The Need for Truth in Politics, Business and Personal Relationships

Lying appears to be becoming an acceptable means to an end.

Some weeks ago we watched the balloon boy hoax motivated by the desire for money and stardom. It didn’t much matter to the perpetrators the effect their stunt might have on other people.

They weren’t concerned about the mobilization and cost of resources and manpower. They were concerned about getting publicity, by whatever means necessary, in order to further their career ambitions and financial aspirations.

Ethics. Responsibility. Not in their personal dictionary of words to live by.

A few days ago we watched a couple  lie their way into the White House and shake President Obama’s hand, in the hopes that their stunt would catapult them into the fame and fortune of reality television.

Both of these events reflect a disturbing trend in our society, a downward spiral into hypocrisy, deception and self-absorption with a total disregard for the concerns of others, in order to further one’s own personal agenda, usually motivated by selfishness and greed.

And it’s now moving beyond promotional pranks.

Religious leaders are advocating breaking laws they don’t agree with. Radical militia groups are on the rise, encouraging Americans to arm themselves against the United States government should the time come when it’s somehow decided that overthrowing the government is in their best interests.

All of this is not particularly encouraging, especially at a time when the world needs truth,  compassion, empathy, responsibility, cooperation and commitment to ethics and ideals.

This is not a time for regression to greater lawlessness, chaos and violence.

So what do we do about it?

We need to discourage the abuse. Breaking the law to increase ratings and profit margins needs to be prosecuted, at the individual level and at the corporate level.

Most people are like little children who don’t stop bad behavior unless they are punished. They don’t care about the effects of their actions on others. They want what they want and they want it now.

Point being: Most people will not stop their bad behavior until it is in their best interests to do so. It won’t be in their best interests to do so until they see that there are severe consequences to actions that are illegal and unethical.

Boundaries, which are necessary to limit chaos and degenerate behaviors, need to be re-set, re-established and consistently reinforced. If we are to survive this century, it is critical that the wild west mentality which is brewing and stewing be dampened by individual and group commitment to democracy, justice, rules of law, and, above all, truth.

Which means that each us should look at the opportunities in our lives to speak out against lies and hypocrisy when it is staring us in the face.

Each of us should look at the opportunities in our lives to make choices in our daily transactions with others which better reflect our commitment to honesty, honor, integrity, fairness, and compassion.

The most important place for us to look for opportunities to nurture truth is in our personal relationships.

It is so very easy to bend the truth in order to make ourselves be perceived by others in a better light. This is short-sighted.

We make assumptions about the thoughts and actions of our partners, based perhaps on the way they’ve behaved in the past, on our harbored resentments, or on denials and misconceptions about ourselves. This is short-sighted as well.

If we are put off in some way by our partner, it behooves us to engage our partner in dialogue, to communicate our concerns, and to get clarification of motives and actions so that we don’t jump to conclusions, create new resentments and generate more barriers to connection and intimacy.

In summary: In order to rebuild the ethical foundations  of our institutions so that they will stand the test of time and fear, we must rebuild the ethical foundations of our personal relationships.

We must re-infuse our relationships with truth and integrity by communicating verbally, non-verbally, and by our actions a renewed commitment to mutual respect, consideration, empathy, and generosity, with a focus on nurturing peaceful, cooperative solutions to conflicting needs for the greatest good of all concerned.

Giving Thanks and Transforming The World

Today, Thanksgiving Day, we honor cooperation, peace, sharing, support, gratitude and giving.

But do we truly honor these ideals if we nurture them but one day a year? Do we truly honor these ideals if we don’t put them into practice on a daily basis?

Truth be told, our thanks are hollow if we do not choose love, sharing and cooperation every day in every decision we make in our lives.

To truly honor the ideals of Thanksgiving and to be consistent with the principles of love and peaceful coexistence, it would behoove us to do more than simply praise and celebrate the symbology one day a year.

Were we to do this, were each of us to choose to be grateful for what we’ve got and to share our blessings with others less fortunate on a daily basis, we would generate an abundance of joy and love in our lives that would help transform this sick, decaying world we’ve toxified and corrupted.

That being said, let’s make a resolution to give thanks not just today but everyday, and to find some way, everyday, to make the world brighter and better for one of our fellow travelers.

The value of truth, facts and logic in problem solving

I was looking for an identification card. I was certain I hadn’t thrown it away. Unfortunately, I had put it someplace where I could not find it.

I presumed I had placed it in a particular desk drawer, but having gone through the contents of the drawer twice already, and quite carefully, I was starting to wonder if I had indeed thrown it away accidentally.

That concept only lasted a few seconds. I knew there was no way I had tossed that card. This left me with the unpleasant awareness that the card was somewhere in my house and that I had to keep looking.

As I was about to embark on my search, leaving the desk drawer in the dust despite knowing that the desk drawer was the most obvious and rational place I would have put the card, I recalled something that had happened when I was looking through the desk drawer’s contents the second go-around.

While searching for the card I noticed that a software CD had found its way into an envelope containing entirely unrelated materials.

I removed it from the envelope to avoid future confusion when down the road I would be looking for that CD. But I hadn’t thought much else of it at the time.

Suddenly the thought popped into my head: If the CD found its way into an unrelated envelope, then it’s possible that the I.D. card I’m looking for could also have found its way into an unrelated envelope, and that before moving into my Nicholas Cage seeking national treasure mode, I should go through the desk drawer contents one more time.

As I picked up in my hands the entire contents of the drawer to put it on top of the desk and give myself more space to do the job meticulously, I spotted the I.D. card!

It had cleverly wedged itself against the inside front wall of the drawer making it invisible to anybody looking for it unless they first removed all the contents of the drawer like I had just done.

Problem solved. Thanks to Arthur Conan Doyle I might add. One thing that always struck me about Sherlock Holmes was his insistence that truth be treasured for the factual foundation that it provides, and not be ignored, denied or distorted.

The truth was that I had to have put that card in that drawer and nowhere else. It would have made no sense for me to put it anywhere else. Therefore, the card is in the drawer.

But I looked. Twice. I didn’t find it.

That doesn’t change the fact that the card is in the drawer.

Okay. If it’s in the drawer and I looked and couldn’t find it, then it must be hiding and rather than look elsewhere where the card isn’t, I need to get more focused in my search, mobilizing the no stone unturned approach.

As soon as I accepted the logical conclusion that the card was in the drawer camouflaged in some way, my mind approached the search differently, and the card was found with no further effort.

So what’s the take-home message? When you’re looking for the solution to any problem (whether that problem be of a personal, relationship, occupational, economic, political or religious nature), respect the facts and don’t discard them because they don’t seem to be getting you the results you desire, unless you enjoy wild goose chases.

Instead, stick to what you know to be true and keep looking for solutions that are compatible and consistent with the facts, despite seeming dead ends.

Truth, facts, and logic will ultimately prevail if we remain calm, avoid catastrophic fear thoughts, keep our eye on our goal and persist in our efforts.

Eureka!

Swine Flu, Personal Relationshps and 2012

I read an article (http://bit.ly/rY2Q3) about swine flu vaccines containing mercury and other adjuvants that can cause multiple sclerosis, lupus, and other debilitating illnesses.

The article discusses how the makers of the vaccines are doing studies to prove safety but are using vaccines in the studies that do not contain mercury and the other adjuvants, which means they are fudging data to fool people into thinking their product is safe, so they can sell their snake oil with no consequences (people damaged by these vaccines cannot seek legal recourse.)

The article also exposes the fact that the need for swine flu vaccines has been magnified by distortion and outright lies, which means that what we have here is the pharmaceutical companies (in collusion with our government) lying to us and damaging us in order to make billions of dollars in profits.

When will such immoral and criminal behaviors stop? Maybe never. But we’ve got no chance of these behaviors stopping if we continue to allow fear and deception to hold sway over education and logic.

It is imperative, now more than ever, that we use our critical thinking to recognize the lies and distortions, and then use the social media networks we’ve established on the internet to inform and alert the rest of the populace, and to encourage all people, regardless of the issue at hand, to join the bandwagon of truth and accountability.

When we catch institutions or individuals lying to us, we need to stop supporting them, even if they champion our pet causes and belief systems.

The same can be said for our personal relationships. If we meet someone who sends the sparks flying, the chemistry is cooking, the infatuation is intoxicating, but, at the same time, our radar picks up certain truths (red flags) about their character and behaviors which we do not approve of, it behooves us to exit stage left and seek our romantic bonding elsewhere.

It won’t be relevant how exciting and sexy the person is when we develop a relationship with that person which ultimately leads to our being manipulated, degraded and abused.

When institutions lie to us and we do nothing, and when people we’re in relationships with lie to us and we do nothing, we are setting ourselves up for a world of pain.

When institutions and people we’re in relationships with put their own needs above ours, despite claiming otherwise, it behooves us to consider Michael Jackson’s perspective: “They don’t really care about us.,” and find ways to extricate ourselves from a losing proposition.

If the world ends on December 21, 2012, it will not be due to cataclysmic natural disasters. It will be due to mediocrity, not cream, rising to the top and making decisions for the planet based on self-serving greed, which lead to irrevocable damage that cannot be repaired.

We can’t afford to be silent anymore. We can’t afford to be in denial. We can’t afford to allow a status quo that places a priority on selfishness over truth, compassion, and cooperation.

Warning Signs at Fort Hood and in Relationships

A psychiatrist goes postal. I’m not surprised. As a psychiatrist and a keen observer of the descent of our society over the past 40 years or so, it is clear to me that all things are possible.

People are capable of acting out their conflicts and aggressions in all sorts of spectacularly outrageous and deeply disturbed ways, which demonstrate a severe lack of insight as well as mind-boggling self-destructiveness.

These days, anybody has the capacity to go postal at any time. We might as well get used to it and not be surprised by it, because being surprised could be hazardous to our health.

Not being surprised means being aware of what’s going on around us. The more attention we pay to potential red flags popping up, the better chances we have to react effectively.

With the psychiatrist who perpetrated the Fort Hood massacre, there were warning signs which, perhaps, were sufficiently downplayed or ignored such that he didn’t get the kind of help that might have enabled him to avoid the actions he took.

There are warning signs everywhere, particularly in our relationships, and we don’t see them because we’ve got blinders on and we’re into denial, or we see them and ignore them with a variety of rationalizations.

The bottom line is we don’t address them. The warning signs come and go, and before we know it the relationship has reached critical mass and is near total meltdown and all the kings horses and all the kings men are unlikely to put the relationship back together again.

By ignoring warning signs, the resentments and antagonisms build to the point of no return, and what might have been salvaged if both people were paying attention, goes away painfully.

Take-home message: Forewarned is forearmed.

We can repair relationships that are failing. By developing effective communication skills, we can mediate disagreements while validating each other, and without diminishing ourselves.

So look for the warning signs. Have the courage to address them and maintain a calm mind while doing so, so as to be most effectively heard.

When we pay attention to the warning signs, we are choosing to be proactive and not a victim. By doing so, we are increasing our potential to steer our relationships and our lives in the most positive directions.