Society and Truth

So, ViolenceJack, like, honestly... does this text make me look fat?

Yes, I am leaving a lot out as far as this particular woman is concerned.

the hell we don't!

you know what's sexier than taking a girls glasses off of her for some heavy smooching......well not much...that's for sure.

edit: of course I'm being hypocritical here. I don't wear contacts because they are more comfortable.

[Edited on Dec 06, 2003 by Volkov]

I feel bad when I tell the truth, because it hurts people's feelings, but it is what I believe is best and it is how I want to be treated.

I didn't say that it was the point of his book. He uses it as a literary device to place an individual outside of the context of normal, everyday life - Meursault, the main character, says whatever comes to his mind without considering the effect those words might have on others around him. The effect is jarring, it makes him seem out of place and abnormal, as well as emotionless and unfeeling. That's why I think one can infer that Camus considers telling small lies to be a way that makes conversation and life flow more smoothly.

No, lol, try a bold font.

OK, fair enough. There's probably a better example out there, but I can't think of it right now.

this debate has no answers... ViolentJack this sounds like an interesting hypothesis... but maybe it would be a better question to test than to ask. try it both ways on two different people. lie outright to one and tell the other the devestating truth... see which one is happier in the long run.. debate will never answer this question...

BUT. It's always good to be nice about things.

Whats the point talking about things that have easy answers? If I know the answer, it's not a problem. It's when I don't know or like the answer that I bother talking about it.

We can only be "honest" to the level that which we are aware of our own knowledge and behavior. You might think that you're being "true" to your own musical tastes if you like Linkin Park, but perhaps you really are an angst-filled teenager that only enjoys the music because you need some music to release that angst. That is, you attempt to justify your feelings with intellectualization when it's a rather simple base cause. People often don't know what causes them to say things or behave like they do. A very large portion of our behavior comes from influences we never notice, never feel, but they're noticeable to the perceptive individuals out there.

I try to be as honest as possible all the time. I offend a lot of people all the time as a result. I even tell girls they suck in bed. If someone asks me if I like their look, I'll usually say I don't care. If people ask me to go to a party, I'll usually respond with "I'd rather sit at home and be a loser." And that's true because I never enjoy myself at parties and have fun without others quite well. Nobody has asked me "what do you think about me?" yet and has yet to receive everything I notice about the person. I usually respond to praise or criticism and counter whatever they have to say, just because I think that they're ignoring both sides of a person or issue. This does wonders for pissing off people of all types.

So I do come across as a very heartless and cold person, like it was hypothesized previously in this thread. I come across as an arrogant, cold person. That's fine with me because I honestly am arrogant and don't care about others very much. Why should anyone think that I'm something I'm not? I'd hate to disappoint people after they've gotten to "know me."


If I said everything that came to mind, I would probably be committed (which was also hypothesized). Who'd allow a guy that wants every person he sees dead to walk around? So I do listen carefully to the mentally ill and try to understand everything that they say. Because oftentimes, they do have something interesting to say that makes you wonder if it could possibly be true. I find it horrifying that the mentally ill are treated with ridicule in our society when they can offer things to our society that "normal" people are simply incapable of.

Iit's true, people like to live with a surprisingly high degree of lies and facades, but I never wanted to live like that. It takes some amount of confidence and open-mindedness to be able to take "raw truth" and to dispense it yourself.

Thus, there's a fine line between insanity and massive creativity. The "insane" people fail to censor and filter many things, but those with greater "sanity" perform more filtering of input and output. I prefer to think that I can switch between both modes willingly. After all, I did pass a fairly rigorous psychological evaluation.

/edit: this is the sort of thing I was trying to avoid saying earlier but didn't feel like putting that much effort into a thread that I thought would die quickly. I'll probably kill this thread, maybe spark something new, or maybe get tons of really short "you're an idiot" replies as usual. Those make me laugh. Hard.

[Edited on Dec 06, 2003 by djk29a]