"Songmeanings.com" is a place I go to read the lyrics of a song because they include posts of what people think about the song or how it makes them feel. Today, hearing this song on a playlist, I looked up Depeche Mode's "Policy of Truth".
If you like Depeche Mode, then you aren't alone. http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/39229/ has 51 comments so far, most of them interpretive. A variety of perspectives are seen by the fans of the song. I think many of them are right on target especially about "coming out of the closet". But good art (music and lyrics) lends itself to multiple interpretations.
For some reason I googled a line from the chorus. I did not believe it at first, but this wonderful song uses a quote from a military officer, individualist, unitarian, anarchist in the 1800's.
The incredibly talented band wrote Policy of Truth using this quote. (Its really not debatable since an entire verse is "word-for-word" from the writer William Batchelder Greene.)
Here is the quote:
Hide what you have to hide,
And tell what you have to tell.
You'll see your problems multiplied
If you continually decide
To faithfully pursue
The policy of truth.
-- William Batchelder Greene
I usually write about cryptocurrency and financial freedom. Surprise!! William Batchelder Greene was a proponent of mutual banking (free banking). I found this on Wikipedia, so it is probably some of his better known writing, and its about money.
He describes the consequences of our financial systems of fiat and debt:
"The existing organization of credit is the daughter of hard money, begotten upon it incestuously by that insufficiency of circulating medium which results from laws making specie the sole legal tender. The immediate consequences of confused credit are want of confidence, loss of time, commercial frauds, fruitless and repeated applications for payment, complicated with irregular and ruinous expanses. The ultimate consequences are compositions, bad debts, expensive accommodation-loans, law-suits, insolvency, bankruptcy, separation of classes, hostility, hunger, extravagance, distress, riots, civil war, and, finally, revolution. The natural consequences of mutual banking are, first of all, the creation of order, and the definitive establishment of due organization in the social body, and, ultimately, the cure of all the evils. which flow from the present incoherence and disruption in the relations of production and commerce." (The Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium 1857).
Deep thoughts; libertarian thoughts. If Depeche Mode came to the other quote (the one from Policy of Truth) via THIS quote about money, then I can only assume that:
- One or more of the band members is libertarian, or
- One of them learned about William Batchelder Greene in college, or
- The band's success, wealth, and credit led to researching "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil," or
- They were all sitting around talking one day (maybe stoned), trying to solve all the world's problems.
In my opinion, people who seek more government regulations for a system bought and paid for by bankers.... well, maybe they don't realize that the bankers and politicians are in it together: chaos is what those elites prefer. Further government regulations simply compound the confusion. Deregulation does not fix the system either.
I read only a little bit more about him. And this is one of his other quotes I like:
“Life is a waste of woes,
And Death a river deep,
That ever onward flows,
Troubled, yet asleep.”
— William Batchelder Greene
My conclusion: Life is too short to spend it as a debt slave. Financial freedom is something different, and to achieve it, you have to do something different from what you have done so far.
Fiat money supply is limited, given with "strings attached", bought and sold by the big boys, manipulated and used against the common man in a huge variety of ways.
Cryptocurrency is your opportunity to have a different system.
So there you have it.... this is about as close to research as I can get, taking something I love (music) and finding meaning and significance worth sharing.