The mouth of truth and the ear of lies

In it Doge’s Palace in Venicein one of the chambers in which it is located The fire of torture, fueled by authoritarian power, there was a small mailbox called “mouth of truth”, which dates back to 1618. There, under terrible cowardice anonymity, or under the cold cunning of a conspiracythere were complaints of all kinds, so that mostly innocent culprits were prosecuted.

In the case of sentencing, the accused is most of the time led with an armed guard through an expedited procedure tiny door to then cross the infamous one the “bridge of sighs”, in which two tiny windows filtered what would, many times, be the last rays of sunlight to be seen by the convicts, who were led into the damp and dark caves inhuman palace dungeons.

Those prisoners and their fatal fate seemed like shadows leading inside Charon’s ship through the underworld that Dante tells us about. Today, one can comfortably take a gondola ride under the infamous bridge, unaware of the screams of the past that came out of the tiny latticed windows, while the painful light of the last sun of those who were condemned entered them.

That kind of thing cruel torturesit They are born from the twisted minds of corrupt politicians, addicted to power, They found the support of a population without civil scaffolding, submissive due to ignorance. The redirection of public authority can only happen where there is a backbone which maintained by governmentsand which consists of those who are governed, suffers from defects in its moral formation, like a kind of scoliosis that can only be corrected by early diagnosis and painful therapy for those who suffer from it.

Just like we all carry, according to Jung, the shadow bearer of all kinds of evil and moral deviations, societies also have them; and those who rule, many times, not only personify it, but are a dark and collective projection of collaborators. That’s why, instead of complaining about the government we have, we should first look in the morning mirror, which reveals the terrible truth: we know how to rule ourselves. Warning “Know thyself” that adorned the lintels Temple of Apollo in Delphi, it was also a challenge to find and master the dark part in yourself, instead of just repressing and criticizing it. Knowing that a venomous serpent coils in every human heart, predisposed to attack from the moment it is empowered, or rather from the moment it is chosen, will help us better understand the shifting waters or dirty pond that all we share with the rulers.