Truthfulness, 6-27-2010

 One can tell the truth and not be truthful. I divided my life into compartments - lawyer, habitué of Muncie crack houses being the basic splits of the last few years of my freedom. The walls began falling and too mixed up, and my life became an intolerable mess.

Reading Book IV of the Nicomachean Ethics makes me think I should not be classed as a decent person:

For we do not mean swomeone who is truthful in agreements in mattersw of justic and injustice, since these concern a different virtue, but someone who is truthful both in what he says and how he lives, when nothing about justice is at stake, simply because that is his state of character. Someone with this character seems to be a decent person. For a lovver of the truth who is truthful even when nothing is at stake will be still known to tell the truth when somethng is at stake, since he will avoid falsehood as shameful {when something is at stake], having alread avoided it in itself {when nothng is at stake}. This sort of person is praiseworthy....

I say that describes what I lacked, as well as politicians and Wall Street bankers. I cannot claim any originality.

Who in public life do we reward for their truthfulness? Why not? Consider those questions and your answers carefully. We are the public who reward politicians for their truthfulness, and the public who politicians fear to tell the truth. 

I merely feared telling my ex-wife, family, and friends of how worthless I was. Which leads now to what I think is the truly important question for you: why do you fear the truth, the reality of the world, so much that you punish those who tell you the truth?

Consider these words from Sirach, 4, 25-26:

Never gainsay the truth, and struiggle not against the rushing stream. Be not ashamed to acknowledge your guilt, but of your ignornace rather be ashamed.

sch

[I typed this up after the January 6 Committee recommended former President Donald J. Trump for criminal prosecution. KH and I were discussing him the other day, we both agree he was never that good of a con man. Why did - do - people find him truthful? That seems an important question. sch 12/22/22.]