A Plea From South Australian Writers: Why Right Always Outlasts Wrong

 

Every writer, sooner or later, bumps into the same unsettling question.

If the world so often seems to reward cruelty, manipulation, and lies, what is the point of telling the truth?

It is a fair question. A dangerous one, too. Because the moment writers begin to doubt that truth matters, that justice has weight, that integrity has consequence, the ground beneath storytelling begins to crumble. Not just fiction, but history, journalism, memoir, even the quiet act of writing a letter that says what really happened.

This is a plea from writers to writers. And perhaps, through us, to the world.

Wrong can win. But only briefly. Right, slow and battered and often unfashionable, always wins in the end.

Not because the universe is sentimental. But because truth has endurance.

Wrong relies on concealment. Right relies on exposure.

And concealment has a shelf life.

You can see it everywhere if you know where to look.

Power built on lies always needs more lies to hold it upright. Every deception must be shored up with another. Every injustice defended by silence, fear, or distraction. That structure grows heavier over time, more unstable, more fragile. Eventually, it collapses under its own weight.

Truth, by contrast, asks only to be told once. It may be ignored. It may be mocked. It may be buried for years. But it does not rot. It waits.

Consider Watergate. For a time, the most powerful office in the world appeared untouchable. Evidence was hidden. Witnesses were pressured. The machinery of authority whirred into motion to smother a story before it could breathe. And yet, all it took was patient reporting, a refusal to let go of a thread, and the quiet persistence of truth. The scandal did not erupt overnight. It leaked. Slowly. Relentlessly. Until the weight of reality became impossible to deny.

Short-term success. Long-term defeat.

This pattern repeats so often it almost feels mythic, but it is deeply practical. Wrong thrives on urgency. Right survives on time.

Evil wants results now. Truth is content to wait.

That is why so many tyrannies obsess over controlling language. Why books are burned. Why journalists are jailed. Why storytellers are mocked, silenced, or dismissed as irrelevant dreamers. Because stories preserve memory, and memory is the enemy of false power.

You can outlaw speech, but you cannot erase remembrance.

Look at the long arc of apartheid in South Africa. For decades, an entire system insisted that injustice was order, that cruelty was necessary, that oppression was stability. For a time, it worked. Economically, politically, militarily. And yet the system could not survive its own moral contradiction. Truth lived in testimony, in songs, in whispered stories, in prison letters, in the stubborn dignity of people who refused to forget what was right.

When Nelson Mandela walked free, it was not because wrong had a sudden change of heart. It was because wrong had exhausted itself.

Truth had outlasted it.

This is where writers come in.

We are not judges. We are witnesses.

Our job is not to punish wrong, but to remember it accurately. To name it clearly. To show how it operates, how it rationalises itself, how it flatters, seduces, and corrodes. And just as importantly, to show how truth behaves under pressure – quietly, stubbornly, sometimes clumsily, but always intact.

Even in fiction, this matters.

Readers know when a story lies to them. They may not articulate it, but they feel it. A villain who prospers forever without consequence rings false. A world where cruelty is rewarded indefinitely feels hollow, even nihilistic. Not because readers demand happy endings, but because they understand something fundamental about human systems: injustice always creates instability.

A regime built on fear must constantly escalate fear to survive.

A relationship built on deception must constantly manage exposure.

A success built on fraud must constantly outrun scrutiny.

Wrong is expensive. Truth is economical.

That is why even criminals in stories often betray one another. Lies cannot coexist peacefully. They compete. They fracture. They turn inward. Truth, by contrast, can be shared without loss. The more people who know it, the stronger it becomes.

History offers endless proof.

The tobacco industry spent decades denying the link between smoking and cancer. For years, it worked. Advertising money flowed. Doubt was manufactured. Science was questioned. But truth did not need persuasion, only evidence. Once enough data accumulated, once enough voices spoke plainly, the entire edifice collapsed. Short-term victory. Long-term exposure.

The same pattern repeats in financial scandals, political cover-ups, cults, abusive institutions, even toxic families. Silence protects wrong only while silence holds. The moment someone speaks, the clock starts ticking.

This is why writing matters even when it feels futile.

You may publish a piece that changes nothing today. You may write a novel that sells modestly. You may tell a story that only a handful of people read. But truth compounds. Stories accumulate. They wait on shelves, in libraries, in hard drives, in memory. When the moment arrives – and it always does – those stories become evidence.

Writers are archivists of reality.

And archives terrify liars.

There is another reason right always defeats wrong, and it is less philosophical but no less powerful.

Wrong isolates. Truth connects.

People built on deceit must constantly guard themselves. They trust no one fully, because they know how easily trust can be abused. They see enemies everywhere. They grow paranoid. Suspicious. Alone. Truth-tellers, by contrast, attract allies. Not immediately, not always safely, but eventually. Others recognise themselves in honesty. They gather around it.

That is why whistle-blowers, though initially vilified, are often vindicated years later. The story shifts. The language changes. What was once called betrayal becomes courage. What was once labelled troublemaking becomes integrity.

Truth does not rush its reputation.

As writers, this should comfort us.

We live in an age obsessed with metrics. Likes. Shares. Sales. Immediate impact. It is easy to feel that if your words do not dominate the conversation today, they have failed. But truth does not operate on the same timetable as outrage or propaganda. It moves at human speed. Sometimes slower.

That does not make it weak.

It makes it inevitable.

So here is the plea.

Keep writing honestly, even when dishonesty appears more profitable. Keep telling stories where consequences exist, even when cynicism sells. Keep naming wrong clearly, without theatrics, without cruelty, without compromise.

Evil does not need help being dramatic. It needs exposure.

Right does not need exaggeration. It needs persistence.

You are not writing to win the moment. You are writing to outlast it.

And history, again and again, sides with those who endure.

Keep writing.