Sunday, April 06, 2025
In Love honesty must
It is impossible to imagine genuine love
in the absence of honesty. For love to be genuine, it must be an accurate
assessment of particular traits within another human being. If the person that
we claim to “love” constantly lies to us or falsifies his actions, then whatever
perception we have of that person that causes us to love him are incorrect.
Since that which causes us to love is
incorrect, our “love” must thus be invalid. To analogize this, imagine that you
work for me and I pay you in cash. However, when you try to spend your
earnings, you discover that I have paid you with counterfeit bills. As a
result, I have received value through your work, but you have not received
value through my payment. My dishonesty has thus generated a false value for
you, because if you knew that I was going to pay you with counterfeit money,
you would not have worked for me to begin with.
Since the truth would have produced an
opposite action in you – a rejection of employment, rather than an acceptance
of it – your diligent behavior was as unjustified as your interpretation of my
honesty.
In the same way, if I tell you that I am
courageous, and virtuous, yet hide sordid aspects of my life from you, drink in
secret and so on – and you believe me – then you will feel more positive towards
me than if I told you the truth.
Since our emotions are so directly
dependent upon our perceptions and are so foundational to our experience of the
world, someone who lies to us is fundamentally manipulating our experience of
the world.
Since our emotions also alter our bodies
biochemically, a liar who gets close to us manipulates our biochemistry as
surely as if he were drugging us directly.
Thus our own emotional stability, which
is a key part of a peaceful and happy life, requires as a bare minimum general
honesty from those around us.
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