How to Topple Tyranny

Recently, I started reading The Gulag Archipelago, the life inside the communist concentration camps in Russia, written by the Nobel Prize laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He said,

“One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.” ~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

That stimulates my thoughts significantly because it’s so true. We have seen these people in our recent history, such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Aung San Suu Kyi—unfortunately, Burma regressed. Solzhenitsyn himself triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union with his book.

It doesn’t have to be about bringing down a government but any form of tyranny. Martin Luther King, Jr. toppled the tyranny against civil rights. Abraham Lincoln toppled the tyranny of slavery. He achieved it through honesty and integrity, so people called him “Honest Abe.”

I read some Palms lately depicting we live in a world of liars. At first, I thought that sounded too cynical, but as I observed people around me, I discovered almost everyone lies. The longer they talk, the more lies they speak. Some tend to talk boldly and intimidatingly to cover up their deceit.

A Burmese proverb says, “Without lies, words are not smooth.” It means your words sound crude or boring without lies; you need a little lie to spice up your words. In English, we have “white lies.” These traditions hint at permission to lie, but gradually it becomes a habit, and we cross the fine line between what’s acceptable and what’s not.

I remember I felt particularly irritated when my children lied to me. Guess who they learned from?

Then I reflected on my words and found I tell no fewer lies than anyone else. You would expect someone in my position should tell fewer lies, if not none. It reminds me of Paul saying he was “the chief of all sinners.” Like Paul, I am the chief of all liars. Confession is the starting point of the road to recovery. Now, I am a recovering liar.

It all began with discovering Solzhenitsyn’s statement, “One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.” Honest people are intimidating to tyrants. That’s why they imprison or eliminate them. Tyranny is sustained by people who join the lie for survival. If stopping lying can make you so powerful, what does it take to stop lying?

Solzhenitsyn received his enlightenment in the concentration camp, where starvation was one of the systematic tortures. Maybe the fasting state raised his consciousness. Similarly, Viktor Frankl also received his wisdom in the concentration camp and wrote his seminal book Men Search for Meaning.

I have been fasting for Lent, and I can see that fasting is like a self-imposed concentration camp. I hope something good can come out of it for me instead of starving to death. Let me tell you a story ...