Given title: "Let's stop all this pretence! Let's tell each other the unvarnished truth for a change!"
Little white lies are everywhere. They're so darn tempting that we can't help but incessantly fall prey to their irresistible allure. We never tell Mary that her dress is actually hideous for instance, or that it was her that was completely out of line last weekend. No, instead we choose to coat the truth in a thick lathering of misinformation and deliberate omission; crafting a rich broth of blatant and bubbling mis truths. This is done usually out of a desire to prevent offence and to conform to an imposed societal etiquette; but it's also of vital necessity for a general social cohesion.
Humans are communal creatures. Our durability as a species is a result of us living as a collective unit. It is therefore essential to suppress the volatility that would undoubtedly erupt if humans were to express all of our basal and abrasive ponderings to others. So, it's understandable that evolution would endow us with a sufficient sensitivity to cautiously tread around peoples egos and to comfort them through the flimsy guise of falsehood. However, this inherent and ingrained sense of responsibility to console others by means of deliberate misrepresentation seems to have evolved to an extent that we persistently lie to even ourselves. The most dominant being the pretence of religion.
Humanities most valuable asset is the mind: its capacity and enigma is astounding. Our lumps of grey matter, safely encased within our cranium, allow us to experience overwhelming emotion and curiousity, to cultivate novel and vastly complex ideas, to innovate, to advance and to understand. It also deems us worthy to gift us with one of the most powerful and cutting instruments in our mental toolkit: logic. People use and appreciate the effects if this immaterial implement every single day. Its influence stretches from deciding upon the best way to organise the teacups in your dishwasher to sending astronauts to the faraway reaches of the cosmos. It demands reasoning and evidential support, and because of this, it works. It is the basis of civilisation and it allows the world as we know it to be.Yet, somehow, as soon as religion and mortality are considered, all requirements of logic and standard reasoning go out the window. People immediately discard all semblance of skepticism and rationality when it comes to their own particular brand of fairytale, it seems. Tell someone that an invisible, flying and undetectable squirrel follows you around all day and you'll be met with nothing but ridicule. They'll rightfully demand substantiated proof, and until you comply with sufficient corroboration, they will inevitably continue to laugh and jeer. "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence", they'll proudly recite, and then by the next breath, blindly profess their legalistic loyalty to the one tiny, and just as unfounded, segment of Christianity that they happen to subscribe to by pure chance of birth. It's a dumbfounding contradiction.
So, then why are these fundamental axioms so readily dismissed once religion becomes involved? Why can't we accept the ugly and unvarnished truth, in exchange for a glimpse at the thrilling rawness of reality? To me, the answer is simple. Religion stems from a very primal and influential fear. When brooding over our own mortal predicament, rationalities answer - that your essence fades alongside your palpable self - becomes disconcertingly unappealing. No one wants to hear of dissolving into nothingness. No one wants a void of unending vacuity. This answer, this blunt reality, however unlovely and unromantic, is all logic has to offer on the subject. So people reject this utterly distasteful notion, and instead, allow their own revulsion over the prospect to fully justify its impossibility without indulging in any of the typical routines of reason. Fueled by our own intrinsic abhorrence over our all too delicate existence, we desperately cling to the soothing and whimsical fantasies religion has to offer.Simply put, we lie to ourselves in order to glaze and soften a profoundly unpleasant reality.
However appealing and fanciful this sugar-coated notion may be, it's nothing but a child-like pretence, and frankly, the world deserves better. Is it not enough that we, such a select few and despite such astronomical odds, are the ones who get to appreciate the monumental privilege that it is to simply be? How presumptuous must one be to demand or assume eternity, when so many get only nothingness? This thought obviously isn't of concern for some. Yet there's a definite value, as well as a liberating honesty, in settling with this far from fantastical truth. Realising the fleeting and fragile nature of our glimpse at life, is the only way to truly understand its rarity and significance. Its constantly lingering presence may cast an unwelcome shadow at times, but it's a stark and much needed reminder to truly value our brief witness to the cosmos.
Its time to stop the pretence.
