What then is truth?
A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms,
and anthropomorphisms
— in short, a sum of human relations,
which become poetically and rhetorically intensified,
transposed, and embellished,
and which after long use seem firm, canonic,
and binding to a people:

truths are illusions
about which one has forgotten
that they are illusions;

metaphors which are worn out,
without power to affect the senses;
coins which have lost their pictures
and now matter only as metal,
no longer as coins.

On Truth and Lie In An Extra-Moral Sense, by Friedrich Nietzsche

Today is Friday. Today appears superficially to be the same as previous days.  An overcast sky, the air temperature is a few degrees above freezing. Still, no two days are “the same.” A comparison betrays the abject degree of what I/we edit out in order to peel away from the mind a label, “another winter’s day in Illinois”, to affix to the day which, – I am “damn lucky” to be here to experience.

A few minutes ago I read the above quotation of Nietzsche’s words which are located within a few paragraphs of the end the book, Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays. I traversed the passage more than once, to absorb his point of view. My initial reading caused me to shudder. This is no reverential appraisal of “truth telling” as if “truth” is sacrosanct. Nietzsche writes that we thoughtlessly make use of familiar words as if they continue to mean something, but in fact meaning has been effaced, worn out through use (and abuse).

I remember as a kid, sometimes I’d find circular pieces of steel, metal punched-out and discarded from electrical junction boxes. Such boxes continue to be used in construction. The throwaway round metal pieces were near to the size of a quarter. I would insert one into a vending machine slot, and sometimes the machine would dispense gum or a prize in exchange for the worthless slug of metal. Truth or lie?  How to tell the difference? All the more so when truth itself is ‘ginned up,’ a metaphoric construction, a conventional way of speaking that’s been around so long, has been in use for so long, – that we no longer know what it means.

I find myself thinking about the term “freedom,” a preferred, oft used word by so-called-conservatives, Trump acolytes, and *Constitutional Originalists.  My instincts tell me that this crowd is without a clue to the meaning of freedom in the 21st century.  How is any woman free who is constrained in healthcare decision making by law?  How are non-white citizens free, when police brutality is tacitly approved in the Law’N Order Society which the conservatives imagine? How are families, individuals of all ages fleeing famine and violence in Argentina and Central America free, if the Trump-following Republican party can manage to choke off possible entry to our country? And Ukraine?

I confess that I have a guilty pleasure. Almost every day I watch a few minutes of a re-run of The Walking Dead TV drama series. The setting of the tale is America, after a majority have been infected by an incurable pathogen. After killing infected individuals, the organism resurrects them as a host. Zombie like, they shamble around, looking for uninfected fellow Americans to cannibalize. Escape from the walking dead, the inhuman hosts, demands they be rendered brain dead by an edged weapon, or by a bullet from a gun.

* The principle or belief that a text should be interpreted in a way consistent with how it would have been understood or was intended to be understood at the time it was written.