August 1, 1988
.PP
.na
Man cannot live alove.
Human life is unconditionally dependent on its social context.
To survive, man must sacrifice
to an extent greater or less, both truth and freedom.
The conventional idealization of politics
conceals the fact that life in society
is ultimately incompatible both with truth and with freedom.
This incompatibility is not absolute.
It is a matter of degree.
The more intricate the social structure,
the greater the degree to which truth is compromised
and freedom is abrogated.
.PP
The intricacy of the social structure is probably
a monotonic ascending function of population density.
The degree to which, for any given density of population,
freedom is curtailed in turn reflects its culture,
depending upon the tolerable level of insecurity.
The degree to which truth its compromised
depends on the intelligence of the population.
The need for deception is inversely proportional
to the quality of insight, and this in turn
is related to the ability to understand.
.PP
The legal system is a mirror of the societal ethos.
It is the antithesis both of truth and of freedom.
But since it derives its authority and power
from man's need for freedom and for truth,
its existence is predicated on deception.
.PP
Freedom is properly defined as opportunity to act
according to subjective reason.
Implicit in this definition is the Socratic assumption
that no man would wish to act irrationally,
or stated more positively,
that every man's wish is to act
upon his own interpretation of what is reasonable.
Clearly, the more densely populated the society,
the greater the degree to which
subjective reason is replaced by objective law. 1)
.FS
1) The dictum that obedience to law is a source of freedom,
"Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben."
is a perversion which demonstrates man's ability to adapt
to a hostile environment.
.FE
.PP
Truth is properly defined as the expression
of ones thoughts and feelings
uninhibited by the social consequences of that expression,
these are characteristically referred to as 
ones "true" thoughts and feelings
as distinct from those which are inhibited,
which are presumably the false ones.
Society induces us all to think and to feel alike,
and to the extent that we are unable to participate
in this conceptual and emotional community,
it forces us to become liars.
The closer we live to each other,
the more dependent on each other we become,
and the more important it is to adapt our expression
to the expectation of the neighbors.
The consequence of this adaptation is
that the perceptions, interpretations, views, opinions
which can no longer be expressed, are lost.  They atrophy.
Our minds become that which they are forced to represent.
We believe our own lies.
And then the lies become truth.
Indeed that individual 
is most successful in his career
who is most adept at believing his own untruths.
So seid ihr alle betrogene Betru#ger, hat Lessing gesagt.
.PP
Consider language as the phenomenon 
of one individual transmitting a meaning to a second.
He will chose his words to have a calculated and
predictable meaning to the recipient.
Can these words have a meaning to the recipient
which is identical with that which they have for the speaker?
One might ask, indeed, whether the meaning of a sentence
to the speaker can ever coincide with its meaning to the hearer,
and one might further ask,
why should one not call a speaker who choses his sentences
to have a meaning to the hearer
different from the meaning to himself, a liar.
These circumstances suggest that the truth content
of communication is inversely proportional to the
deliberateness with which it is attempted.
.PP
It is obvious that communication may be classified
into a spectrum of messages.
For some the discrepancy of meaning will be trivial.
For others the discrepancy of meaning will be so great
as to be unsurmountable, precluding the possibility
of conceptual communication.
Untruthfulness arises when the speaker
modifies the message in order to create an illusion.
Commonly the speaker remains unaware of the inadequacy
of his communication and unaware also of his attempts
to circumvent it.
Occasionally, however, the speaker is aware of the inadequacy
and, unwilling to accept a potential failure of communication,
deliberately sends a message which to him is not true.
.PP
A different, and in some ways more productive way
of looking at the distinction between truth and falsehood
is to acknowledge that in many, if not most instances,
the purpose of communication is not to convey to the recipient
the speaker's image of reality,
but to convey to him a directive, an instruction to do
or not to do something.
Human nature being what it is,
such directives may be ineffective
unless they are accompanied by supporting accounts of reality.
And that is where the speaker resorts to lies.
.PP
An alternative interpretation is to the effect
that all objective knowledge,
everything that is taught as "true",
is in fact subjectively false,
but that in the process of learning
it is transformed into a subjective truth of sorts.
.PP
So far as the loss of freedom in society is concerned,
it is clear that men are in competition and are intent
on exploiting or subjugating one another.
Social institutions provide a framework for their interaction.
Society's function is to mitigate,
to buffer that hostility to make feasible the cooperation
which is the source both of security and wealth.
Where men live far apart, and where the distances
between them are not abrogated by powerful techniques
of communication and transportation, 
there is little cooperation, life is poor and inefficient,
and the degree of freedom is great.
Where men live in proximity, and especially where the space
separating them curtailed by powerful techniques
of communication and transportation, 
cooperation flourishes,
food and shelter are abundant and inexpensive,
but the simplest and most natural of activities,
the disposal of garbage, for example,
constitutes a potential aggression against ones neighbor,
laws, rules and regulations are required
to protect men from one another,
and the degree of freedom is small.
.PP
Man is a most adaptable creature
and can accommodate himself to constraints
of all kinds and of all degrees.
The adaptation is virtually painless
when the constraints are imposed or impose themselves gradually.
It is the sudden and unexpected
deprivation of freedom which causes pain.