‘I seek the truth,’ spoke the liar

Perhaps no one has ever been sufficiently truthful about what ‘truthfulness’ is.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I am a big fat liar. As if proof were needed, there are at least two lies in the previous sentence. Like all of us I have been lying to myself for a long time, probably since I started using language and perhaps before, and so by implication I lie to other people.

The truth is I have not been a seeker of truth for some time and yet even as I began to realise this I continued to pretend I was. This was easier while I believed it since I was able to present it as truth. As this self deception grew more uncomfortable I nonetheless kept it going since, like many seekers of truth, it meant I was joining in.

The most common lie is that which one tells to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A person’s capacity for self deception mainly depends on how much truth a person can live with. Fortunately there are many convincing and palatable ways of supporting such a lie.

Modesty is both believable and culturally acceptable; false modesty perhaps even more so.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

Friedrich Nietzsche

***

I feared being labelled arrogant for no longer seeking. This was true for a while although this fear masked a greater fear (and excitement) that I might become distant from people and my profession.

Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from eyes – and calls it his pride…

Friedrich Nietzsche

Ironically seekers are generally more arrogant than non-seekers, albeit secretly. They present as humble while basking in the reflected glory of their ideals and their identity as modest after the truth.

Caught in a double-bind the incentive to reach their goal is eclipsed by a desire to not give up the reflected glory and remain in the company of fellow seekers.

***

To claim possession of truth (which is itself a lie: truth cannot be privatised) says little about truth and a lot about those who seek or lay claim to it.

Many people claim to be in possession of truth as though truth had taken possession of them which is odd since truth possesses nothing.

Like vampires and evil spirits a lie has no power to possess anything unless it is invited in. The desire for truth is more certain than truth itself making it invulnerable to truth, and truth subject to desire.

Giving up seeking truth has little to do with finding it.

***

Learning the value of solitude is necessary if you want to go beyond seeking.

I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet,

Leonard Cohen

We can only wonder why Hank does not answer, and like Leonard, we might also wonder – since we can only wonder – whether Hank feels lonely, and if so, what is the value of his loneliness.

One man runs to his neighbour [psychotherapist] because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you…

Friedrich Nietzsche

While for many solitude can feel like a prison, for others being in company feels worse. The pressure and desire to join in can over-ride the discomfort and pain of not fitting in, and so the company of people can feel very lonely. Though joining in need not mean fitting in, it does require a certain observance of collective norms, values and beliefs.

I go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody’s cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.

Friedrich Nietzsche

***

I’ve paid the price of solitude, but at last I’m out of debt

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan chose not to live in debt, it would seem he acknowledges an indebtedness to solitude and the importance of being debt free. He does not say what it cost him and how much he paid for it.

Whether Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan or indeed Nietzsche found solitude, or solitude found them, it is hard to imagine their art without it: none of them joined in or followed the crowd.

***

Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character…

Friedrich Nietzsche

Solitude is being on your own with your many selves. In this sense being by yourself in your own company can become a remedy for loneliness.

We neglect ourselves and others when we neglect our solitude and deprive others of their’s. Joining in can often be a form of self neglect.

Psychotherapy is a sort of shared solitude.

***

How from the beginning we have contrived to retain our ignorance . . . in order to enjoy life! And only on this now solid, granite foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so far—the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will: the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but—as its refinement!

Friedrich Nietzsche

An important first step toward re-evaluating the relationship between truth and ignorance is to see that they are not opposed – they are complimentary.

How willing and able are we as psychotherapists to discern our knowledge and truths to be a refinement of our ignorance? I suggest it is incumbent on any psychotherapist to ask themselves this question since many interventions make good use of the will to ignorance.

For example a typical approach some therapists take when working with trauma is to tell the person to keep repeating ‘their’ truth or narrative in the hope that it will help them comes to terms with a trauma. The necessity to convince themselves acknowledges that they do not fully trust their truth as true. Rather than being a demonstration of the power of truth, it demonstrates the force of their will to ignorance and their ability to convince themselves.

The power of truth comes from being a refinement of ignorance.

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you nonetheless tell the truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The conflict between truth and ignorance is contrived, there is no conflict: it is more like a dance, a sort of psychological aikido.

Aikido often looks more like dancing than combat. In aikido there is no attacker or opponent; the person coming at you is called your ‘partner’. You do not resist them, you must (much like dancing as a couple) ‘agree’ with them by joining in the direction of their force and by doing so the conflict is overcome.

***

The will to truth that still seduces us to take so many risks, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers [psychotherapists] so far have spoken with respect: what questions this will to truth has already laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! That is a long story even now—and yet it seems as if it has scarcely begun? Is it any wonder that we should finally become suspicious, lose patience, and turn away impatiently? That we should finally learn from this Sphinx to ask questions, too? Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants “truth”?— Indeed we came to a long halt at the question about the cause of this will—until we finally came to a complete stop before a still more basic question. We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?

Friedrich Nietzsche

It is as though we are locked in a protracted and complicated one player game of “Hide and Seek” with only one outcome.

That truth was never going to overcome ignorance says more about our relationship to truth than truth itself. Truth was hamstrung the moment the Church crowned it as the supreme value. The crown inevitably became a mill-stone not only because truth could not measure up to its own standard, but also because it could not bear the weight of promise placed upon it.

For example, ‘the truth will set you free’ is a religious claim that has crossed over into secular culture. Though demonstrably false, it is a creed people want to believe in; it has even been adopted into mainstream psychotherapy. To base freedom on truth is a form of voluntary slavery.

Rather than trying to resuscitate truth to its imagined former glory, it would be more honest to give up our traditional idealisation and accept its intimate and co-dependant relationship with ignorance. History and the present show us how fighting and arguing over truth has been as futile as it is endless. It is a deflection from acknowledging our indebtedness to ignorance and a way of maintaining what is an artificial conflict. This pretence only serves the ideologies, commerce and psychology that depend upon it.

Psychotherapists could start by asking themselves: what ignorance supports their life and the way they work with people?

The challenge would be to consider what might they have to do, or think to be able to celebrate their will to ignorance.

***

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognise itself; anyone who wants to recognise it has to be a lie.

Franz Kafka

Kafka’s aphorism inverts our thinking and questions the possibility of recognising truth. However it does allow for finding, having and manifesting it, provided we do not recognise it as such. It also questions whether there is anything authentic about the desire to recognise truth.

If ‘the truth will set you free,’ as Christianity maintains, then according to Kafka, any attempt at recognising it is a form of self-incarceration.

If, as Christianity claims ‘God is Truth’, we could say God is for those who do not want to recognise him, in other words; God is for those who are ignorant of him, and want to remain so.

If belief in God requires some recognition of him, then God is for non-believers. And so the God we are worthy of – and is worthy of us – is a God we cannot believe in.

Ironically atheists are more likely to recognise God since they are less likely to want to and more likely to deny it. Unfortunately and interestingly for them, they would no longer be able to trust how they deny his existence.

If ‘Seek and ye shall find,’ is poor biblical advice, then what is the best way to approach God? The answer is not at all; if you want truth, freedom or God, do not seek them. Instead, if God is love; then love, create, become kind and playful – though you may not call this God, you will no longer feel the urge to recognise him.

***

God and truth are for those who have no desire for either. This is consistent with the Book of Genesis, having completed all creation, he rested on the Seventh Day, then sanctified it. Like Hank Williams God apparently wanted to be alone. Might solitude be the greatest gift he (Hank or God) gave himself? Perhaps it is the most precious thing we can learn from God – and give back to him.

If we left God to move freely amongst us without being recognised, the only people that might suffer would be those who feel the need to legitimise their cause, activism, teaching, beliefs, justice, moralism, sexuality, prejudice, desire, hope, war, crusade, charity, hostility, peace, love and kindness.

Given that a priest’s role is, amongst other things, to recognise and spread truth, telling lies is a necessary part of their job. We might wonder what Christianity might have become if priests were able and permitted to say, ‘I cannot recognise truth.’

***

Is not psychotherapy a means and an end toward no longer recognising ourselves?

Once done with seeking and the lie of seeking, the absence of self and truth recognition can come as a relief and joy.

This was the realisation Jesus had on the cross when he said, ‘It is done,’ and was able to no longer recognise God.

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