Truth-saying

In Richard Adams’ Watership Down, a group of travelling rabbits reach what seems to be a perfect rabbit warren. The warren rabbits are well-fed, there is plenty of space, and the nearby farmer controls the rabbits’ natural predators. The farmer even carelessly leaves out carrots and other delicacies that the warren collects.

What seems ideal is in fact slavery: the farmer ‘farms’ the warren, and traps and shoots enough rabbits for his own use. Under the farmer’s protection, the warren has developed unusual rabbit behaviours, and they have lost some of their essential survival skills.

When one of the travelling rabbits lays this truth bare, the travellers are criticised, attacked and driven away. Each of the warren rabbits ‘knows’ at some level the truth of their existence, but all but one of them (who escapes to join the travellers) find it easier to live the illusion than acknowledge the truth.

Truth-sayers in human society sometimes face similar responses. Note that I’m using the early Quakers’ definition of truth: not as doctrine or objective fact, but an individual awareness or understanding drawn from inner attention and group reflection. The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, said that everyone “must come to the truth in their own particulars” – meaning, find the truth for you based on your own experience. Your own ‘truth’, provided it has been worked out, can only be tested by others, but ultimately not denied.

Those who challenge an organisation’s culture or behaviours can encounter difficulties too. ‘Wise as serpents, gentle as doves’ comes to mind, along with the courage of course to say something like “it looks to me as though reality may be this way rather than the way we’ve been thinking it is.” Such people need to be open to challenge, and be willing to adapt their own understanding in the light of the responses they get.

Most importantly, they need to think “What would be useful for my colleagues to hear, and how might they most usefully hear it?” Acting on the answers to these questions is a truth-sayer’s responsibility; how others respond is theirs.