When can we stop lying to each other? I wonder. Every time I watch the news I wonder. Or look in the mirror, especially then. Because I lie to myself, too often, pure and effective delusion, to keep problems at arms length. We all do, to some extent. Realizing that, it is hard to grasp the full dimension of all the lies, big and small, we tell our fellow human beings. I tend to know others by myself. A horrifying thought.
Without lies, the world would crumble. It seems. Every time I see another embassy on fire, another flag burnt, it seems like it. The whole truth and nothing but the truth survives only with the greatest difficulty. Every compromise is loosing ground for the truth, a way of decorating a cake that is in fact mouldy.
When extremists, bandits and tyrants set the agenda, the rest of the world has to relate to them. We have no choice. We might fight them or bow our necks, but we have to relate to their actions. The diplomats say: “but we have to talk to them, it is the only way to get somewhere. Giving up talking, is giving up.” Diplomats say. They have an awesome profession.
A few years ago, I was on an assignment in Belarus. In Aleksandr Lukasjenkos native town Aleksandria (what else could it be called?), I was put before a tribunal of local officials before we were allowed to make an interview with the village’s head of administration. They asked me, “so what do you think of Belarus politics?” I felt my heart slip out of its normal rhythm and started sweating. Not because I was afraid they would to put me in prison if I told them what I really felt about Belarus politics, but because I wasn’t prepared to lie. So I said, after a pause, a way too long pause, that I did not consider it my job to tell them my opinion of how their country was run, but instead wanted their answers to my questions. Strangely enough, I got away with it, probably because I was the inferior part in their inquiry. They knew it very well, and that simple fact was satisfactory, for them. For me it was a foul experience.
I met a brave man once, in northern Afghanistan, in front of The Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif. I was there, among other things, to ask people what they felt about the cartoons of the Prophet. A Kamikaze assignment. This was in 2006, after the first round of protests and embassy burning had started. Our local fixer and interpreter said diplomatically, “this might go well …”. The Norwegian military commander in the camp outside town asked, “do you want our company and coverage?” I thanked him, but said no. No need to become an even more obvious target than we already were. The interviewing did go well, but it was not a pleasant experience to represent a country where the cartoons had been published. We got straight answers, some wanted to tear our heads off. But the most interesting of all the answers came from a man who felt that the Muslim aggression was not at all in line with the Quran, and that the extremists should be ashamed of themselves. Only afterwards I realized that the man probably represented the vast majority of Muslims we just seldom hear utter a word.
The world would be quite a different place to live in, if it was not the extremists who so often set the agenda. If it was possible to speak together as civilized human beings, without the one part having to feel inferior, or even humiliated or scared. A roleplay where the objective is to achieve peace, or economic advantages, or whatever, in front of a partner who is more concerned about showing sheer muscle strength than willingness to cooperate, results in lies, black and white lies, and the weaker part sinks in its knees and will make hard compromises.
Freedom of speech is not a pleasant thing. A lot of people and cultures regard freedom of speech extremely offensive and impolite. And that is exactly what freedom of speech can be. That is why it is so hard to handle, even for cultures that take it for granted and have it engraved in gold in their constitution. It is unbearable sometimes, to hear the truth. In my own country, Norway, the authorities tried for quite some time to keep secret what politicians and bureaucrats had told the 22 July Commission. Fortunately the control mechanisms functioned, and the files were opened to the public.
Authors, artists, oppositional politicians, journalists and others working in the sphere of expression sometimes become very good at leaving their message between the lines. In the Soviet Union, scriptwriters and directors in film and theatre created something they called “green frogs”. A green frog was a provocative passage deliberately put into the script to deflect the attention of the Special Committee set up to approve pieces of art for political correctness. The green frogs were of course removed immediately, while other parts, the really questionable ones, were approved. What a game! What a brilliant way to tell a story to an intelligent audience. This is also why the public in various parts of the world are experts in reading between the lines. If such readers ever come across a text that spells everything out in capital letters, they would say there is nothing to it. This again, explains why we sometimes meet these overwhelming cultural barriers, why we do not seem to communicate properly. We simply speak different languages, in more than one sense of the word, but that is a different story.
This story is about lies, and why we lie. The safest way, if you are afraid to stick you head out, is obviously to shut up. But for some people that is worse than anything else. Because shutting up creates a tremendous pressure, inside a human being and in the civil society as a whole. In such an environment some always become desperate, so desperate that they sing the wrong tune in church, consciously or unconsciously, they take it all out in bold writing. In places where that is not accepted etiquette, it might end in misery, even in prison, and the rulers of good and evil will spit on the songbirds and pull their feathers out. They will tell the world how offensive these daredevils behave in front of good, honest people. In some cases it seems vague who is actually offending whom. Some would say that taking away the right to sing and speak is also quite offensive. But power usually rules, and life goes on, either with the mouth shut or a society based on lies and secrecy, and intimidating people, is a very effective means of communication.
We live in a part of the world, this northernmost corner of Europe, where the Cold War once embraced everyday life with its lies and distorted images. We learned a lot from the Cold War, first and foremost that you did not mess with authorities that owned the key to the truth, the whole truth. Differing views were equivalent to treason. Things have changed to the better these past twenty years. We have built some very solid ties, across the borders, between individuals and economic structures. There is no reason to start lying again, not now. We have had enough of the secret services and their bullies. We should give them a rest, they are outdated, and let somebody else set the agenda.
