When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated

Hear the words of Walter Lippmann, the sharp observer of men and nations: “When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.” This is no idle warning, but a revelation of how fragile truth becomes when carried upon the winds of speech, rumor, and power. For the farther it travels from its source, the more it bends, until the light of reality is refracted into a thousand misleading colors.

What Lippmann speaks of is the peril of simplification. The human heart craves certainty, while the world offers complexity. Thus, when the intricate is told to the many, it is often pared down, carved, and twisted until it becomes something it never was. The hypothetical is preached as unquestionable law, the relative is proclaimed as eternal decree, and the subtle shades of reality are painted over in the crude black and white of absolutes. This is the danger of mass communication without care: that truth, once living, is hollowed out and paraded as a skeleton of itself.

History bears witness. Recall the years of the French Revolution, when the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity—noble in origin—were simplified into slogans that could fit upon banners. These words, carried into the frenzy of the mob, lost their nuance. The cry for freedom became the justification for terror; the hope of equality was wielded as a blade. The truth of political philosophy was distorted into dogma, and the streets of Paris ran red with its consequence. Thus Lippmann’s insight is proven: the distant and complex, when simplified for the many, may ignite both inspiration and destruction.

Consider also the age of Galileo. His careful observations, framed as hypotheses to be tested and weighed, were received by masses and rulers alike as threats to ancient certainties. What he presented as inquiry was transmuted into dogma, either praised as blasphemy or condemned as heresy, depending on the side. The careful balance of relativity—his acknowledgment of human limitation in understanding the cosmos—was flattened into absolutes by those who heard only what they wished. Thus, truth once more was lost in the hands of those unable or unwilling to hold its complexity.

Yet this teaching is not only for the rulers of states or the masses of nations—it is for each soul. In our daily lives, we too are tempted to turn the uncertain into certainty, to mold the complex into the simple, to declare the partial as whole. When we hear a tale from afar, when we repeat a story half-understood, we join in the distortion of truth. And when we cling to absolutes without humility, we blind ourselves to the wider vision that reality demands.

Therefore, O seekers, guard yourselves against the arrogance of simplification. When you encounter a matter unfamiliar, resist the urge to declare it plain. When faced with the complex, be patient enough to sit in its mystery. Do not demand absolutes where only the relative can be known. The wise are not those who shout certainty, but those who dwell in humility, acknowledging the vastness of what cannot yet be grasped.

The lesson is clear: handle truth with reverence, as one carries a fragile vessel. Speak it carefully, knowing it can shatter in careless hands. In your conversations, seek clarity but not reduction; in your judgments, seek understanding but not rigidity. Above all, beware the voices that proclaim absolute certainty from distant and complex things—for these are the voices that lead men into delusion.

Thus, remember the words of Lippmann: that the truth suffers when the faraway is forced into simplicity, when the tentative is preached as final, and when the relative is turned into the absolute. To walk wisely is to resist this temptation, to honor complexity, and to live not in the dull comfort of distortion, but in the vivid struggle of seeking what is real.