Radical Honesty
If you think to yourself "oh, I'll be dead anyway, who cares?", then why was it so important to lie? Just tell the truth, you'll be dead anyway, who cares.
I believe in something I made up called “radical honesty” which is actually just honesty. It isn't really radical in its own right, it's only radical because dishonesty is so culturally normalized in the world today. But really, we need to stop lying to one another and ourselves if we want to pass something worthwhile onto our children.
At every moment you must choose how to behave. What you choose is the final choice. The decisions you make, no matter how small will impact the feasibility of every future moment you live, and every future moment of this planet. You are a big deal in that regard. Your truth is like gold, but the lies you tell are like meteor showers destroying the integrity of the information ecology required to achieve togetherness, and our shared dreams all the way up to and beyond world peace and the feasibility of life on Earth.
In order to make decisions you must operate within an information ecology. If the information ecology that you have to work with is full of lies and deception how can you make impactful and meaningful decisions? The same is true for the information ecology you produce. If you can't be honest how can other people act in your best interest and the best interest of the planet?
Personal Relationships: If you succeed in your relationships by lying about your intentions or values, your whole personal life becomes a mirage. It's fake. When the person in this relationship with you starts to see the cracks in your facade, you have to work ten times harder to prove yourself or prove them wrong and eventually your behaviours lead to pain and suffering for everyone involved.
Business: If you prosper at business by deceiving your customers about your expertise, virtues, hiding the truth, you will eventually need to back up your inflated claims with real action and tangible results. If you can't do this, you will need to engage in even more deception and lies to support your predicament just to keep your reputation in check. This is unsustainable and obviously a lot of work for no authentic benefit to anyone, not even you.
Government: If you achieve political supremacy through secret deals, coercive control, manipulation and oppression of your people you may have your glory days or decades, but it will only be a timespan before the true history books will emerge no matter how many times you burn the libraries or annihilate populations. Eventually your power will be removed, and you will have to face your fate and disgrace.
You might disagree with me. It might seem like you're escaping the flames or avoiding capture in these deceptive games and you think, I'm willing to take my chances. But, eventually your lies will catch up with you. It's not just the personal repercussions, deception literally damages the information ecology of every future moment, causing repercussions well beyond your own selfish concerns.
Your deception is embedded in future states, within the order of lies you’ve created. This will eventually return to chaos and your deception will be exposed. Why discount the whole of existence to favour your own deceptive benefit for a short sliver of time? The math doesn't add up, does it?
If you think to yourself "oh, I'll be dead anyway, who cares?", then why was it so important to lie? Just tell the truth, you'll be dead anyway, who cares.
Embracing radical honesty is the only way to heal personal, cultural and societal narcissism. Set healthy boundaries around deceptive behaviour. It's your choice to participate, the more we normalize moving towards radical truth, the less acceptable codependent narcissism becomes. Don't be afraid to tell someone the truth. With the truth we can work together to achieve actual tangible goals. The awkwardness or pain of reality is infinitely more workable and less disruptive to future existence.
Let's do it! You know you can do it! Radical Truth!
Examples of Radical Truth you might ponder:
“Yes we are aware Israel is committing genocide and pursuing plans to expand the state”
“Yes we are aware that First Nations peoples have been brutalized by colonialism and they DO actually deserve their property back”
That’s enough to get the ball rolling.