I live on the famous island where there are two villages, one inhabited by people who tell only the truth, and the other inhabited by people who are not like me, who only tell lies. Perhaps I am the only truth-teller living in the village of liars, or perhaps I am lying.
Is it better to be someone who, congenitally, is incapable of telling a lie, or the opposite, someone who is incapable of telling the truth? Both conditions would be burdensome if our responses weren't automatic. We are always running into anthropologists at crossroads who ask us complex conditional questions: “If you were a liar, would you tell me that the village of truth-tellers is to the left?” How is a liar supposed to answer such a question? Does she first say to herself: “I am a liar”? What if liars lie to themselves and don't know they are liars? I always feel like telling those anthropologists to go have sex with themselves, but both liars and truth-tellers on our island are infallibly polite. Still, why do anthropologists think they have the right to force me into convoluted thought? In the end, I might not be a liar, just a poor logician.
The best thing about lying is the simplicity of it. The most effective lies are mingled with truth. The least convincing truths are the ones that contradict what everyone thinks is true. The most powerful lies are the ones people will themselves to believe, because they're afraid of the truth. The truth may set you free, but what will set you free of the truth?
There is not one happy marriage over there in the village of truth-tellers. People tell their spouses: “I felt a strong erotic attraction for somebody else, and even though I didn't give into it, I think you ought to know.” Or else they announce that they did give into the urge. Here among the liars, we constantly tell each other how beautiful and wonderful we all are, and how faithful we are to our lovers, and that makes us feel good, even if we know we are ugly, promiscuous, and smell bad. Our policy regarding erotic attraction for people who are not our spouses is: Don't ask, don't tell the truth.
We are also much more prosperous than the truth-tellers, who are deeply pessimistic and always say, “What's the point of making an effort, when we're all going to die anyway?” Or something of the sort. They don't use money, because they have understood that money is essentially a lie, a representation of specious value. They sometimes attempt to barter: I'll give you some number of eggs for some amount of wheat. But it takes them hours, sometimes days to figure out exactly how much each commodity is worth in terms of the other, in the scrupulous, absolute fairness to which truth-tellers are committed. By the time they figure it out, the eggs are rotten, and the hens have starved. But no one has been cheated!
Unlike the truth-tellers, we do use money. Most of it is counterfeit, but who cares? It works. The truth-tellers don't even have electricity, and we have high speed Internet connections with the outside world, a thriving gambling casino, and off-shore banking. If those idiotic anthropologists were only to walk down the road till they got to the village, they'd see soon enough who was a liar.
You may wonder how it happened that the population of our island became divided as it did. We liars have many contradictory explanations of our origins. Here's one: About three hundred years ago a ship full of European rationalists was wrecked near our island, which was then inhabited only by nubile women – left from an earlier shipwreck of feminist pirates – who were yearning to give birth to the children of Enlightened Europeans. They established a society based on the principles of Voltaire, Hume, Locke, and the rest. Then, about a hundred years ago, a group of missionaries landed on our island. Half of us accepted the revealed religion they were proselytizing, and half of us stuck to our Enlightenment principles.
Since I have told you that I might be a liar, you don't have to believe me, and you can guess who the truth-tellers are. Their village is off to the right.
Truthteller by Jeffrey Green was read by Patsy Prince at the Liars' League Decline & Fall event on Tuessday 8 September at The Wheatsheaf in London
Jeffrey Green is a freelance literary and academic translator. He was born and raised in New York City and has lived in Jerusalem since 1973
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