THE GREAT COSMIC SWINDLE: TRUTH EXISTS, ONLY LIES ARE INVENTED

​By Martin Foskett / Dispatches / Reflections

Image by Martin Foskett / Knelstrom Media

​Bold truth, the kind that rattles your teeth when you bite into it, doesn't need polishing, branding, or committee approval. It's just there, standing stubborn as a pub regular on last orders. Lies, though, oh, they're crafted in backrooms, shaped like sausages from the offcuts of reality, wrapped in shiny paper to be flogged to the gullible. Truth is found; lies are built. And once you spot the scaffolding, you can't unsee it.

​It was a Tuesday, always a suspicious day, when I realised the entire machinery of civilisation runs on the petrol fumes of lies. Not the big whoppers alone, no, but the polite fibs that grease the wheels: the "we're looking into it" emails, the "you look great" from a bloke who hasn't looked up from his phone, the "we care deeply about our customers" printed in Helvetica by a company that charges you for breathing in their shop.

The truth? It doesn't arrive with fanfare or trumpet blasts. It doesn't need to. It just sits there, inconvenient and unpolished, like a stubborn cobblestone in the street; trip over it or step around it, it doesn't mind. But lies, those need carpenters, decorators, advertisers, a small army of paid shouters to keep them from collapsing under the weight of their own nonsense.

You can smell a lie if you stand close enough. It's got that faint whiff of something cooked up indoors with the curtains drawn, a stale backroom conspiracy involving too much instant coffee and not enough oxygen. A lie is the deliberate act of construction: the scaffolding poles of plausible deniability, the tarpaulin of charm, the paint job of selective fact. It's an art form for those who've sold their soul but still want the receipt.

Truth, by contrast, is feral. Untamed. It lurks in plain sight like a fox in a supermarket car park, unimpressed by your headlamps. Politicians don't make truth; they stumble into it by accident when they forget which speech they're reading from. Journalists don't create truth either; at best, they shovel away enough lies to reveal a faint outline underneath. And your mate down the pub, he doesn't invent truth, though he might try to smother it under six pints of bravado.

But here's the punchline that'll keep you awake at night: lies don't just appear from thin air. Someone, somewhere, has to build them, nail by nail, word by word. The structure might be small, a fake excuse for missing Aunt Jean's birthday, or grand, like an entire economic policy stitched together with promises that evaporate faster than warm beer in July. Every lie is a piece of carpentry, and the finest ones are built so well that even their makers forget which bits are real.

The trouble is, lies have a shelf life. They rot, they sag, they collapse in on themselves. Truth, meanwhile, ages like good oak, weathered, tough, and far more valuable than when you first found it. This is why tyrants fear it, why corporations pay PR firms to blur it, and why your aunt's Facebook feed is full of people arguing over it.

And so, the game goes on: truth existing quietly in the wild, lies being churned out in the factory. If you want to live honestly, learn the difference between a stone in the road and a balloon in the air. The first one's been there for centuries; the second one was made yesterday and is just waiting to pop.

#dispatches #reflections