About Always Telling The Truth

[vizual]

I've been watching some videos from Jordan Peterson recently and he is always very adamant about people telling the truth. He's saying that you should always tell the truth regardless of the consequences. Well, maybe I am misinterpreting his message but it is an interesting dilemma nonetheless. Are "white lies" to be deemed acceptable? Does it aid a person in his personal growth?

When someone says that everyone should always speak the truth you can confront him with the following dilemma. Let's say you are in nazi Germany and you are hiding Jews in your basement. A Gestapo officer kindly asks you "Are you hiding Jews somewhere in your Hause dear sir?". If you aren't a hypocrite and truly believe in speaking the truth you confess that you indeed are hiding Jews. The consequence of you speaking the truth is the cold blooded execution of the said Jews, you and your entire family. 

Most people would say, that speaking the truth has limits. In the Jew dilemma, most people would not tell the "truth" to the Gestapo officer. They would lie to save themselves and their loved ones. But where is the line? Let us say your girlfriend asks you if her dress makes her look fat. And indeed it does make her look kind of fat in your eyes. Do you lie to her to not hurt her feelings and give her confidence about her appearance, or do you speak the truth but at the risk of indeed hurting her feelings and self esteem. 

To get to the root of this dilemma we have to understand the function of communication. Why do beings communicate with each other? Well, beings primarily communicate with each other the smooth out and enhance the social cohesion and goals of the group. By using language people have been able to divide tasks and make concrete plans with each other to ensure the survival of the group. Note that without a group; language is useless and non-sensical. Language is by definition group oriented.

To exemplify this: Let's say you stole a loaf of bread. You stole it just for yourself to eat, nothing about it, you weren't even hungry, you stole it for the kick of it. But let's say someone else also stole a loaf of bread, but he did it to feed his starving family. Now, if person A is honest he will say that he indeed stole that bread. And if person B is honest he will say that he did not steal that bread. You see that even though both persons gave a contradicting answer, they both spoke the truth. Why? Because they stayed true to the true function of communication. Person A hurt the group with his action and person B helped the group. 

Of course, now comes the question. We are not living in small tribes anymore. What actually is the group? Is my family the group? My coworkers? My countrymen? All living beings? Or is the group just me? Well, in an ideal world. The group consists of every being that is able to speak the language. When a bird sings he isn't singing to the snake that wants to eat him. He is singing to his fellow bird friends. 

As a rule you can say; the more people you include in your group, the truer your words feel. If you consider only yourself in your group, you are going to experience a lot of anxiety in your speech. Because you consider everyone you speak to as someone from another group, and thus someone that might be a predator to your group. But if you include every living being in your group, your speech is very liberating because you can not say any wrong. All your words are to collaborate, not to compete or destroy.

The problem is that considering every being part of your group is hard. Since it totally goes against your social conditioning. But the payoff can also be big. Gandhi for instance dared to act and tell the truth as a part of the whole. He did not chose sides in his speech, his words were universal. He stood for peace of all..

Edited September 30, 2017 by vizual

[mathieu]

@vizual maybe try studying Spiral dynamics. Leo has a video about it - titled The Grand Model of Psychological Evolution.

People in the Beige (1st stage) only care about survival, i.e. babies, mentally ill, bums on the street. they have to meet their needs (food, safety, etc) regardless of knowing its good or bad to others. theyre selfish.

Then, when growth occured, they will transcend on the next stage, Purple. They were "groupish", caring about the tribe they belong, having norms of good and bad that would affect the tribe. When you compare the Beige to the people on the Purple stage (2nd), then, it would be apparent to them that Beige were doing "bad".

It was like people on the advanced stage see whats going on on the lower stage. there were like 7 stages in spiral dynamics. so lets say when you were on the Red (3rd) or Blue (4th) stage, you could understand whats on the lower stages. It was just like there's no absolute good thing or bad thing in life. it will only depend on your consciousness. its amazing to study it for yourself.

 

[Gabriel Antonio]

Great topic!!

I think a better word than honesty is sincerity. Be honest with yourself. I feel like sincerity means that you are a fucking human being and are suscetible to mistakes. So why on Earth are you going to share "everything" to others? Let me give you an answer in advance: they don't fucking care. Sometimes we use "radical honesty" as a way to be mean to others.  

We have to be honest with ourselves, fully rooted in the body. Or else... BAM! You fall into a huge trap: to live from the outside-in. No, no, no. Let's live from the inside.

I was practicing radical honesty full hard-core in the beginning of this year. I DO NOT RECOMMEND. I destroyed lots of relationships. On the other hand, it was pretty interesting to dive REALLY deep into FEAR. I had some Awakening experiences after some crazy-ass blunt truths. Hahaha... but, seriously, it is so fucking painful... If you want to experience a Rude Awakening, feel free to dive into absolute radical honesty. People will hate you, you will feel crazy.

I feel like we need to be aware of a huge trap in Awakening, which is to get stuck in phase 1, which is the masculine side, you know? The second phase is a very tricky especially for men: be kind to people. A lot of men find this fruity, but it is 10000x than any neurotic highly-disciplined practice. Hahaha... I only exhausted my ego to know that the reason why we are here is to spread loving-attention.  

So, in a way, I feel like you need to use the "mask", you have to "play your role", you know?

Edited September 30, 2017 by Gabriel Antonio