Tell the Truth, or at Least Don’t Lie (12 Rules for Life)

Rule 8 is tell the truth or at least don't lie. And originally that rule was just tell the truth. But then I thought about it, which you should do if the rule is to tell the truth. And I thought, no, you better be careful about putting forward a rule like that. Because to tell the truth implies that you know the truth. And you don't know the truth because you're too ignorant to know the truth. You don't know the truth about anything fully, right? If you push your knowledge out far enough, if I ask you why about something you're doing enough times, it's usually only three or four times by the way, you're out answers. You don't know. And it's the same generally if I ask you how something works. How does a helicopter work? Well, you know, the little whirly things spin and, I don't know, this thing like rock-like entity rises into the air. It's like, really? That's a pretty sad explanation. And, you know, that's kind of the level of detail that you have about a lot of things. So, you know, you're pretty ignorant like everyone else. It's just so, well, there's just so many, there's just too many things to know, you know, and they're detailed and difficult. And so you get by with pretty shallow understanding of most things. And so you can't really tell the truth. But I think you can not lie, you know. And that's not even the same as not being wrong because, of course, you're also going to be wrong and you're going to have stupid theories too. And they're not even necessarily lies. A lie is when you know that what you're saying is not true and you say it anyways. That's a lie. And it's a lie that you've decided yourself on the basis of your own knowledge. That's a lie. You've decided that. That's your own moral judgment. And so I rewrote the rule to suggest that it's not a good idea to say things that you know not to be true. And I would say, by the way, as a practical issue, it's also a worse idea to write things that you don't think are true. Because, you know, your mind is organized at the highest level of abstraction in language. And it's important that your mind is organized. Because if you're not organized, then you're disorganized. And then things don't go well for you in the world. Just like they don't go well for anything that's disorganized. And so you have to be very careful with what you say and what you write. Writing especially. Because it's like it's focused speaking. It's focused speech. It takes more intense thinking. So in some sense, writing is even deeper than speaking. You don't want to speak things that you believe to be untrue. And you certainly don't want to write them. Because that changes you. And it changes you in the direction of the deception that you're undertaking while you do the speaking or the writing. And you might think, now I can write whatever I want. And I can just leave it be. But that's not true. And the reason for that, in part, is because your knowledge is shallow. And so if you take rather shallow knowledge, and then you write something detailed that's false, you end up convincing yourself in all sorts of ways that you don't even notice that what you wrote that was a lie was true. And then you're stuck with that. And it's not stuck with it psychologically exactly, although it's also that. It's stuck with it neurologically. Because when you learn things and you make new connections, you change the structure of your brain. And then that's that. I mean, you know, it's plastic to some degree. But you're messing around with your psychophysiology. And that's a bad idea. And you know it's a bad idea, because you kind of know, like everybody knows, that if you want to get through the world, if you want to get from point A to point B, if you want to get to wherever you're going, it'd be good to have a map. And it'd probably be good to have a map that isn't full of holes and errors. Because otherwise, you're not going to get to where you're going. You might not even know where you are to begin with. And that seems like a bad plan if you're going to undertake a journey. And you are going to undertake a journey, because your life is a journey. So pathologize your speech. Then you pathologize the systems that guide you. And then that relates back to Rule 7, which is, well, you have an instinct for meaning, let's say, and it can guide you. And you need it. And then if you pathologize it by introducing material that you know to be untrue, then you distort and warp and pathologize the very structure, the very feeling that you need to place yourself firmly in the world. And then you can't rely on yourself. And this is a very bad idea, because you need to rely on yourself, especially in situations of crisis, you know, when you have difficult decisions to make. It's like, well, it's not obvious whether I should go right or whether I should go left, right? Because there's a lot riding on both decisions. And so you're sweating it out. Or maybe you have three or four decisions to make at the same time. It's like, you can talk to your friends and all that, but you, you're the guy in the final analysis, man. It comes down to you. And if you can't trust yourself because you filled yourself up with nonsense, then you'll make the wrong decision. And then, hey, maybe you'll pay for it for the rest of your life. And, and maybe you'll deserve to as well. And so it's very, you know, you hear now and then university students say, undergraduates, they say, well, they just, I just write what the professor wants to hear. And then I get a good grade. It's like, first of all, most professors aren't that corrupt. There are corrupt professors, but most of them are not that corrupt. You have to be pretty damn corrupt before you go that far, before a student will hand you something that's well crafted and well thought through, and you'll actually punish them for it. You've gone way off the malevolent end of the academic spectrum when you do that. Now, you know, maybe you're a bit biased and you'll give them a B plus instead of an A, and it's not like that's particularly forgivable, but it's not a catastrophe. But, so I think it's a bit cynical on the part of the undergraduates, usually. But more importantly, it's like, what are you going to do? You're going to do your whole four-year degree and all you're going to do is write what you think your professors want to hear and you think you're going to come out educated? You think you're going to come out the person you were when you went in? It's like, no, you're not, because you've rewritten a different self and you've practiced deceit with regards to your highest moral faculty, right? Your capacity for articulated speech. You've practiced that for four years. And so then definitely when you come out, you're way worse than you were when you went in. And that's not education. That's the antithesis of education. Better not to be there. Better to lay bricks, right? And I have nothing, by the way, against bricklayers. Way to be bricklayers, as far as I'm concerned. But at least they can lay a straight brick wall and it will stand up and there's something honest and solid about that. Much better that than to go and produce written material that your soul isn't in. That's what the damn education system is for, insofar as it's not there to train you professionally. It's to develop you psychologically and spiritually and to turn you into a citizen, into a competent human being. You compromise that because of expediency, an excuse usually. It's a very bad idea. I would highly recommend against never doing it. And I would say the same thing at work whenever. It's very psychologically dangerous to say things you know not to be true. And in part, it is because it warps that instinct for meaning.