" A Vital Lie


Take stock of self and those around you
and you will hear us talk in precise terms
about ourselves and our surroundings
All the outward appearances,
which would seem to point to our having ideas
on the substance of our inner lives.

But start to explore,
question our ideas and you will find
that we hardly reflect in anyway the reality
to which we appear to refer,
and if you go deeper you will discover
that there is not even an attempt to
adjust our ideas to this actuality.

Quite the contrary:

Through our perceptions
excuses cut off any personal vision of reality
of our very own life,
and the larger world around us.
For life, as designed, is at the start a chaos in which one is easily lost.
The individual suspects this,
but is too frightened at finding themselves face to face
with this bewildering reality,
and try to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy,
where everything is clear to them.
It does not worry him or her that their “ideas” are not true,
authentically theirs
for ideologies are used as trenches
as scarecrows to frighten away natural reality
as barred doors upon perception
while we peer out at existence
through narrow openings inside our closed caverns
in defense of an existence
that is not even our own. "

― Brien Pittman