This post is part of series on how the media world we live in today is a Sorcerer State, based on manipulating and controlling people primarily by persuasion rather than force. I maintain that this persuasion model violates some of the most basic laws of effective communication and change work.
In this post I am looking at the Law of Truth, Honesty and Trust.
There are two dimensions to this Law, and they are inter-related.
– First, there is the nature of words and thinking, their relation to creation and to reality as we affect it and experience it.
– Second is how our use of words affects the nature of inter-personal relationships.
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The corporate media today is based on a model of the world which is all persuasion and no truth – or rather, it is operating on the premise that reality can be whatever we wish it to appear to be – that reality is like a TV or computer screen, and we can do whatever we want with the contents.
It has effectively lost all notion of underlying truthfulness, or of there being some sort of actual truth that can be checked against. This can be easily seen in how very often the media broadcasts stories to have a particular persuasive effect, which are found to be complete fiction – not even a biased presentation of fact, but based on no facts at all.
There is a flaw in the underlying philosophy at work here. Awareness of this problem goes back to the writings of Plato/Socrates. The dialog named First Alcibiades has for its subject the difference between philosophy and rhetoric, language used to convey truth or to persuade. The point is made that focusing on persuasion with no regard for truth or for any kind of underlying moral values is questionable at best and very dangerous at worst. We see the fallout from persuasion without truth in the state of the corporate media today, which seems to be in the process of imploding in on itself from a collapse of trust in the truthfulness of the media message.
You hear much in our culture about persuasion, and influencing, and making a good impression, putting on a good face, on marketing and on image. The whole focus is on how you want to appear, with no emphasis on underlying reality. It is all mask with nothing behind the mask.
Plato makes the point in First Alcibiades that is is dangerous to concentrate on persuasion skills until you have a solid sense of underlying values. The young man in the dialog very much wanted to be a political leader and was focused on persuading people he could lead, but he had given no thought to what his values were, or what was true of false, or what direction would be best to go. This is wanting to be a leader with no direction, just to be able to say you are a leader. People like that end up being very easily corrupted by promises of power and wealth – just say what we tell you and you can have the world at your feet. When the power of being a leader is itself the goal with no larger context that quickly devolves to lowest-common-denominator selfishness.
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Another dimension of this issue is about the power of words, and how words are used in creation. Numerous religious and philosophical traditions speak of the Logos, or God creating by his Word, You can make the case that in Taoist philosophy the concept of Tao or the Way is analogous to that of the Word – Chinese translations of the Gospel of John say, In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God, and so on.
It is very important to realize that this creative power is not arbitrary. The universe operates within laws, so it is not a matter of, it is true because God said so, but, God must create what is true. Philosophically this is known as the difference between realism and nominalism – realism says there is an underlying reality to creation by word, and nominalism says that creation can be arbitrary. The modern approach to persuasion/marketing/reality is nominalist – it is true because I say so.
The point I am making here is that the universe operates in realist terms. it is not arbitrary, and has underlying laws and structure. When we create, we must abide by those laws, and the power of our words directly reflects how they correspond with those laws.
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For the individual – thoughts have power, and how you think goes far to determine the world you experience. Since thoughts have power you are bound by them and by their consequences – the kinds of things you think, the thoughts and images you hold in your mind, shape you. This shows how the mind has a great deal of power but it is not arbitrary; there are laws.
it makes sense then that working on thinking as clearly and truthfully as possible is good for your mental health, and leads to your thoughts being clear and powerful. It also makes sense that to use deliberate falsehood and deception robs your words of power.
Think about ignoring truth and concentrating just on persuasion and appearance – we see a great deal of that in the media and political sphere these days, people whose speeches and actions are all tailored towards marketing and appearance with no regard to underlying truth. If you do that for any length of time you lose the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood, between reality and desired appearance – lay down a line of jive and you will inevitably buy your own jive. Get in the habit of lying to persuade and you get caught up in believing the lies.
Our thoughts, our words, are part of our inner connection to God and to the depths of our own souls. It is related to our intuition and conscience, a guiding voice of the divine within us. Live in a world of deliberate falsehood and you blur over and eventually lose that inner . It rots the soul out from within, so that eventually you have people who are all image and no substance, a shell with nothing behind it. It rots out any sense of internal coherence and personhood. When you have lost that inner rational and spiritual coherence then all that is left is the lowest level of physical and animal sensations, desires and instincts – which in turn makes you a sucker for other’s manipulation.
There is also a self-defeating loop here – concentrate on persuasion and marketing with no regard for truth and that robs your words and actions of all their real power. This turns into a vicious escalating spiral – as you lose control the tendency is to double down on the persuasion and marketing, with no regard for truth – and with zero respect for the people you are trying to control.
That’s the nub – manipulation with no regard for truth shows a profound contempt and lack of respect – for others – and, for yourself. Once people figure that out you are in trouble.
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This is where the inter-personal dimension comes in.
In the study of persuasion and salesmanship one of the core principles for long term success is building relationships, building a reputation for truth and reliability. It is not just a matter of lip-service to say that the best sales people are those who sincerely do operate with the best interest of their clients in mind, who would never take advantage of a customer to close a quick sale and make a quick buck. That may work in the short term, but long-term it is self-defeating.
Any persuasion relationship has to be built on a basis of truth and trustfulness. Once that trust in broken – once a person has figured out that they are being lied to or manipulated – then you have lost all credibility and your ability to persuade drops to zero.
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So what do we as individuals do about this problem? How do we navigate?
Value truth and honesty over reputation and appearance – in my experience this is much, much more difficult than you realize – until your thinking and exploration takes you into areas that are off-limits to the mainstream consensus. I’ve discovered over the past several years that I have mental guard-rails set up in my mind – when I would start to explore in questionable areas I would get a mental warning sign and a flash of tension, like a red warning light saying, don’t go here – don’t even think this – it could get you in trouble. In the past I have nicknamed these mental land-mines, placed there to make sure that certain topics were off limits. It wasn’t until I pushed past those warning signals and did my own thinking, that I realized how thoroughly my thinking had been constricted. This in turn created serious problems communicating with people who still had those mental land-mines in place – touching on some topics felt like setting off an explosion.
I’ve been writing online for well over a decade now, and I can’t count the number of times I have started to write something and then thought, wait – this could hurt your reputation – you can’t say anything that will turn people off. It is a kind of hard-wired self-censorship that is hard to become aware of. I also noticed that in situations like that there was often a kind of inner imperative there, pushing me to write exactly in those areas – sometimes I would be writing in response to an inner prompting while simultaneously thinking, oh, man, don’t make me write about this; you’ll get me in trouble.
The best way I know of to become aware of this is to pay attention to your own thought processes, and your emotional reactions to news – and what kinds of thoughts run through your mind before you decide to speak – or to stay silent.
When you start to question parts of the news, pay attention to your motives, your feelings – are you thinking, I can’t go there, it will get me in trouble; What will my (fill in the blank) think?
Thinking for yourself sounds easy until you try it.
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Another very important milestone is to be willing to admit where you have been fooled and taken advantage of. Be willing to admit you have made mistakes, have been told lies and have bought them. Again, this can be much harder than it sounds until you are faced with it, and get that ugly sinking feeling where you would do anything rather than admit that. This is particularly difficult where you have said things in public that you figure out were false.
Get some good recipes for eating crow; you will need them.
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In my experience there is also a scary point where you realize that a lot of the authorities you have trusted through your life are corrupt, so that you cannot rely on anyone else, any institution or expert, to do your thinking for you. There is a funny sort of free-fall moment where you realize you are responsible for your own decisions, and your own thinking. Past a certain point there is no-one left to blame and no-place to shift the responsibility. Whether you were misled or not, you are responsible for the consequences of the decisions you made.
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To move past the persuasion model we need to be willing to dialog, be willing to let people disagree without your having the need to judge them or cut them off. Again, this can be a lot harder than it sounds, especially in your personal hot-button areas.
We are so trained into an adversarial model of relating to others, the binary right/wrong model, that getting past that can take work and feel really uncomfortable – I know it does for me.
It is very important to allow other people to think for themselves. to allow that there can be areas where they are right and you are wrong, or that it is more likely a mixed bag where neither side is all right or wrong. Or, sometimes you may have areas where you are convinced you are right, and you need to allow people the freedom to disagree, without rancor or judgment. That is hard.
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Learn to think. Get a good dictionary, and get in the habit of defining important words. Learn to recognize when language is being used on you to obfuscate and manipulate rather than inform. That is not a quick process; it takes work and awareness, and it is very different from the sort of thinking we are trained to do in school, which is largely a matter of rote memorization and parroting back the expected response if you want to get ahead. That is a hard habit to break.
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Choose your news sources carefully. if you agree with me here about the corporate media, now that they have lost authority and credibility, it means you can no longer rely on credentials in choosing your news. The people I now follow online have proved their veracity and trustworthiness to me over time, so I now rely on them, which does not mean I agree with all they say. Over the years I have followed and then discarded multiple news sources, and I now have a small handful of people I read regularly who are my main sources of news.
If you learn from experience that a news source has lied to you to manipulate you – that is a big red flag. Drop it; do not assume that because you are aware of their manipulation in that one area, that you are not being hoodwinked in others. It is so very easy to fall into the trap of thinking you are too smart to be fooled like that. Whatever media you ingest affects your mind, and much of that effect is outside your conscious awareness.
Manipulative media is toxic and brainwashing; avoid it, it is dangerous – And no, you are not above being fooled because you are too intelligent. Some of the most thoroughly brainwashed people I know are the most credentialed and degreed.
If you place a lot of value on credentials, be careful; given the disillusionment going on with authority and trustworthiness, those credentials no longer mean what they used to. By now, my favorite and most trustworthy news sources ares un-credentialed outsider types who have no academic cred. I have to judge sources by their inherent worth rather than their credentials or labeling.
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This next point may be the hardest part – being honest with yourself.
Sometimes there is a price to be paid for stepping outside of popular opinions and being honest. Ask yourself if you are willing to pay it – and don’t bother equivocating, because if you lie here you are only lying to yourself – and if you lie to yourself you will never know what trust means – because if you are lying you will have to assume that everyone else is lying also, and that will destroy any real friendship.
If you get in the habit of lying to yourself you are proving you can’t trust yourself – and if you can’t trust yourself, how can you expect anyone else to trust you?
How in the world can you possibly find the sorts of friends you would like to have if you aren’t honest with others? If you are putting up a false front, then how can anyone figure out who you really are?
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We are reaping the consequences of living in a society that places manipulation and persuasion above respect for truth and for others. That world is falling apart around us, and going forward we need to rediscover the importance of the ironclad, unbreakable laws of honesty, truthfulness and trust.
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Image by M. Richter from Pixabay.