Saving Ourselves By Ignoring the Truth

WE RESIST THE TRUTH only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it. That, in so many words, was articulated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the undisputed prince of European literature. how true it is. If you think otherwise, consider this. Each year thirty five thousand Americans and one million people world wide die in automobile wrecks. To quote Casey Stengal, you could look it up. yet, onward we drive, billions of us, unconcerned. Automotive culture is a life and death lottery. To us, its worth it. Its worth it to lose one million people per year as the price we pay for our cars. Our avoidance of truth consists in the fact that we never admit to that obvious fact. We do not call for an immediate halt to the mass slaughter; we accept it, cooly. Scoff if you wish, or choose not to "look at it that way". It remains true. The truth is, the truth we ignore, is that we the human race is perfectly willing to trade one million innocent dead for the convenience of our cars. To accept that reality would be uncomfortable, so, we "don't look at it that way." Temper your angry disagreement with me; I'm just the messenger boy. We ignore climate change, as a species, except for a lot of hot air, a lot of talk. we really do not care, because it does not impact our daily little lives. The truth is we don't give a damn, and we casually endure our six month summers in Minnesota, ninety degrees in Sweden, daily flooding in Florida, weird weather, because we really don't suffer from it, like our poor descendants will. Let the Marshall islands sink! By the time the planet becomes uninhabitable, we'll all be dead, and Al gore's inconvenient truth will be buried with us. Football season is here in America, and how I, along with millions of other people,love it. So do the players, who are starting to retire earlier to avoid dementia later in life. We resist changing the rules of the game t make it safe, but less violent and exciting. Over half of all former football players suffer from concussion dementia, and the outrage and panic we should be be using to fundamentally change the sport is utterly lacking from our interests. who cares? The truth is easy to ignore. And in America, does nobody really give a tinker's damn about opioid addiction and death, domestic violence, or gun violence, all of which ravages our culture, and bring devastating destruction to millions of lives? Certainly not those among who have not suffered because of it! we are fortunate to have the psychological freedom to ignore the truth when we choose, because Goethe was right; we resist the truth only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it, and we very well might, but, fortunately, we do not have to find out.