Flutterby™! : Secrets are a Captive Country

Secrets Are a Captive Country — My grandfather had never told me about his trip to the Soviet Union in the sixties, but I don’t know why I was surprised. He never told me anything, not even my grandmother’s name.

When someone is forced to repeat an obvious lie, Hannah Arendt observed, even if they don’t believe the lie, through repetition of the lie they submit to the liar. They are forced to choose the world contained by the lie. Self-deception can become a matter of survival. If you are constantly affirming the lie, why not believe it? At least believe it sometimes, or with half of your mind, or because you stop being able to comprehend a world outside of the lie. When do you start to believe that Jazz is dangerous, and that it’s a slippery slope from loving jazz to betraying your family, to betraying your nation, to betraying yourself? Certain lies are exercises in power and social control. What happens when the lie is dismantled? Were the suicides after Khrushchev’s secret speech a reaction to the disclosure of these lies? Was it a question of complicity? Was the horror too much?

Via MeFi