Find your truth
If there is a beautiful illustration of tyranny in the face of mass indoctrination of a people in some form of dogmatic truth, it would be Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag archipelago, that talks about the communist experiment in Russia.
As Russia was transforming its society under the communist idea of having the means of production owned collectively. It had forgotten the fact that the ones with the means would not give it up easily, and therefore force had to be used. Russia, therefore, seized businesses and farmland from their owners, this was just the start of something unseen in the world. Later, millions died in various forms of atrocities. Yet, the communist ideology was alive and well, spreading throughout the world. With the bold ideas it put forth it hid the masses that died like flies with no pity or human dignity. Prison camps for the peasants who owned the land that was seized, to critics of communism. More were just casualties of a blind idea that starved them for the farmers were in prisons or left out in the snowy deserts of Russia to die and shot when they tried to escape. This is the human evil that lurks in society, in the heart of every individual, for those that acted out these atrocities were human, like you and me. Sitting waiting for a form of truth to aspire to a promised higher ideal, without reflection of the consequences.
The thing with truth is that none is always ultimate, and any that puts forth itself as being the ultimate one needs more scrutiny. For it would be catastrophic to take on something that would be proven false at a later time, having reared enough hatred and dead bodies in its time. Looking at human history there is enough of human tragedies in the claims of truths that only drove us further away from having a normal society. Since we’re a unique being in terms of the terrible things we are able to do. Due to the nature of having psyches that are bottomless, as Carl Jung pointed out, ‘The roots of the human soul grow the way down to hell’. Therefore, we need to be cautious of our psyches, and the various forms of evil that lurk within it waiting to be stirred brought to life by a malformed ideal.
Something happens in our attempt to adhere to a social force that puts forth a truth we ascribe to. We create social forces, to educate us on the world from the institutions that aspire to make us productive members of society to our religions that serve to guide us through this life and an uncertain one after. We find comfort in our formed ideologies that we never question the cost of the utopian world we may currently inhabit, or are aspiring to, detached from those who might not ascribe to your ideals or just the complex nature of human societies. For it's presumptuous to think that the entire collective was regarded, for there is always an us vs them. Whether it’s the rich vs poor, educated vs non-educated or believers vs sinners. These groupings are used to explain all those that suffer in the utopia.
This makes one wonder, what happens when we can stand up to social forces? When the individual being served by them is no longer able to stand up in the face of an ideology that promises salvation, on the blood of others? Because, if we choose to have a sense of meaning and interpretations of our existence, it shouldn’t be dogmatic and devoid of individual voices, unable to transform under new knowledge without any form of reflection and question on its nature. Since all social forces need its members to act out their ideas. It is the corruption of the individual, to accept without question. That evil prevails. What then happens to individuals who cease to tell themselves lies that they know they shouldn’t act out?
With a consensus of action on dissidents and a lack of formal ways of dispute, it is imperative that an individual stick to the social script on the fear of being outcasted and not regarded as part of the collective. Since the problem with dogmatic truths is that they provide its adherents with justifications and excuses for their actions.
‘Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and other’s eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors’ — Solzhenitsyn.
The proper way forward for the redemption of such groups and mankind as a whole is for the redemption of each individual. For as Solzhenitsyn further pointed out,
‘It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrain it within each person’.
This can only occur in adherence to the truth and courage in the face of being, take on your onslaught and face on the bludgeoning’s of life for that is how we find meaning that will sustain you in life, and the patterns that will redeem the world. For life is a very difficult business it’s fatal, full of suffering, betrayal and malevolence, nothing about it is trivial. Therefore, you need to develop a relationship with something that is profound, and what can be more profound than the truth. When you decide to believe this you are taking on an existential risk, an act of faith, take on the truth and look for that divinity within your soul and strive to live in a manner devoid of that which isn’t worthy of that goal die, and that might be everything that you are. The alternative is the hell that we have managed to produce around us with some expertise.
‘Let your credo be this: let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But, not through me’
