Awake and now caffeinated, todays question (one of many I distracted myself with, not falling asleep) was how lies can be used to express truth. This is the job of every writer, to tell a story, possibly fictional, but beneath the characters, plot and location capture something essential and true; artists, painters and musicians all do the same, hide the truth within a lie, we, the audience, will find it, pick it out, if there is truth it will resonate with us, if it is false the art will not survive. And in time the lie evolves.
And this is true as well with mathematics and the sciences - think of negative numbers: they do not exist. It is that simple, yet without negative numbers we could not have the banking system (not necessarily a bad thing), debt could not exist, it is a theory or thought construct that allows us to move and grow in different directions. But a bank is but a trivial application of this idea, think of the computer software, advanced math and physics that all use negative numbers, without their supposed existence (the lie) we could not have gotten into space or to the moon.
God is another such example. I don't mean "God" - here, the big G, but those specific cultural gods, think of the early Christian God, wrathful, angry, proud, human, yet upon him was built the Cistine Chapel, Notre Dame of Paris, St. Pauls Cathedral, libraries of music were composed in his honor, countless books, paintings, sculptures were created to celebrate his glory. Every religion has done the same, from a lie built truth.
Or Physics and Chemistry - the models we are taught in school, the periodic table of elements, all are lies. We have no photo's of the atom, our knowledge of it is entirely inferred, the models we use are props to help us imagine their existence, yet these models and thought structures allow us to manipulate chemical structures, create plastics, fuels, the list is endless...
Find other examples - in politics - in philosophy - anywhere you can - of lies that have been used to create truth.
Over time these lies evolve, they reach the end of their usefulness, the early Christian God has been thrown out of science in favour of chemistry and physics, and these things will in time as well be thrown as well, the lies having reached the end of their purpose and new ones will emerge to move us forward.
Which brings the question:
What new lies can we tell that will move us personally, or as a society, forward?