I’m playing in the land of metaphor this morning, detailing exactly where the left coincides with the right and the metaphors that bind them, in the context of Bad Neighbours.

Ironically, it ended being filtered through the judge’s verdict on the Hockey Canada sexual assault case acquittal, in which she posited that while we are all on the train of believing victims, doing so without examination essentially means applying the doctrine of guilty until proven innocent, when our system runs on innocent until proven guilty. There was enough conflicts, contradictions and assertions that didn’t agree with established facts in the case for the judge to reasonably decide that she could not say there was a crime committed, beyond doubt.

Reading the specifics of her verdict, I would probably make the same choice.

And it’s important, the distinction of innocent until proven guilty versus guilty until proven innocent. How many of us had listened to someone make assertions about the behaviour of their ex, or a coworker, or a friend or enemy that had no actual bearing in reality, even if we didn’t know it at the time? How many of us have had someone assert that their significant other was mistreating them, or playing the role of victim, or rationalizing away bad or regrettable behaviour on their part, because they didn’t actually want to take responsibility for what happened?

Most people don’t want to be responsible for their own actions. They live in denial. They falsely equivocate, they exaggerate, they outright lie, often to the point of deluding themselves as to what’s actually real, in order to avoid accountability for what’s ultimately on them.

You say you want freedom? You want truth?

You have to accept two things then: understand that total freedom comes with total responsibility – these are inseparable – and secondly, that reality is not what you want it to be, it’s what is, and if you want truth, you have to be willing to suspend your beliefs and the little fictions you tell yourself about yourself, or about the way things “should” be, and surrender your open, empty mind to what is, no matter the consequences.

Freedom is responsibility. Freedom is accepting consequence. Truth is what is, it’s not what you’d like to to be, or how you want to frame it. It’s what is.

So, innocent until proven guilty is the better way to go, because believing the accuser means automatically accepting their version of the truth, which we all know can be a highly creative, even self-deluding fiction at times. It can also be true, but that’s what the process is meant to find out (and admittedly, that depends on the competence and relative framework of the process, whether truly fair, fact-finding mission or kangaroo court). But guilty until proven innocent It’s not about what is; it’s about what’s asserted; it’s hypothesis without testing. You claim donkeys can fly, you have to prove that they can. The people you’re telling they can don’t.

That’s the way it works.

And that’s infinitely better than someone shouting, “Donkeys can fly!” and then having everyone that heard them run around scrambling to build wings for mules to make it true.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 2749 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Odds On, Michael Lange (John Crichton)
Comics: Low 22, Black Science 40-41, Deadly Class 39
Music: Endless Wire, The Who