Honesty and Moralism
What does it mean to speak the truth?
Perhaps it could be illustrated in a lot of paradigms.
I had a profound reaction to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote:
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Learning to develop a sense of self, i.e. genuine confidence, seems to depend upon how great we feel in our own skin.
And what could inspire more confidence than the truth?
I feel that we too often cling onto dogmas and ideologies that have not been verified, and are taken at face value like various colors or shades.
If we must affirm a truth, let it be one that actually works for us.
Have you gotten that feeling before that, in talking to a person, everything you’re saying is getting rebutted as if you’re arguing with them?
And more importantly, do you ever feel that a person’s words are leading you to the conclusion they want to get from you?
For it seems futile to deal with people who are dishonestly playing word games, or those who seek to manipulate you with discussion.
I yearn for those who are honest — those who are sincere and willing to challenge the most popular ideas, analyze them, and make sense of them.
In our era, there is a lot of blame passed around, a lot of moralism.
You want acceptance, you want peace, you want the truth.
But the truth belongs to those who are truthful, not those who play games with your feelings.
You want a discussion with someone, but they seek to shame you for having the wrong opinion.
Yet if you ask them about their opinion, they will simply deflect and say that you’re the one who should change.
This is a form of psychological and linguistic gaslighting.
Be mindful of those who get power from you and expect you to do things because they say so.
I am trying to get at an important point — talking to people in bad faith is self-destructive, therefore the only good discourse is in good faith. If someone takes you seriously, they will be sincere with you, and share their real self.
And once you open the door to healthy, honest discussion, and take away the moralism of it, you realize that there’s a lot to understand in its original context and outside of it too.
One must learn how to ABSTRACT somehow, for if they don’t, they may forever be entrapped in false dogmas.
I might say religion can be a false dogma, but God is not.
I might say philosophy can be a false dogma, but the Truth is not.
I might say ethics can be a false dogma, but what is Good is not.
And in this sense, I am trying to establish a discourse that seeks to understand a truth, and yet THE truth, all in one essence.
We are vessels of truth, and that is all that matters.
Thank you.
