‘You Always Get What You Deserve’: Another Blatant Bloody Lie?

Major religious groups (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last week, I wrote a post titled, ‘Work Hard and You’ll Succeed: the Biggest Lie?’ Today, I want to explore, with you, another blatant lie.

We’re told, frequently and with much volume, that we get what we deserve. I think this is an attempt by some to encourage the first lie in the minds of those as yet unschooled in reality. It’s also, of course, a saying completely founded in the religious concepts that underpin the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Their sacred texts explicitly tell followers that their rewards will follow from their actions.

But is it true? Do we, or indeed anyone else, get what we deserve?

Does the innocent child deserve to starve to death by an accident of geographical location? Does the winner of millions on a lottery actually deserve this piece of great fortune? Does the drug baron deserve a life of luxury and ease at the expense of those who suffer and die through his activities? Does the Chairman of a business empire deserve the exorbitant income he awards himself?

There are millions more examples of people receiving things they don’t deserve. In fact, I’d say that more people get what they don’t deserve than get what they do. In fact, I can think of very few people I know who have actually been given what they deserved.

I hear those of a religious mind-set yelling that we get our real rewards in heaven, paradise, or whatever other presumed afterlife they believe in. But such destinations are pure speculation. There’s no way of knowing whether they even exist except by taking that final step to enter them. By then it’s too late to discover that all your effort, good, bad or indifferent, has, in fact, resulted in you reaching the same end as all living things on death: i.e. the recycling of your components. If there is an afterlife, and it’s something we can never know since no one has ever returned with a reliable report, then surely the creator of such a splendid reward system would want us to be certain?

There’s little point in any deity permitting us to have doubts about such things, since these are supposed to be the very motivations that make us do the bidding of that deity. Yet the tales that are sold by the various religions are so different and contradictory. Surely any deity worthy of the name would at least remove the elements of doubt and dispute and provide a means whereby we could actually experience such rich rewards? Nothing else makes sense.

Of course, I understand that many are now yelling at me that I have to have faith. I’m sorry, but faith in something for which there is no evidence, let alone proof, strikes me as little short of imbecility. Does anybody seriously believe in fairies, a flat Earth, that Mars is inhabited by little green men or any one of thousands of such tales? We’ve dismissed the myths of ancient times, the tales of Zeus and his clan, Odin and his cohorts, Ra and his comrades, as early attempts to explain what was then inexplicable. A similar fate is already undermining current deities as reason and rational thought supersede superstition and folklore.

It isn’t that I deny absolutely the possibility of religious dogma having a basis in truth; it’s that I see such division in interpretation and I don’t believe it can be proven. The very existence of God is a matter we, as humans, will probably never be able to determine one way or another. If such a power actually exists, it must, by its very nature, be so far outside our experience and knowledge as to be incomprehensible. Any attempt to define such a power must inevitably diminish any reality it might possess. So, I take the only sane and reasonable attitude possible: I can’t know, which is why I style myself agnostic.

I’d like to say, ‘religious considerations aside’ and give examples of my argument on that basis but, unfortunately, the world in which we live is so deeply imbued in religious foundation that it’s impossible to escape its influence.  

But I will set a challenge.

Can anyone, without citing religious concepts, please provide more examples of people actually getting what they deserve than those who most clearly do not deserve what they get? I’m open-minded enough to be converted to a different view, if I can be given evidence that ‘just deserts’ is something more than a meaningless lie disguised as truth by those with vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Go ahead; change my mind.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Fable/truth

Fable/truth – antonyms.

Fable: noun - a fictional narrative or statement; a myth or legend; a fiction devised to deceive; a ridiculous or dishonest story; idle talk; something falsely claimed to exist, or not existing outside legend; a short story with animals as characters conveying a moral; someone or something that has become proverbial.

Truth: noun - faithfulness, loyalty, constancy; trust, confidence; belief, a creed; disposition to speak or act truly or sincerely; truthfulness, sincerity; fact, facts; the matter or circumstance as it really exists; the real thing, as opposed to a representation or imitation; a Religious belief or doctrine held to be true or orthodox; orthodoxy; conduct in accord with a divine standard; spirituality of life and behaviour; what is true or real; reality; a true statement; something held or accepted as true; a fixed or established principle; conformity with fact; genuineness; authenticity; accuracy of representation in art or literature; lifelike quality; in Architecture, without pretence or imitation; conformity with a standard, pattern, or rule; accuracy, precision, correctness.

'Most of the stories and reports concerning religious entities are fables; that these myths and legends have long been mistaken for truths is a matter for great concern amongst those who understand the value of honesty.'

'The behaviour and values of the vast majority of politicians, in particular the leaders in that field, demonstrate that they have no understanding of the meaning of truth. Like so many journalists, they mistake opinion for fact and proceed as though their particular beliefs about social matters equal truths, when, in most cases they represent only their own narrow and often distorted views of reality.'

2/12/1697 - St Paul's Cathedral was opened in London
2/12/1755 - The second Eddystone Lighthouse was destroyed by fire.

Pic:  Barmouth beach, Dorset.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude: noun - apparently true or real, resemblance to truth, reality, or fact; realistic quality, probability; a statement  that has the mere appearance or show of being true or factual, an apparent truth.

‘Most writers rely on verisimilitude to draw their readers into the fictional world of their novels, hoping that their suspension of disbelief will carry them through the events of the book.’

The classical, literary notion of verisimilitude focusses on the role of the reader engaging with the fictional work of art. The novel should offer a pleasurable experience to the reader by facilitating the reader’s willingness to suspend disbelief. Verisimilitude is the means of achieving this mindset. To promote the willing suspension of disbelief, fiction needs to be credible. Something that’s physically possible in the worldview of the reader can be defined as credible. Through verisimilitude, the reader can glean truth even in fiction because it reflects realistic aspects of life.

Pic: Humber estuary at Hessle, East Yorkshire.

To Tell the Truth, or Alter It?

Image via CrunchBase

As fiction writers, we often take factual situations and even people as the basis for our stories. To what extent is it valid and/or morally defensible to pass off an altered factual account as fiction? I was prompted to ask this question when one of my writing friends, Patricia Love, invited me to a LinkedIn discussion forum as follows: Has anyone ever written a piece of fiction based on a public or historical event, or a piece of news that required some investigative reporting?

(Some areas of interest are whether writers find it challenging to present a narrative that is reliable, yet subtly subjective.) You might wish to follow the link and join in the discussion; I have.

But, back to my question. Many books have been written as fictionalised versions of a factual situation, or thinly disguised portrayals of real people. My interest is in whether such conversion is right; morally, artistically and socially. We live in a world where it is now possible to present entirely fictional information as fact, whether in written, photographic or film form. In fact, due to advances in the CGI process, it is becoming almost impossible to tell the real from the manufactured in film nowadays. The amalgam of journalism with online mechanisms makes the reporting of items, once considered as 'news', open to all manner of distortion, plagiarism and Chinese whispers (my apologies to Oriental friends). So that we, as the consumers of the news, are no longer able to determine whether what we are being shown, told, informed about, is real or merely the workings of some fevered journalistic brain.

I recognise that we are far too far down the road of technology to go back to the days of newsprint and lead type. Though there is no real evidence that news presented in those 'good old days' was either neutral or factually accurate, of course. But we do need to be aware that the world we now inhabit allows ideas, opinions, propaganda and dogma to be presented as truth, and that this 'truth' is then abused by people in positions of power.

Is there anything we can do, as citizens intent on discovering the reality behind a given news story, to learn what is true and what is false? Short of examining the issue from a number of different and disparate viewpoints, we are unable to sort the chaff from the wheat.

It is for this reason that organisations such as the BBC World Service, still a well-respected purveyor of news over the globe, must continue to be strictly governed to prevent both deliberate and accidental bias or distortion. Doubtless, there are other international news organisations that are currently equally trusted. We lose these organs of truth at our peril. For, without them, we dive steeply into the world of those newsrags that sell lies, mistruths, legends and myths (urban or otherwise) as truth entirely from a profit motive. Under such a regime, we will find ourselves incapable of trusting any information gained and will become unable to form informed opinions and make important choices on all manner of subjects.

Which takes me back to the fiction question. Is it right to take real situations and people and turn them into fiction? Or, does this practice encourage the use of fiction in real journalism? This is an invitation to discuss and put forward points of view, so, please, let's have them.