The Muse # 68 wild ducks ~ and the price of truth

The Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote several plays about the price of truth. One of them is called The Wild Duck.

The wild duck in the play has been injured by the villain, a man of high society in a small town. He lives the highlife but harbors the secrets of his dirty deed of years ago, for which his friend and his friend’s family pay each and every day. Without his knowledge, his friend, the betrayed, has taken on caring for the injured bird. However, when the son of the villain takes on the role of a truth-monger, it becomes clear that the familiar pain of unseemly lies has become more comfortable and sustainable than the truth.

What is the price of truth? Where is the line in the sand? What is the price of comfort?

Like most of Ibsen’s plays, this one deals with both interpersonal and social dynamics of big egos faltering as they face, or don’t face, the truth. Their lives become a struggle to maintain their identity against the fragility of their own human psyche, or that of others. The conflicts result in dirty laundry being aired in the most rigid and presumably proper sorts of families and circumstances. The battle to maintain outward appearances sucks the life right out of people. Mind you: Norway is no fool for happy endings. Up there in the north-country, reality bites colder than the gale of the North Sea.

The weight of social mediocrity and the personal cost that comes with putting self-righteousness above righteousness; social dogma above mercy and humanity itself, are topics that are unearthed and dissected in most of Ibsen’s plays.

On the backdrop of the current debate of torture and truth, security versus freedom and the voice or tune of patriotism, I wonder what kind of play Ibsen would write if he lived in America today. What is the price of truth? What is the cost of American freedom and the brand of integrity in American democracy? What is the proper tit for tat?

Does government and government officials answer to a different truth than we do as individuals? How powerful is the law, and how good is it at judging truth?

Then again, Ibsen, may have chosen the social milieu of the armed forces in Baghdad and looked under the surface of bravery and the price of bravado, exploring the social dynamic behind the tragedy of the murder suicide in a counseling facility.

Whose truth matters? Every truth matters here, and must be honored, even though justice can never be served in this tragedy, lessons can be learned, as they will have to be, again and again.

The truth itself, as it were, may be our true north, but in life, truth is but a compass or a path. I don’t think anyone can stay on it without falling, loosing track of it and eat some dirt from time to time, and that includes our institutions. It seems like the price for serving truth paid by our soldiers as well as the authors of the infamous torture memos, is justified by the lessons we learn as we face the dark side of democracy: the undemocratic institutions and dogmatic processes (believe me, the army is no democracy; neither are the rigid bureaucracies of many other necessary evils of our society) all of which are required to preserve our democracy in a harsh and aggressive world. The truth behind the methods used to uncover it, is worth uncovering; in a civilization, it is perhaps the most important task of truth itself: to be, or to become, known. The lessons are unpleasant, but critical.

Judgment may not be perfectly just or fair, but judgment needs a voice in a democracy. Who was acting in the service of truth – of power – of liberty? Who was justified in compromising the law? Who was just following orders?

Democracy is messy, but it works as long as it has a voice. Living in a democracy, along with the privilege of freedom and the right to vote, comes the freedom and a duty to listen and keeping our eyes as well as our minds open, even to the most painful of screams and wrongs; especially then. And so, let the legal process in a democracy be the only power that is above any single law, executive order, or bureaucratic breach of contract.

It’s not a fun pep-talk today, but it is something to think about. Sometimes we just have to get comfortable with the uneasy parts of life; it is a good thing that democracy it’s not all black and white.

~ Marit.

May 22 good karma blessing

May 29 party like the squirrel-cat

June 5  for the love of picnics