On Remaining Silent in the Face of Lies

Many Christians will see through... lies today but will choose not to speak up. Their silence will not save them and will instead corrode them, according to Czesław Miłosz.

    In his writing about communism's insidiousness, Miłosz referenced a 1932 novel, Insatiability. In it, Polish writer Stanisław Witkiewicz wrote of a near-future dystopia in which the people were culturally exhausted and had fallen into decadence. A Mongol army from the East threatened to overrun them.

    As part of the plan to tale over the nation, people began turning up in the streets selling "the pill of Murty-Bing," named after a Mongolian philosopher who found a way to embody his "don't worry, be happy" philosophy in a tablet. Those who toll the Pill of Murti-Bing quit worrying about life, even though things were falling apart around them. When the Eastern army arrived, it surrendered happily, its soldiers relieved to have found deliverance from their internal tension and struggles.

    Only the peace didn't last. "But since they could not rid themselves completely of their former personalities," writes Czesław Miłosz, "they became schizophrenic."

~ Live Not By Lives, Rod Dreher, pgs. 15–16.

    I'm currently reading Live Not By Lies. I've been eager to get my hands on it since it came out. I'm not a fan of reading things electronically, so I had to wait until I came to the US to get a hardback copy. One of the things I wonder about is whether I should keep reading the things that I read — the things that get me riled up — or whether I should just stick my head in the sand like so many others around me and imbibe on a diet of Netflix and cat videos. Those who do the latter somehow seem happier, but they also seem to be absolutely clueless to what's going on around them. I think I have no choice but to choose the former course of action.

    Dreher continues:

    What do you do when the Pill of Murti-Bing stops working and your find yourself living under a dictatorship of official lies in which anyone who contradicts the party line goes to jail?

    You become an actor, says Miłosz. You learn the practice of ketman. This is the Persian word for the practice of maintaining an outward appearance of Islamic orthodoxy while inwardly dissenting. Ketman was the strategy everyone who wasn't a true believer in communism had to adopt to stay out of trouble. It is a form of mental self-defense.

    What is the difference between ketman and plain old hypocrisy? As Miłosz explains, having to be "on" all the time inevitably changes a person. An actor who inhabits his role around the clock eventually becomes the character he plays. Ketman is worse than hypocrisy, because living by it all the time corrupts your character and ultimately everything in society. 

    Miłosz identified eight different types of ketman under communism. For example, "professional ketman" is when you convince yourself that it's okay to live a lie in the workplace, because that's what you have to do to have the freedom to do good work. "Metaphysical ketman" is the deepest form of the strategy, a defense against "total degradation." It consists of convincing yourself that it really is possible for you to be a loyal opponent of the new regime while working with it. Christians who collaborated with communist regimes were guilty of metaphysocal ketman. In fact, says Miłosz, it represents the ultimate victory of the Big Lie over the individual's soul.

    Under the emerging tyrany of workeness, conservatives, including conservative Christians, learn to practive one or more forms of ketman. The ones who are most deeply deceived are those who convince themselves that they can live honestly within woke systems by outwardly comforming and learning how to adapt their convictions to the new order. Miłosz had their number: "They swindle the devil who think he is swindling them. But the devil knows what they think and is satisfied."