J. Michael Dew

Jordan B. Peterson argues that we must always tell the truth or at least not lie.  What does this suggest about the way in which Western society has evolved?  Are we a culture built on falsehoods?  Have we become a people too afraid to call it how it is?  It does not take long to see in the cacophony of arguments inundating the air waves, social media, and the like that people are usually dancing around the issue, whatever that may be.  A direct observation would be refreshing.  A refusal to submit to rules of conversation dictated by ideologues would be helpful.  Our voices should not be mere echoes of what somebody else says.  We should think on our own and say what we mean, not in coded language but in clear, honest language.

Perhaps the ability to write fiction is the ability to make something of wounds, either yours or somebody else's.  I'm thinking now of the boy who, years ago, worked in the same field as a group of other individuals.  They were haying, and they were bonding in the way that coworkers do who ache and sweat under the same sun.  When lunch time came around, everybody but the boy was invited to go up to the house.  The boy was only twelve.  While the rest ate together, the boy ate his sandwich by himself on a stump next to the field. That event remained with him throughout his life.  It haunted him -- gave him feelings that he struggles with to this day. Perhaps it is a writer's duty to try to make sense of instances like this,  Perhaps all it takes is to write them down.  We take a wound, and we make it communal.  Maybe this is where the healing begins.