[...] I lived like a blind man in the position in which I had been put, without considering what it was, because in that position I had been born and had grown up and it was therefore natural for me [...] And it must always necessarily seem to us that the others are mistaken, thinking that a given form, a given act is not this and is not thus. But inevitably, a little later, if we shift one degree, we realize we were also mistaken, and it isn't this and it isn't thus; so in the end we are obliged to recognize that it will never be this or thus in any stable, sure way; but first one way, then another, and at a certain point all will seem to us mistaken, or all true, which amounts to the same thing; because a reality wasn't assigned to us and doesn't exist, and we have to make it ourselves, if we want it to be [...]
What sort of reality can the majority of men manage to establish in themselves? Wretched, unsteady, uncertain. And oppressors, of course, take advantage! Or rather, they deceive themselves that they can take advantage, making others undergo or accept the meaning and value they assign themselves, to the others, to things, so all will see and feel, think and speak in their way.
But everything that can be imagined about us is really possible, even if it isn't true for us. The others don't care whether or not it's true for us. It's true for them. So true that the others, if you don't cling fast to the the reality you have given yourself, can actually lead you to grant that even truer than the reality you have given yourself is the one they give you.
[Luigi Pirandello]
One, No One & One Hundred Thousand, p.59, 62, 85, 86, 135
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