Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken… (Emma)
And then, the question of veracity (in reporting) is also highlighted by Isabel Colegate in her novel News from the City of the Sun. Leading up to the dialogue that follows, two friends have been discussing a book in which some apparently scurrilous events are given as factual, and one character asks another:
“What do you think?”
“My dear, I haven’t the faintest notion. I find I have no idea what anyone is doing at any time unless I actually see them doing it. Even then I’m often not too sure...”
These are very good observations I think, and I find that when I talk to someone who is especially knowledgeable about a particular subject I often have to make considerable adjustments to my ideas — if not abandon some of them altogether. However, this cannot but be a good thing — a well–patented guard against the ossification of thought! And the choice really is ours. We can, I think, quite literally decide to live with a closed mind, and therefore become ‘free’ to embrace Mormonism, creationism, or any other incipient insanity that catches us — like fascinated rabbits — in the headlights of the untruth. It is terrifying to think of what some people carry around in the invisible attics of their minds. Redemption, alas, is comparatively rare, and people who knock on doors to save you from your (presupposed) sins, are themselves often the ones in need of salvation!
It seems hard to discover any quality in human beings that is incorruptible. And yet there is one such. Consider this from Kant’s forbiddingly titled Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals:
There is nothing it is possible to think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without limitation, excepting only a good will. Understanding, wit, the power of judgement, and like talents of the mind, whatever they might be called, or courage, resoluteness, persistence in an intention, as qualities of temperament, are without doubt in some respect to be wished for; but they can also become extremely evil and harmful, if the will that is to make use of these gifts of nature, and whose peculiar constitution is therefore called character, is not good. (Allen W. Wood translation. Yale, 2002)
Patience and perseverance, for example, are usually lauded — but not in instances of criminal planning. To be befriended — by a person of good will — in a difficult period of our lives can result in a ‘rescue’ for which we may remain permanently grateful. However ‘befriendment’ for evil purposes can lead to consequences which need not be rehearsed here (and the word ‘grooming’ has perhaps been irreparably sullied). Likewise, such ‘qualities’ as intelligence, cleverness, inventiveness, originality, indefatigability, etc. can be put to the most appalling usages: willingly and knowingly. And, when we see defendants let out on bail, or being led from a police van into the courtroom, they are often observed trying to shield their faces from the camera with their hands, newspapers, or a jacket pulled over their head. We should be careful not to assume that all such are guilty. However their body language usually suggests an expression of acute shame. Moreover, even if the criminal has been brought up by criminal parents this hardly changes our reaction. It seems, therefore, that we always have a choice as to how we shall act. Or, in other word, we have sufficient free will to avoid actions that will harm others. If this was not the case, then culpability, guilt, shame, and remorse would be mere conceptual husks. They are not: we experience them at a deep level. And this, it seems to me, is the strongest evidence available that we do indeed have free will — to a sufficient degree to lead meaningful lives.
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