and the Profitability of Lies
Should we Defend the Truth? No!. The truth isn’t something that needs defending, in fact it would be more likely we need to protect ourselves from the truth…
Truth simply exists, it does not care about us, or even right and wrong. We can choose to value it and use it. Or we can choose to ignore it, or deceive others about it. But in the long run making decisions while ignoring it or deceiving can be very costly.
We all have a view of how we want the world to work. We want our view to be correct, we find people who share the same view convincing ourselves we know the truth. If you are comfortable with the truth and feel it agrees with your world view…. Well I hate to tell you you probably don’t know the full truth yet. The truth is sometimes simple but not always….
Nut knowing the truth and making decisions based on it can pay off not only for you but those around you. Great examples of this are the many scientific discoveries that have led to improvements in our lifespan, made us more mobile and life easier in so many ways. Those discoveries took time and effort. So yes truth is valuable but takes hard work. Fortunately, that hard work often returns shared profits for both the truth seeker as well as many others.
Of course there are other ways of profiting… Deception can be incredibly profitable and much easier. However unlike truth profiting from lies almost always comes at the expense of someone else. In the long run lies tend to fall apart but sadly event when they do the cost of the lies often hits a different set of people not always those who profited from he lie.
A troubling example is the tobacco industry. For years tobacco companies profited by deceiving the public, executives made large bonuses, research companies made money to create disinformation, PR firms got their share. The people that paid most dearly were smokers, community health care, children of dying parents, …. Eventually the lie was exposed and yes companies paid dollars, but that was borne by who? Did the execs pay back their bonuses? Did they go to jail? No with was the investors at the time that paid, most of which had nothing to do wright the lie.
We always have many truth and lies to navigate. I am hopeful we will choose the path of valuing truth and figure out how to reduce the profitability of lies….
A Madman has spoken, or has he?….