Humanity -- or rather, the entire culture and society written into our very genes -- is not about honesty. We say what we don't mean to people, who dutifully lie to us in return, and we rest easy in our tenuous mutual pleasantness. I am, sad to say, a liar, quite fundamentally. Tempering my words is second nature to me, and concocting excuses and reasons for my behavior -- accurate or not -- comes as natural as breathing.
It's a lot of mental time wasted, a lot of processing power devoted to non-core tasks, and it's all for no better reason than to try and insure social self-comfort. Do any of us have the strength to live wholly true? I suppose, but we call them antisocial and eccentric even as we call them geniuses.
Next question, then: If we all were as absolutely, fundamentally true as the mad geniuses among us, could we even exist as a species? Would it make us fundamentally healthier, finally breaking us out of the dysfunctional ghosts that have haunted us as a species since our creation, or would we merely hasten our own eradication? And even if the latter, what grand things might we accomplish?
Could I have written this more succinctly? Used smaller words? Is every word that I type here analyzed to be a perfect and honest act of communication of the ideas contained in the words, or am I deceptively trying to communicate other things about myself even as I pretend to be talking about just one thing? Am I trying to convince you that I'm smart? Funny? Eloquent? Have these thoughts entered my mind, flickering in the background, even as I pretend to concentrate entirely on the topic at hand? Of course they have. Is that a lie? Perhaps. Maybe all these arty words are just husk and chaff at the end of the day. Maybe the real genius, the truly honest man, would have said in two blunt sentences what it's taken me paragraphs to communicate. I'm not like that. I'm a liar.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
It's a lot of mental time wasted, a lot of processing power devoted to non-core tasks, and it's all for no better reason than to try and insure social self-comfort. Do any of us have the strength to live wholly true? I suppose, but we call them antisocial and eccentric even as we call them geniuses.
Next question, then: If we all were as absolutely, fundamentally true as the mad geniuses among us, could we even exist as a species? Would it make us fundamentally healthier, finally breaking us out of the dysfunctional ghosts that have haunted us as a species since our creation, or would we merely hasten our own eradication? And even if the latter, what grand things might we accomplish?
Could I have written this more succinctly? Used smaller words? Is every word that I type here analyzed to be a perfect and honest act of communication of the ideas contained in the words, or am I deceptively trying to communicate other things about myself even as I pretend to be talking about just one thing? Am I trying to convince you that I'm smart? Funny? Eloquent? Have these thoughts entered my mind, flickering in the background, even as I pretend to concentrate entirely on the topic at hand? Of course they have. Is that a lie? Perhaps. Maybe all these arty words are just husk and chaff at the end of the day. Maybe the real genius, the truly honest man, would have said in two blunt sentences what it's taken me paragraphs to communicate. I'm not like that. I'm a liar.
Makes you think.