Walter Mosley (3 page)

Our best students, most of them, are limited by our own failed knowledge of how the world works and what is possible.

Passing a test in math does not make or define a mathematician. Reciting a passage of Aristotle does not make a philosopher. Of course students have to know certain facts and be able to work inside the logic of their chosen fields of study. But at the same time we, and they, must remember that Einstein had weaker math skills than most of the prominent physicists of his day. This lack did not keep him from being, arguably, the world's greatest physicist so far.

The question is, Does an education today allow every student to become the best he or she can be? The answer, I believe, is an unequivocal no. Teachers can fail. Parents can fail. On a broader plane, teachers and parents can be average or mediocre. But children are all and only the potentials for beauty, growth, and genius. They are not solitary receptacles of learning or cogs in the
manipulation of knowledge. They are a whole nation waiting to blossom and come together to build upon each other in ways that we have never imagined.

 

It is only when we have mapped out the education we feel is necessary for our children as they head into this large and dangerous new century that we will know what it is we lack. A true knowledge and acceptance of one's deficiencies have a greater impact than any talent, test score, or excellent grade. Socrates realized that he was the smartest man in Athens because he knew his deficiencies and limitations, his ignorance.

We will increase our knowledge pool when we allow our children to rise above the little we know, our mundane understanding of possibility.

Our contribution to the new global dialogue will come through the mouths and ears of our children who—no longer competing against each other and us, nor hampered by the blinders of ignorance and functional illiteracy—will speak in a global language separate from the millennium we are leaving behind, a millennium that witnessed the Black Death, the Holocaust, slavery, and rampant unchecked Europeanized imperialism.

A
t the turn of the century I was asked to write a piece for presentation in London that told how I saw the coming of the new millennium. I decided to take on that job by looking at the past we seemed to want to escape so badly. A monograph came out of the talk called
Workin' on the Chain Gang: Throwing Off the Dead Hand of History
. I tried, in that first attempt at putting down my political impressions, to cover all the ills we were dragging along with us across a false notion of the border of time. I was satisfied with the book though it has its limitations and is already dated in many ways. I am happy to leave
most of that monograph behind me. There is little in it that I want to repeat here—except for one idea.

This solitary notion is that it is the responsibility of each and every person in the nation to tell the truth at least once a day. This truth may be repeated but only if it falls upon ears that have not heard it from you before.

We live within an intricately woven fabric of lies. We lie about our children, our sexuality, our loves (and hates), our job histories, educations, experiences, our age. We lie to absolutely everyone, even, and most consistently, to ourselves.

We lie to our children, and our government lies to us. Advertisers have transformed the telling of lies to an art form. Historians fabricate with confidence and impunity. We tell lies and then, when we are found out, we lie about our deceits.
Yes, I did say that but I meant something quite different.
Our clothes lie about our bodies and our teeth lie about our smiles. We deny our actions even as we commit them.

The reasons for the war we are fighting in Iraq are based on lies. Our banks, our insurance and investment companies all lied about our money. Our religious and political leaders lie about their private lives with almost predictable regularity. Defendants in court prevaricate about their actions, and prosecutors twist the truth until it is worse than any falsehood.

Very few honestly believe what political candidates promise while running for office—we expect them to lie.

We expect to be lied to in almost every aspect of our lives; this fact is both a travesty and a tragedy because it opens the door for us to lie to ourselves. And if we accept that this notion of falsehood is at our very core, how can anyone trust us, how can we be trustworthy members of society? If we have accepted dishonesty into our hearts, have we not become the Prime Liars?

And let's not forget: How can a society be true to its destiny if even its execution of basic constitutional law is a perversion of itself?

 

We must pull away from the tide of lies and spread the truth (as well as we know it) to everyone who will listen. This action is essential if we are to begin to come to terms with each other. A common language arises not only from a proper education but also from pure expression and the desire not to hide.

On the other hand, truth can be a hard taskmaster. Its telling may well put the speaker into jeopardy. If you speak out against a popular war or a belief about sexual acts that are unacceptable to the culture,
if you no longer love your spouse or think that the leader of your group, organization, or office is behaving wrongly, you may very well be in for challenging times. This truth might set you free in an empty elevator shaft or send you careening off the side of a mountain.

But if there is no risk there is little possibility for gain.

Putting the antithesis and thesis together in this manner I believe that there might be a way for us to come to truth in our lives without destroying the little we have been given to survive on. That's why I suggest telling the truth only once every day. It could be a personal belief or conviction, an experience, an untold secret confided by a now departed relative, a desire, a medical condition, an addiction, even an admiration that you've felt but never expressed. Maybe you believe in the death penalty, or not; maybe you believe that God guides your hand or that your actions are governed by the economic infrastructure—it doesn't matter what you believe, your truth will certainly conflict with someone else's notion of reality. This is why we need to speak out. The truth we tell is not an end in itself. Speaking out will spark dialogue, and dialogue will rend the fabric of lies that cocoon us, the fallacies we live by but do not believe in.

Maybe you were the victim of a crime; maybe a perpetrator. Every day you might look out the window at a branch, noticing how it changes with the seasons and years. Maybe your eyesight is going but at the same time the acuity of your perceptions is increasing; maybe you have never experienced an orgasm. Truth is the grist for learning in adults and the adult world. If we all share what we know, what we believe, then we will change the world.

 

Lies promote darkness and injustice. This is why we live in a world that is so convoluted, why most of the only truth we hear is from TV sitcoms and cartoons, presented thus so that we can
laugh it off
.

The first handmaiden of this darkness is Silence; that which goes unsaid, that which is kept secret, and the real story that goes untold—all these are our enemies.

 

It is worthwhile for a moment to discuss the methodology of telling the truth each day. You might want to approach this exercise from different angles and trajectories.

Certainly you want to keep some kind of journal of your truths—a list in a password-protected file on your computer or a slip of paper that you carry around with you. There are a few reasons you might want to record these truths:

Of course, there is a certain danger in just writing down a truth. What if someone finds it? How will you feel having broached a subject that rattles you to your core? Feeling this threat is a marker for value in truth-telling.

 

On the other hand, keeping a journal of what you believe without bringing it into the world is akin to keeping silent. You have to speak out one day. You can start by talking to close friends and absolute strangers—
friends because real friends will want to hear what you have to say and strangers because they have little power over your life. You can confide in a good friend about feelings that have festered in you but you have never voiced. And you can, for instance, tell a mechanic you never met before that you have always felt un-mechanical but believe that you really should know how the world works. The admission of ignorance is the first step toward understanding.

There is no truth too small.

The simple expectation that you have to say something once a day will have a great impact on your life. It will bring you into the world in a way that once seemed impossible. Every day will be an exploration into new territory. And, as the years pass, there is the possibility that a new person will emerge in you—a person you've always known about but have never met, a person you feel very comfortable with, a good friend you can trust to tell the truth.

As time goes by and you become comfortable with the truths in your life, you might want to start experimenting with how to express these newfound treasures in your heart and mind. Maybe you'll rent a billboard or take out an ad in the newspaper. Maybe you'll start a blog where you slowly expose the list that you've kept for so long in your wallet.

But even as I say this I am reminded that telling the truth is first and foremost an interpersonal enterprise. It is always best to meet with other people face to face and see how your reality reflects in their eyes.

 

The last element of this step is its antithesis—exploring the lies we tell every day. Each time you are about to lie, think about your action. Consider the message you are sending out into the world, the possible ramifications. Often you will go ahead with the fabrication, certain in your heart that what you are about to say will be for the best. But there will come an existential moment when you are aware of who you are and what you become when you spread your lies. This is a transitional moment, a potential epiphany. At this point you will begin to build the character and the conscience of a free citizen—a person who might even be able to rise above the rat maze of her or his life and see the true direction to follow.

I
n the spirit of speaking of the truth: My awe of the power of the economic infrastructure causes me to believe that, as much as any other factor, our psyches are formed by our economic and technological interactions. We are, in part, defined by how we are organized inside, and against the underbelly of, the economic system.

The undereducated, impoverished worker who is destined to swing a sledgehammer, either on a construction site or on a chain gang, has a role and an identity that he must accept in order to fit in this world. In the same way, a Harvard business school graduate has a path set out for her. Most of us follow our paths
with few questions. We even look forward, with dread or elation, to the milestones along the way.

The
fabric of lies
I referred to in the third step of this rehabilitation essay comes into play in the way in which classes are defined and how they see themselves.

The lower classes (i.e., sledgehammer swingers) are almost at the very bottom of the scale. They have the least influence and the lowest incomes. They live on the border of poverty and crime and are served last at the table. These are poor people. They do much of the most important labor in this world. They fill out the armed forces and police departments, accept the greatest levels of unemployment, do the heavy lifting, and keep the economy flowing in an upward trajectory. In almost all cases these people do not have enough money to afford comfortable lives. They go deeply into debt, which means that, as Tennessee Ernie Ford has told us,
they owe their souls to the company store
.

Some members of the lower (sometimes called working) classes become supervisors and managers, scraping out a little better living than those they lead. But these people also live near the edge of poverty, dreading the pink slip just as much as do all the others in the factories and warehouse-like offices.

Past the working class and working poor we have the beginnings of the middle classes: storekeepers and
CPAs, investment analysts and real estate investors, local bank managers and some artists, even some drug dealers, pimps, and illegal gamblers. The middle classes are the furnishing for the upper-middle classes and the wealthy; they are the flagstones and garden chairs, the one-night stands and yes-men. They, the middle classes, have a blue ticket that allows them to sit in the reserved seats at the back of the auditorium. This ticket also allows them to go back to the buffet table multiple (though not infinite) times. They are above the salt but nowhere near the head of the table. These people own the mortgage on an impressive home and have probably managed to finance a summer dwelling as well. They have all the accoutrements of wealth without much of a bank account to back it up.

After the middle and upper-middle classes we find the rich. These individuals own a great deal of the world we live in. They own the mineral rights on government lands, skyscrapers that house the corporations that govern most of our material interactions, vast tracts of empty land, and houses by the score. The rich don't have to work in the way that the classes below them do. Their money buys huge diamonds (but not diamond mines), extraordinary educations, and entrée into rooms that lesser class members don't even know exist.