The State Of Honesty
The State of Honesty
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Can you imagine a community where nobody can be trusted, everyone keeps an eye on everybody, and nothing is what it seems? Though easy to depict it, one cannot truly grasp the problems that would persist in such a case. Not even I, for that matter, but then, I don't have to in order to talk about it.
The problem with such a community would be the fact that there is no honesty, a factor that would inevitably wreak havoc on the entire society as a whole. How?
Politics would be little more than a bunch of lying and bickering figureheads that would not help the community because of mistrust back and forth. Elections would be reduced to little more than races for higher distrust, and votes would be very, very low.
Games ranging from chess to golf to baseball would be rendered unplayable due to rampant cheating and infighting among players, disrupting the peace of a chess match and the politesse in the gentleman's game alike with wicked efficiency.
Business would starve because stealing and lying to cover the crime would be decimating the industries. Wages would be terrible because of an imbalance of the system, and higher ranking officials who control the monetary system in a company would be the richest, while middlemen get almost nothing. Costumers who are semi-trusting or simply dependant would be taken advantage of like sheep following a murderous shepherd.
Crime rates would be at an inconceivable high due to corrupt law enforcement and untrustable neighbors. Anyone could be a mad axeman.
... Get enough? While this may have seemed extreme, it is happening around all the time. There are so many cases of lying and mistrust that I cannot bother counting them. But you now can see how important honesty and truth is to a society.
Now, I was taking a town as my example. You may ask what this would have to do with someplace like BZP, or something as grand as a huge nation. However, it all fits together nicely. I should say that I am a believer of Chaos Theory, and the linear dynamics, etc. While I am not entirely for the theory as a whole, I do agree with the system and the way it ties everything together, big and small.
((Let me give you a quick rundown about Chaos Theory and the an idea I believe in. Look at a pebble under the microscope, and look at a mountain through binoculars. Both of them will have the same ruggedness and will be related, mo matter how much you strip either one down. I look at BZP and look at the USA, and they both look the same, have the same problems and are identical when it all boils down to it. That is how I relate them both, and thus believe that these essays have huge relevance to both societies.))
In my past essays, complete and published and incomplete and, er, NOT published, I have established a variety of links between something like BZP and a nation of any size. Both of these rely on several principles: rules, enforcers, and people. These three things make a community, and without them there can be none. Show me one society that works that does not have at least these three things. As such, we can see how BZP and *fill in blank if this were blank* are related. More can be added, but they only add to the concept.
How would a lack of honesty hurt a place like BZP? While lying here may seem more difficult, it is actually not that hard. I have seen many people (myself included) blame everything on the server busyness, and that is one of the primary ways to get by with a spam post. (("OH! This is spam! uhhh, I double posted! It was the server! I swear!")) As such, the lesson is never taught by the enforcers, and the citizen learns nothing other than maybe another perfect alibi.
That was just one idea of a lack of honesty in a community like this.
But then, when looking at something like, oh, say, a debate, and you are sticking to your belief even though it is wrong, who are you kidding? By rejecting an idea that is obviously superior in logic and wisdom to your own, you are lieing to yourself. Now, who wants to lie to themselves? I don't and you should not, either. ((However, I have done it before, and I hated doing it. But now I have already come to terms with the issue.)) Not only are you being dishonest to yourself, but also you are mocking truth, and if the opponent is correct, him, too. So you can see how this would be very bad in a debate searching for greater knowledge.
And yet I see it every day, happening all around me and in me. I have done it so many times I feel terrible. Yes, I am confessing to it, and that is one of the reasons why I made this essay, so that you do not make the same mistakes I did in the past.
Communication is, as I established in a previous essay, a very important --if not THE most important-- part of a community, and if it is blemished by a lie, false thought or malicious concept, it ruins communion and the community as a whole. Just think: would you have others lie to you? I thought not.
Please, remember to remain honest. And as the line goes, "a honest person has nothing to worry about."
((I think this is the first Respectism essay I have made that does not contain the word 'respect.' Hm. Wait... I just said that word. Awwww, dang.))
~EW~
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