retro: my cofounder has greatly challenged my conviction in the black and white binary i’ve presented in this… writing. i’ll probably write a part 2 at some point detailing the counter
the goal of this is to clearly identify what i think is virtuous and what i think is evil.
tl;dr.
everyone’s heard of george washington and the cherry tree
the cherry tree myth says that despite the risk of punishment, washington told the truth
it implies that true integrity is when we risk cost but do so with no benefit to self
it carries forward through legend, through the centuries, because it appeals to some persistent deeper desire we have
because knowing your friend is honest means you know your friend has your back. you don’t need to play adversarial games with them to extract information. you know they’ll tell you as information comes up
for some reason most people wince when i declare “omission is the same as lying, and omission of truths you know the other party might want to hear means you lack integrity”
we first hit this conflict when we hear “white lies“ contrasted to “integrity”
the first time we heard “if you have nothing nice to say… don’t say anything”
which was supposed to mean “don’t be deceitfully mean… don’t tell someone they’re ugly if they’re not ugly and you’re just trying to bring them down”
but people construe it to mean “even if they’re ugly, don’t tell them they’re ugly, because that could hurt their feelings”
and then it rolls into “white lies good - the world is full of shades of grey”
and suddenly we think it’s ok to tell your friends that they’re talented when they’re not. that they deserve better when they don’t. that it’s not their fault when it is
and then we think it’s ok to not tell your friend you didn’t forget their birthday, you just didn’t care. or that it’s ok to tell them you’re on the way when you’re not and didn’t care about being on time. or that it’s ok to respond “maybe” on a party invite instead of telling them “you just don’t want to go”
and then we think it’s ok to not tell your neighbor that you accidentally stepped on their flowers… or broke their window playing baseball… or chopped down the cherry tree
and evil people [or really just people who are further along the spectrum of jaded-ness] tell us “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” and we pretend that something that is obviously a vice… because it makes us feel special, is an ok thing to say
i want to be able to turn my back to a certain direction, knowing that i have friends looking in that direction, and fi there’s something they notice that i might not notice they will absolutely tell me
i don’t want to have to play weird games to make sure my friends feel comfortable calling me out
i don’t want to be friends with people who don’t want to be called out on things they missed
i don’t want to be friends with people who don’t want to call each other out
i don’t want to be friends with people who treat confrontation as a vice - and think that integrity is optional and we shoulda ll live in bubbles and actually strive to live in bubbles
so it hurts me when i see people omit things