Note: This piece has won the WYNG Philomathia Student Essay Contest, based on the theme LIGHT. Written in Feburary 2020.
What do you actually mean by ‘society’? It is a concept that solely exists in the mouths of politicians. Nobody cares about the least of their brothers and sisters when they have their own interests at stake. Whenever there are social unrests, people bash the youth for their naïvety and blame the government for being the culprit of everything else. We turn on the television and read the newspaper every day, looking for some particularly wonderful or awful things that happened, but it all comes down to whether it affects us personally or not.
It all started a while ago. People want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We see people joining forces to destroy and cancel their ‘enemies’, we see people in different walks of life gathering around to defend their beliefs, we see a sleeping city slowly awakening. No matter which side you support, there is a will to fight for what you want, what you demand- and make your voice heard among crowds. ‘Social justice warriors’ are seen across all social media platforms, we all want to convince each other what we believe in. Behind every comment, every opinion, is an idea that stands tall. The ‘we’ turn us into society.
We are born to be compelled by the truth. The unseen impulses blur our vision like a blinking light, desperately calling us to come and seek what we want. This is the case for the so-called believers, as all they know is to provide and provide. Do you want ‘evidence’? I will give you evidence. Pictures of the cruel, inhumane officers beating the innocent, videos of a harmless old man being harassed and attacked by a group of violent and ignorant young people, and last but certainly not least, the cold-hearted politicians ignoring everything happening in our society. See? That is the truth! That is what happened! We see these scandals come to light. We are quick to fuel more insults and aggression, yet we offer little reflection and compassion. Words like conscience and morality being thrown around casually, yet nobody shows a basic understanding of respect. We do all that just to prove a point, a point that we see as the undeniable truth.
Look at the photograph. We see half of the image, brutally honest and telling, while the other half is covered in the bleak white of light. We never get to see the other half of the image. We cannot know what is behind the photographer. Seeing is deceiving, and we only see what other people want us to see. There were no such things as fake news after all. There is only the half-truth in news, presented as reality. What about fact-checking? That is just something to convince people that the half-truth is the entire truth when it is remotely not true. We are all blinded by the light like flies, desperately trying to seek the full picture, when the other half-truth was presented right in front of us.
Half-truths never look any better. We first learn this concept from George Orwell’s 1984, as the art of doublespeak. It is the intentionally ambiguous language that makes the truth more tolerable. So we obscure the truth, take the parts we want to believe in and shove it to other people’s faces. Too violent, you say? Touché, that is how the system works. We do not see the full story in newspapers. They present to us the course of events and the aftermath of every sick act psychopaths have done, leaving the people nothing but horror and distraught. They do that in the light of the sales and clicks, to make your blood boil in your veins and believe in the half-truth. Half-truths are the photographs; they show the undeniable events, yet cover up the other parts of reality with a blinding light, making the restless crowd mildly infuriated.
The fact that even media outlets are biased just makes me question more about the state of our society. I am telling you a half-truth. She is telling you the half-truth. There is no actual way for us to learn the true reality out there, who is right and who is wrong. In fact, I know people will be disagreeing with me. Perhaps that is exactly my goal. The allure of half-truths will forever haunt the crowd, for nobody is willing to admit their wrongdoings. There are no truths around here, only half-truths and lies.
I used to know what to believe in. I used to stand in the frontline, shouting out anthems and waving the flags of glory and freedom. I used to mock the naïvety of the younglings, how they strive for their non-existent and impractical hopes for society. I used to sit back and observe the angry men silently, thinking that I was the one with the moral high ground for not taking sides. I believed in everything and nothing until I found out about the half-truth.
I am, by no means, telling you that everything is a lie and that we should have trust issues. I am reminding you that there is no need to seek the truth- simply because there is no such thing as the truth. It is just like the photographs: take half of the ‘truth’ you see with a grain of salt. That is all I ask. We now live in a society that uses opinions beyond our means, we will never know when the full story will finally come to see the light of day. Who cares if the other half of the photograph shows the things you wish not to see? As long as you stay blissfully imaginative, anything could happen on that other side. It is the ambiguous duality of truth that keeps us alive. And that is exactly the half-truth.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The views and opinions expressed in the essay and the speaker have shared do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions held by the author.