand, many of you have been waiting for a long time and what you have been waiting for has not been forthcoming. No, I am not simply referring to the comet. What you have been waiting for, and waiting much longer than I’m sure even you realize, is to be told the truth.”

“You have heard what you might call one man’s version of the truth, but what you have never been told is that the truth has no versions. There is only the truth; all else is falsehood.”

“You have been told truth is relative; that truth is dependant on who you are and on what you perceive, but the men who taught you that had reason to keep the truth from you, to keep you from recognizing the truth when you saw it. Those men thought they could bend the truth to suit their purposes and to fit the occasion. What they didn’t tell you and what they never wanted you to find out is the truth once bent is no longer the truth. Truth is not elastic and it is not flexible. It simply is what it is.”

“Throughout your lives and the lives of those before you, you trusted that someone somewhere would tell you the truth. This is perhaps your only mistake, but it was the worst mistake you could have ever made. You made the mistake of giving up your ability to recognize the truth and by doing so gave that responsibility into the hands of someone else, someone you thought knew better than you and would therefore be honest enough to tell you what was true. You made the mistake of thinking those people would have enough respect for the truth, and enough respect for you, to give you the glimpse of reality you no longer wished to discover for yourselves.”

“The instant you ask someone else what he thinks, not as an exchange of ideas but as a way to avoid having to judge for yourself, you have given up your responsibility to recognize the truth. Do it enough times and you give up your ability to know the truth. Once you lose your ability to know the truth, any charlatan has you in their grasp. You only have to look around at the world right now to see the results of that.”