Telling the Truth: Struggling vs. Presenting Your Perspective

Telling the Truth: Struggling vs. Presenting Your Perspective

Sam Harris’s Google+ Blog, “The Straight Path, A Conversation with Ronald A. Howard (http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-path-of-honesty) gave rise to some thoughts of my own about the truth.  Below I’ve written a few of my own observations suggested to me by the article.  

• ·      The importance of telling the truth is a factor of either, how old you are, or, alternatively, how long you are going to have a relationship with the person to whom you are speaking.
• ·      If you, as the speaker of truth/or not, have a perception that you will live an indefinite amount of time, or will have an indefinitely long relationship with the person you are potentially lying to, you have a lower likelihood of telling the truth.  I think this is true even of people who usually intend to tell the truth. The key word is relationship.  There is some unknowable correlation between one being more likely to tell the truth to someone with whom you have a relationship and the potential for lying to someone in a one-off transaction.
• ·      There is such a thing as too much truth.  Like your favorite weather conditions, a sunny sky, a cool breeze, a refreshing shower, or a lovely snowfall, too much of any one or more of these conditions will produce undesired results.  Too much truth can work the same way.
• ·      Self-deception is just as potentially destructive to anyone involved, as telling lies.  Whether the people you are dealing with detect the truth about you or not, whatever you say regarding that self-deception, and particularly, any actions you take based on it are more likely to have adverse results. 

It is not enough to intend to speak the truth, most of the time.  Everyone is better off if we tell the truth, even if it can put us in awkward situations.  We might even find that we have fewer awkward situations if we tell the truth more often.  Even well intentioned lies can have adverse consequences.  Often these consequences follow later, when they are most inconvenient.

The Economic Compass Needle

     When an American is unemployed he is counted in the national "Unemployment Rate" which was reported, Friday, April 5th, as 7.6%.  NPR reported that rate along with the proviso that only job-seekers are counted as unemployed.  Those who choose to retire, whether formally or informally, or otherwise give-up on searching for a new job because they are frustrated by a general lack of response, are no longer counted as "unemployed" by the Labor Department.  Does this mean that those people don't count?  No, it just means that they are not included in that primary economic indicator, "the Unemployment Rate", one of the most significant indicators used by economists, and therefore, government officials and the media, to show whether the "Economy" is getting better or getting worse.
     Who cares if the "Economy" is getting better or getting worse?  The answer to this is more complicated than who is counted as unemployed.  In brief, banks, Wall St. traders, stock and bond holders, the government, and much of the mass media sometimes treat the economic direction like that is all that counts.  If the unemployment rate is declining, the economy is improving.  So when the "Unemployment Rate" calculation is adjusted by adding or removing whole groups of unemployed people, like who is looking for a job because they believe they can still find one versus those who are temporarily disheartened, the bean counters are playing with numbers that make a difference to a lot of people.
      This means take heart, fellow unemployed job seekers!  Those times when there is no HR assistant calling you to schedule an interview, nor any recruiter seeking to make money by connecting you to your next position, remember that you are still an important cog in the wheel of the national economy because you are still seeking a job.  You are vital as an economic indicator; monetary gauge to the most respected, influential, and powerful people in the world.