Is it our nature to lie? Is it a sign of our exceptional mammalian intelligence when we find creative ways to deceive? Is it normal for higher lifeforms to put up a facade during social interactions?
If people do not lie, everyone would be more willing to accept the uglier side of humanity. Pedophiles would be slightly more acceptable, mass murderers would be more understood and rapists would be more pitied and less reviled.
But we do lie. Oh yes we all do lie. No one is an exception. This is a law far more powerful than the Rule 34 of the Internet. We lie from a young age for all sorts of purposes. Most of us eventually learn the various consequences of deception, but we do not stop. We continue to lie to others, lie to ourselves.
"Be truthful" - a virtue, a fictional, unreachable goal that one can attain only after their deaths, because for humans, only dead bodies cannot lie (watch CSI :P).
We have been avoiding the truth for so long, all of us are adapted to dishonesty. No one likes people who tell them the truth all the time. Fortune-tellers rarely tell the whole truth, except for the better (and more accurate) ones. In a relationship, neither side wants the opposite sex to tell them their actual thoughts all the time. Lies help in our social environment in so many ways, it is sad.
It is compulsory for everyone to evade the truth, or at the very least, sugar-coat it. We never act the way we feel like acting, do the things we feel like doing. We act the way we want others to see us, do the things we want others to associate us with.
We smile when we want to kill someone.
We act friendly when all we want is to gtfo.
We joke when we actually do want to tell the truth.
We persuade through the fabrication of falsehoods.
It is commonly believed that without religion, most people wouldn't be as good as they are now. Thus these "most people" do good deeds so that they can reap rewards in their afterlife.
Only in 4chan have I ever seen true, brutal honesty (but not always).
Only when there is no consequence to saying the truth can I ever witness such lack of fiction where I expected lies.
Only when we do not need to worry about others' impression of us can we ever stop wearing masks.
To advocate honesty is hypocrisy. Hypocrites are celebrated among humankind.
No comments:
Post a Comment