I am always trying to strive to do the most ‘authentic’ thing on the whole as it seems that that is the best thing to do in and of itself, not because I have any particular moral obligation to anyone other than myself but because it works out the best overall. With the case of lying I find mostly, big lies, will usually blow back and whip you in your face so its often not worth doing them as they are counter productive. I woke up today though and realised like a bolt from the blue, that alot of high status people tell white lies to shut people up who were probably asking something they didnt deserve anyhow- mostly just by putting them off or offering promises they have no intention of keeping. When I thoguht about this it occured to me that it is quite authentic to tell lies to people who are not in your ‘tribe’ ie not close to you or you have no obligation to. If someone is pressing you to take up your time on something insignificant and they are perhaps even doing it maliciously in order to divert you for their own selfish purposes- they want something from you- status, power, knowledge whatever…then telling little white lies seems to me perfectly authentic as it is more ‘real’ not to show these people some plastic veneer of coutesy which you are only acting out for the sake of nicety than to give them what they deserve- nada, air, smoke and mirrors. When you tell a white lie and even if you are shown up to be a liar, not being ashamed of it and acting like you dont care is more authentic because the other person was taking a liberty in the first place and you replied by showing you are not going to give them anything of value- one could argue that this would be bad to be ‘shown up’ as it shows you to be duplicitous in front of people you may respect and thus they too might then not trust you but I believe someone of the same status would be aware of what a ‘pest’ such a person would be in the same situation and would empathise with the situation.
I am not talking bit things here but small ‘stretches’ of the truth such as, and this is one Ive known MANY high status people to do, when you begin talking to them they say ‘one sec’ and as you wait there patiently the ‘sec’ never passes and they may have driven away in a car or be on a plane to Kilimanjaro while you look and wonder if your watch has broken. So in instances such as these I think, when it is clear someone is out to ‘waste your time’ then it is perfectly alright to rebuke their requests with a ‘yarn’. As I said above I used to always feel ‘tied’ to having to act very scrupulously to EVERYONE and as such I often find I get the short straw and am left with the bum deal as the other person uses my time unfairly but now in light of these new thoughts I feel it to be quite authentic to act in this way and will not feel the guilt associated with telling white lies to those who are not ‘in my clique’. Those who ARE in my clique I will remain as noble as possible to.
So it’s authentic not to do what some lower class people want you to do?
It is possible for somebody to always be 100% honest and yet never speak truth, for to be true requires enough sense and experience to fully know, not to fully say.
It is possible for somebody to never be honest and yet know all of the truth, realizing that every kind of information released to others has an effect, and carefully choosing the most favorable effect.
To choose the most favorable, compassionate, helpful and progressive effect or result
Is a form of relativism. It’s always different par situation, and requires a sort of creativity.
To always tell the full truth and be 100% “honest”, no matter how harmful or out of place that action is,
That is a form of absolutism. It is so simple that it has no imagination, and is uninventive, disingenous.
A computer “thinks” in absolutes. Its absolute requires a sort of “perfect” exactness.
Some human peoples are so dumb that they also tend to operate around absolutes. That dumbness, however, is the inability to build up new ideas in order to optimize the desirable outcomes and complex effects of applied choices.
Your O.P. seems slightly Romanticist to me, if I were to catagorize you like a robot does, and thus give you a “class”.
To be more “authentic” is allot like being more “natural”. To “be” more “natural”, one must move farther away from human idealism, human control, social limitations, suppression and the unrealistic. Living and being more like the animal, which is flexable and living by its strength, instead of living like the captive, which must restrict itself to what its master commands. The captive must be exact and rigid instead of being strong and “free”. The animal is free because it has no master/owner.
All social creatures have idealisms, control, social limitations, suppressions and masters. To deny this would be unnatural.
You may want humans to all be alpha creatures , but that would be impossible. All social creatures fabricate falseness in one way or another to control social structure. Humans being sentient and ungodly numerous have taken normal natural falseness to new levels. Its not unnatural it is actually an extension of nature to compensate for complex social interactions. For better or for worse we will always be creatures of nature, just more complex socially than our brethren creatures. While the complexity is difficult, unnerving, challenging and repulsive, we still as individuals need it to survive in a human filled environment.
Yes but earlier I was speaking of the use of the word “natural” and “unnatural”.
For example to say an abortion is “unnatural” would be a use of the word.