Interesting post! It sounds like someone hurt you recently and I'm sorry for that. Congratulations on trying to understand it.
I think you missed one very important type of lying that really serves a higher truth. In our relationships, we get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of our friends, mate, etc. Would continually calling out your friend's shortcomings, however real they are, help that person improve or would it tear them down? Most people aren't ready to see all of their dark side. I know from my own experience that facing some of my moral shortcomings now is a lot easier than earlier in my life when certain issues might have crushed me. Instead, I had people around me who realized that and called out a higher me that they saw as potential. To them, I am grateful.
So, whether you call that lying or not, it is a form of focusing on the truth as well.
ps. Someone didn't just decide that lying was wrong. Imagine how our world would be if lying were the norm rather than honesty. You could trust anyone around you, you couldn't buy anything without worrying that it wouldn't work they way it was promised, you wouldn't be able to save money in the bank because it might not be there tomorrow, you couldn't trust scientists who were more concerned about funding rather than finding the truth. The minute truth ceases to be an objective standard in our lives, then everything falls apart.
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Interesting post! It sounds like someone hurt you recently and I'm sorry for that. Congratulations on trying to understand it.
I think you missed one very important type of lying that really serves a higher truth. In our relationships, we get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of our friends, mate, etc. Would continually calling out your friend's shortcomings, however real they are, help that person improve or would it tear them down? Most people aren't ready to see all of their dark side. I know from my own experience that facing some of my moral shortcomings now is a lot easier than earlier in my life when certain issues might have crushed me. Instead, I had people around me who realized that and called out a higher me that they saw as potential. To them, I am grateful.
So, whether you call that lying or not, it is a form of focusing on the truth as well.
ps. Someone didn't just decide that lying was wrong. Imagine how our world would be if lying were the norm rather than honesty. You could trust anyone around you, you couldn't buy anything without worrying that it wouldn't work they way it was promised, you wouldn't be able to save money in the bank because it might not be there tomorrow, you couldn't trust scientists who were more concerned about funding rather than finding the truth. The minute truth ceases to be an objective standard in our lives, then everything falls apart.
February 21, 2009 - 10:02pmThis Comment
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