truth, respect and freedom
'and this potion won't help anyone,
to try and tell the truth...'
to tell someone an important truth about oneself is an act of trust in the other person. or, better, it is an act of entrusting oneself to the person. to withhold the truth about oneself, or to lie outright, is frequently a way of putting up a wall between the 'real me' and the me that is seen and perceived. thus, to withhold the truth, or to lie outright, is a common strategy for keeping oneself from being exposed and vulnerable.
conversely, to tell an important truth is to make oneself vulnerable, and hence to express faith that the other person will respond correctly to one's vulnerability -that the other person will show the proper care, make the right effort, not betray one's trust. and to have such faith in others is to respect them. this is one reason why we can be hurt if we feel that a friend is withholding from us some important truths about himself: it can seem that the friend is not willing to entrust himself to us, and hence it can seem that he does not trust us to respond correctly, that he lacks faith in our ability to understand or respond to him.
if what is at issue is not a truth about oneself, but something more general or a even truth about the other person, then truth-telling can be connected to respect in other ways. in talking about her own resolution to tell the truth, a friend recently put the point to me this way: other people are worth it. they are worthy of the truth, no matter how difficult that may be. to tell someone else the truth is to respect her as someone who is able to work out her own life in confrontation with the full truth, whatever that might turn out to be.
another friend put it to me like this: to tell someone is a lie is to cut him off from reality, if only in a small way. insofar as another person accepts my lies, then i have put up a barrier between them and what is actually the case, a wall between them and the real world.
behind both if these formulations, i think, is a point about freedom. it is fitting that a human being be free, and that freedom is a great value. to be free is to be able to direct oneself, to determine one's course rather than be determined from without. moreover, a freedom that is truly valuable (and, we might say, a freedom properly so called) involves one's ability to direct oneself in the right way, to choose for the right reasons. what makes something the right reason, however, is its connection to the good. and the kind of freedom we value is the freedom to choose what is good. at this point, however, the role of truth is crucial: the good cannot be chosen as such unless we know the truth about ourselves and our situation. the point is so obvious that it is strange to say: we cannot choose what is good -and hence we cannot be truly free- unless we know what is good, and we cannot know what is good unless we know what is truth. hence, we cannot be truly free unless we know the truth. thus, to tell someone the full truth, to allow her a confrontation with the whole truth, is to respect her as someone worthy of freely choosing for herself.
the above paragraph is painfully abstract, but what i have in mind is commonplace, even ubiquitous. don't we often fail to give people the whole truth, because we think they could not really handle it? because they wouldn't be able to understand? because the lie helps them to cope with life?
of course, the fact that something is true about another person doesn't in itself give us good reason to tell it to him. and every child learns quickly that telling the truth can easily be an act of manipulation or domination or cruelty. but what i am saying is this: to the extent to which we withhold important, relevant truths from other people, we deny them the privelage of fully and freely confronting what is real. and in doing this, we may quite likely be patronizing them and tacitly disrespecting them as a rational, free beings.
in thinking about what truth to share with another person, a good test might be this: if such a truth were not shared with us, would we feel disrespected or patronized? and if we have a reason for not sharing the truth with someone, is that a reason we would accept for ourselves if we were in his place?
to try and tell the truth...'
to tell someone an important truth about oneself is an act of trust in the other person. or, better, it is an act of entrusting oneself to the person. to withhold the truth about oneself, or to lie outright, is frequently a way of putting up a wall between the 'real me' and the me that is seen and perceived. thus, to withhold the truth, or to lie outright, is a common strategy for keeping oneself from being exposed and vulnerable.
conversely, to tell an important truth is to make oneself vulnerable, and hence to express faith that the other person will respond correctly to one's vulnerability -that the other person will show the proper care, make the right effort, not betray one's trust. and to have such faith in others is to respect them. this is one reason why we can be hurt if we feel that a friend is withholding from us some important truths about himself: it can seem that the friend is not willing to entrust himself to us, and hence it can seem that he does not trust us to respond correctly, that he lacks faith in our ability to understand or respond to him.
if what is at issue is not a truth about oneself, but something more general or a even truth about the other person, then truth-telling can be connected to respect in other ways. in talking about her own resolution to tell the truth, a friend recently put the point to me this way: other people are worth it. they are worthy of the truth, no matter how difficult that may be. to tell someone else the truth is to respect her as someone who is able to work out her own life in confrontation with the full truth, whatever that might turn out to be.
another friend put it to me like this: to tell someone is a lie is to cut him off from reality, if only in a small way. insofar as another person accepts my lies, then i have put up a barrier between them and what is actually the case, a wall between them and the real world.
behind both if these formulations, i think, is a point about freedom. it is fitting that a human being be free, and that freedom is a great value. to be free is to be able to direct oneself, to determine one's course rather than be determined from without. moreover, a freedom that is truly valuable (and, we might say, a freedom properly so called) involves one's ability to direct oneself in the right way, to choose for the right reasons. what makes something the right reason, however, is its connection to the good. and the kind of freedom we value is the freedom to choose what is good. at this point, however, the role of truth is crucial: the good cannot be chosen as such unless we know the truth about ourselves and our situation. the point is so obvious that it is strange to say: we cannot choose what is good -and hence we cannot be truly free- unless we know what is good, and we cannot know what is good unless we know what is truth. hence, we cannot be truly free unless we know the truth. thus, to tell someone the full truth, to allow her a confrontation with the whole truth, is to respect her as someone worthy of freely choosing for herself.
the above paragraph is painfully abstract, but what i have in mind is commonplace, even ubiquitous. don't we often fail to give people the whole truth, because we think they could not really handle it? because they wouldn't be able to understand? because the lie helps them to cope with life?
of course, the fact that something is true about another person doesn't in itself give us good reason to tell it to him. and every child learns quickly that telling the truth can easily be an act of manipulation or domination or cruelty. but what i am saying is this: to the extent to which we withhold important, relevant truths from other people, we deny them the privelage of fully and freely confronting what is real. and in doing this, we may quite likely be patronizing them and tacitly disrespecting them as a rational, free beings.
in thinking about what truth to share with another person, a good test might be this: if such a truth were not shared with us, would we feel disrespected or patronized? and if we have a reason for not sharing the truth with someone, is that a reason we would accept for ourselves if we were in his place?
posted by micah at 6:06 PM
1 Comments:
i have enjoyed these posts, since transparency, authenticity, and truth-telling are some of my favorite topics (and, in many cases, virtues). there are a couple thoughts that have come up as i read this and the previous post.
i think that to grow in the quality of appropriate transparency and vulnerability, one has to work it out in the real messiness of human relationships. meaning--the way i have started to learn to discern who can be trusted with certain truths about myself is to actually try it out. and sometimes someone i expected to respond well actually responds poorly, and vice versa. and sometimes there's a learning curve for people to realize how to best care for someone in the midst of their vulnerability.
anyway, i just feel like it's important to risk being vulnerable with people; otherwise we run the risk of writing everyone off and sticking to a comfort zone of hiddenness, by telling ourselves we don't think they could "handle" our truths. (i'm not saying our truths need to be told to everyone, but i do think there needs to be some real risk taking.)
also, i'm struggling some with the language in this post about the responsibility of telling people the truth about themselves. like, speaking truth about the other's character and whatnot. it is mostly the labeling of it as "truth" that somewhat concerns me. because, although certain things might be obvious and concrete in another person and readily observable (e.g., you are drunk every night of the week), some truths are not.
i have been in situations before where someone approached me to tell me the "truth" about myself, only to project onto me their own issues and misperceptions. this has been very hurtful. so i think it is dangerous for us to casually say that we know the "truth" about another person, and that we can then reveal it to them.
in some cases this is certainly true; and i have benefitted from times people who love me and know me tell me the truth about myself. but i feel like a high degree of humility is necessary in these situations--and perhaps that humility should start with not calling our perception of the person "truth" but rather, simply, our perception. or maybe that doesn't give enough weight to it? i dunno. interesting to think about.
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