“All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.” – Schopenhauer

There’s a recent report in New Scientist which has analysed the plot lines of Eastenders in its 18-year history, and compared it to “real life” statistics related to prostitution, infidelity, paternity deception and other such steaminess. The study finds that, apart from murder, every vice is under-represented in the soap. We cheat more, we lie more, we get raped more in real life than in Eastenders.

But, if real life is more dramatic than fiction, it is also unscripted, chaotic, random, often quite silent, with no theme tune to help us to know what to feel. I was watching a fight on the street recently, a serious one, and what struck me most was the panic in both men’s eyes, the way they’d grip on to each other’s jackets and jeans to stop getting hit, desperate for breathing space, pausing for as long as they dared; the blows would be sharp and vicious and erratic and silent, with perhaps a slight sound of a slap, or gravel being ground underfoot. The silence was incredibly menacing.

When we hear a real traffic accident, we want to hear noise after the bang, we want to hear engines running. It’s silence that starts us running. It’s nothing like the soundtracked crash-bang-wallop choreography of TV or film. In real life, we don’t know what we’re doing; that’s the truth. Been to a real casualty department? It’s nothing like ER or Casualty. Most times, there’s just a lot of standing around in silence, everyone trying to be nice, while people are trying to puzzle things out. Confusion rules until, bit by bit, a positive course of action materialises. In real life, confusion is normal, accepted, everyday. But our media-led culture seems to have a mission of eradicating it from our lives, of seeing confusion as failure. Silence is “dead air” – the broadcast media need noise to stay alive. That’s why we can’t represent reality properly on our screens, that’s why politicians enter a rhetorical Never Never Land when they take on power – confusion is perceived to be weakness.

September 11, 2001 – we are all familiar with the face of George W. Bush reacting blankly to the news that a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. But as I’m writing this I’ve got running in the background on my computer the video of George sitting in that classroom listening to the children after he knew his country was under terrorist attack, while the rest of the world was watching the two towers burning on TV. He claims to have seen the first plane hit live on TV – which is impossible, that chance recording only hit the airwaves the following day. I’m not saying Bush is a liar (no more than any politician lies) – I’m saying that in those circumstances, we forget things, we do nothing unless we really know what to do, which very few people do. In his case, buffoon that he is, he just carried on waffling away until someone else told him what to do. It’s quite a shocking video – if it were carried live, I think there would have been a revolution, as people would have had a split screen with carnage on one side and their leader chatting away to schoolkids complimenting them on their reading skills. For twenty minutes, some reports say. Or, maybe, given the power of the media, if it had been carried live, his advisers would have then got him to look presidential and take action. Confused? So am I. Where’s the truth? How can it be established?

Is the only truth that life is confusing?

The BBC’s Horizon explored homoeopathy under scientific conditions last year, but, bizarrely, under the sceptical eye of a magician, James Randi. The findings seem to prove that if researchers are aware of the nature of the substances they are testing, then the results corroborate the hypothesis that water has a “memory”, and the sub-molecular concentrations of homoeopathic remedies have an effect. If the human awareness is removed, then the results show no such thing. Skeptics such as Randi see this as evidence of fraud or magic tricks, and assume malevolent intent. When he’s proved right, with repeated experiments removing human awareness, the reputations of the people he’s investigated are ruined. You see what you look for, the conman sees a con if he looks hard enough. The reality is, possibly, neither a fraud nor a miracle – but something we don’t understand yet. The scientific establishment is vicious to those who produce research that challenges established norms, that doesn’t fit in with what we know already; it’s as if they believe their truth needs defending, as much as blind faith. Perhaps it does – perhaps they know how tribal truth really is.

Latvia has an Anti-Absurdity Bureau. The bureau, which was opened in January, has the job of fighting “the arbitrariness of those in power, the laziness of civil servants and the lack of order in national and local government”. Good luck to them.