quote:
Op zaterdag 16 oktober 2004 21:03 schreef P8 het volgende:
You say the ability to lie is one of our worst abilities. why is that? In my opinion, this is something that can do good. of course, a good liar with bad intensions isnt a good combination. but there are situations in which lying would not do bad. for example: if you are planning a surprise for someone.
or sometimes the truth is to hard to handle for some people. in such cases it would be good to not be honest.
once i heard a quote which might be true: "if you always tell the truth, you'll end up alone"
another thing i was wondering about: you make me think the aliens are living in an Eden or something. its like all of the races in the alliance dont have problems with their own population etc. But that cant be the case, can it?
come to think about it, do aliens have a cure for cancer? I presume cancer is also a common disease among alien life, since its cause is a mutation instead of a virus or bacteria. And are there diseases caused by a virus as well on earth as on other planets (although this must be quite a coincedense)
Though I'm not Earthsister, I implore you to throw a few more interesting questions on the table. I don't really have a problem with your questions, and I surely don't have a problem with you (before you think that), but more with the fact that the questions you're asking there don't really apply to this topic, in my eyes atleast. You could find the answers everywhere in the everyday life, so there's no need for them here. I don't think Earthsister would have any special answers on those that other people cannot give you.
I mean come on, having a cure for cancer? With the current progress made WE will have a cure for different forms of cancer in the very near future, so if any alien race more advanced then us would have a disease similar to cancer, they would have a cure for it. Or atleast, I hope so. For them.
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The fact that they have a lot less problems, and their societies may seem like Eden to us, is not that alien as you think. WE could do that, if only we would view problems as puzzles that need to be solved, instead of unovercoming obstacles. Apart from the unwillingness from many people to get up and do something for a change. You can not only see it in the fact that we still have many problems in this world, but in a host of other things as well, even how many people live their lives. Even though they're mentally bored or in another way unhappy with their lives, they just keep on going to work everyday and refuse to do something about it, all the while saying that: "it's no use trying to change things". simple lazyness. Though most people are lazy in a few or many areas, including myself ofcourse, that would decreasy massively when people would see obstacles as something to be overcome with a bit of creativity, I'd think..
Anyway. Lying is never positive. It's extremely hard to keep a lie you've made up alive, even if you come to believe that lie yourself over time. Because, somewhere, you will always acknowledge the fact that it's not the truth. And people will feel it. Not everybody is as skilled with body language, and as good in touch with their intuitive feelings as others are, but almost anybody can detect a lie when it's spoken (or written or whatever). Even if the person doing it is an extremely skilled liar. Just as you can feel it when there's something wrong with someone, for example, even though that person acts as if everything's all right. The point is, that people will always know they're being lied to in a small or a large way, and it won't lift their spirits. It will worsen when their feelings get backed up by hard facts. And, almost any lie will come out eventually. It's that simple. No lie can be held alive forever, because of the simple fact that it's a lie.
You state that a good example of when lying can be a good thing is when someone can't accept the truth about something. People can take on a lót more then you usually think, before it becomes too much for one person to handle. Though that varies from person to person ofcourse, but only in small degrees. The only possible way a person cannot handle certain truths is when that person has been lied to before, multiple times in his or her life (read: véry often). If those lies weren't told, then that person wouldn't need to hear a lie now either.
For example: You're on a vacation. You come back, and in the meantime a good friend of yours has commited suicide in an absolutely horrible way. Another friend of yours knows this, and thinks about wether to tell you the truth, or a lie. If the other friend tells you a lie, you will never feel completely content with it, for deep down, you will know that it's not the truth, and you will never be able to let it rest completely. When it comes out, you will be bothered even more, it will be a complete strain on your psyche, depending on how strong you are in that respect. If that person, on the other hand, tells you the truth... Then you, in normal circumstances, would be able to handle it, even though it would be a shock to you. If you would not be able to handle it, there are two possible reasons: Either you've been lied to before, lots of times (about that friend's mental problems because of wich he or she came up to the point of suicide), or you have a lot of your own heavy problems on your mind, in wich case you've lied to yourself multiple times about one thing or the other, or you would've been able to face certain things a lot earlier, so they wouldn't bother you for long and pile up like that. There are a few other examples I could name, but in either one lying would definately *not* be the best option.
And, when push comes to shove, *everybody* appreciates being honest to. Everybody. Every single man, woman and child on this planet.
The only way, I think, is to remove the so-called 'need' for lying, is to remove the need for people to lie to themselves, wich is attributed to a low-self esteem or another reason why people think they can't handle certain things themselves (organized religions are notorious about saying 'you cannot accomplish <insert>'). My conclusion is that the only way to remove the 'need' for lying, is to stop lying at all. People will be confronted, after wich they'll lie less to themselves and as such less to others, after wich even more people will lie less to themselves etcetc. It's a circle, and Humanity needs to step out of the old one, and into the new one.
My quote wouldn't be: "if you always tell the truth, you'll end up alone", but rather: "if you always tell the truth, you'll never end up alone".
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[sorry for this offtopic post tho *goes back into lurking mode*]
[ Bericht 2% gewijzigd door DiSiLLUSiON op 17-10-2004 04:31:13 ]