The Comparative Difficulties of Truth and Untruth

From a letter Freddy Spaghetti Nietzsche wrote to his sister about whether it is better to quest for the truth, no matter how terrifying, or to embrace as much truth as capable while still avoiding the painful aspects of truth, no matter how true that pain may be:

As for your principle that truth is always on the side of the more difficult, I admit this in part. However, it is difficult to believe that 2 times 2 is not 4; does that make it true?

On the other hand, is it really so difficult simply to accept everything that one has been brought up on and that has gradually struck deep roots—what is considered truth in the circle of one’s relatives and of many good men, and what, moreover, really comforts and elevates men? Is that more difficult than to strike new paths, fighting the habitual, experiencing the insecurity of independence and the frequent wavering of one’s feelings and even one’s conscience, proceeding often without any consolation, but ever with the eternal goal of the true, the beautiful, and the good?

…Do we after all seek rest, peace, and pleasure in our inquiries? No, only truth—even if it be the most abhorrent and ugly.

Still one last question: if we had believed from childhood that all salvation issued from someone other than Jesus—say, from Mohammed—is it not certain that we should have experienced the same blessings? I point this out to you, dear Lisbeth, only to disprove the most common means of evidence relied upon by orthodox people who derive the infallibility of their belief from subjective, inner experience. Every true faith accomplishes what the person who has the faith hopes to find in it; but faith does not offer the least support for a proof of objective truth.

“Hence the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.

All of which is to say, either you care about the capital-T Truth, no matter how horrible that may be, or you don’t. For my part, I have committed myself to abandoning all of my principles for the Truth, to smash any lie no matter how compassionate. The only caveat to this is that I need to be certain that it is the capital-T Truth before abandoning all of my principles.

And so far as I have discerned, the Truth is never as terrifying as the doubt that rests on the precipice between ignorance and understanding. As we humans can never truly return to ignorance once exposed to its unhealthy storms, it is always better to continuously make the horrifying leaps over the chasm towards Truth, even if we never make it, then to attempt to rest forever on the ledge of uncertainty.

In short, my retort to Freddy is this: the truth is difficult, yes. But how much moreso untruth, once exposed?