Honesty. Or why I'm an asshole...

I've mentioned elsewhere that my philosophy may best be summed between two complementary ideas.  One, the idea that "Voices Carry."  The other, Audre Lorde's assertion that "Your silence does not protect you."

The essay that has done more to inform this sensibility than any other is feminist poet Adrienne Rich's "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying."  It's ostensibly a piece that talks of the role of honesty as it pertains to women, but I believe that the central message, as with most ideas worth examining, carries much broader implications.  Voices carry.

Rich grounds the piece in her own experience.  Which is obviously that of a woman.  As I noted above, I believe the piece can be read with much broader implications.  It's a melange of epigrams (Hello, Mr. Markson.)  Some of those strike me as more cogent or forceful than others.  I'd like to run through some of my favorites...

To discover that one has been lied to in a personal relationship, however, leads one to feel a little crazy.

While I know the feeling, I'd actually argue that Ms. Rich doesn't take this quite far enough.  To lie to someone is to make them a little crazy.  It doesn't matter whether we speak of a subjective reality or an objective reality in this case.  If I tell you that a red light means that you should go forward, you'll have quite a bit of trouble functioning in the world as we shape it.  If I tell you that the sky is green and you believe me, this is insanity.  If your beliefs do not pertain to reality, you are considered psychotic.  To lie to someone is an act of violence.

Lying is done with words, and also with silence.

Silence is complicity.  If one does not offer one's voice as a corrective to a lie, one is an accomplice to the act.

In the struggle for survival we tell lies. To bosses, to prison guards, the police, men who have power over us, who legally own us and our children, lovers who need us as proof of their manhood.

Whether you're a woman or not, allowing someone else to define reality according to the prerogatives of power is to acquiesce to a lie.  Again, silence is a form of lying.  Assenting to a lie, whether by remaining silent or concurring with it vocally is an act of violence.

We take so much of the universe on trust. You tell me: "In 1950 I lived on the north side of Beacon Street in Somerville." You tell me: "She and I were lovers, but for months now we have only been good friends." You tell me: "It is sevent...y degrees outside and the sun is shining." Because I love you, because there is not even a question of lying between us, I take these accounts of the universe on trust: your address twenty-five years ago, your relationship with someone I know only by sight, this morning's weather. I fling unconscious tendrils of belief, like slender green threads, across statements such as these, statements made so unequivocally, which have no tone or shadow of tentativeness. I build them into the mosaic of my world. I allow my universe to change in minute, significant ways, on the basis of things you have said to me, of my trust in you.

Does it matter whether we speak of personal relationships or otherwise?  Is any act of speech private?  Speech is public.  Speech is meant, explicitly, to move beyond the individual.  All speech is a public act.  And if silence, too, is a form of communication (if we are complicit in lies by refusing to speak against them), then is not silence a public act also?

When we discover that someone we trusted can be trusted no longer, it forces us to reexamine the universe, to question the whole instinct and concept of trust. For a while, we are thrust back onto some bleak, jutting ledge, in a dark pierced by sheets of fire, swept by sheets of rain, in a world before kinship, or naming, or tenderness exist; we are brought close to formlessness.

 Again, to lie is an act of violence.

She may say, I didn't want to cause pain. What she really did not want is to have to deal with the other's pain. The lie is a short-cut through another's personality.

 I'm reminded of Billy Bragg's line from "New England"...

I don't feel bad about letting you go, I just feel sad about letting you know.

Bragg's quote is an interesting one.  Bragg's narrator doesn't express concern for the feelings of the person he's addressing.  He is only concerned with the discomfort that the action causes in himself.  It's an entirely selfish viewpoint. When I was in my early twenties, I'd tried dating a woman.  She led me on for six months.  Told me to call her if I needed to talk when my father died.  I spent two weeks calling her.  She answered her phone and told me never to call her again.  I asked her why she'd spent six months leading me on.  "I didn't want to seem like a bitch," she said.

Again, it's an entirely narcissistic worldview.  I lied so you would think me better than I am.  I don't take into account your feelings.  I'm only concerned with how I come off.  Oddly enough, lying didn't make her seem any less of a bitch.  It just made her seem a lying bitch.

And (s)he may also tell herself a lie: that she is concerned with the other's feelings, not with her own.

I throw the ()'s around that, again, because I don't think the trope is limited specifically to women. I think the idea that we lie to someone to spare their feelings is in and of itself a lie.  If my zipper's down, you can feel free to let me know.  I'd rather have the ability to correct that than roam around embarrassing myself in a state of ignorance.  I'd rather hear a truth, no matter how painful, than be misled with a lie.  You tell me any sort of lie, you're leading me astray.  You're not sparing my feelings, you're letting me dig myself deeper.

Here's the thing.  A lot of people tell me that I'm an asshole.  You know what?  I don't really care.  I'm not big on politeness.  I value kindness.  The two things are not equivalent in any sense.  A friend of mine was recently bemoaning the fact that too many people would be kind to his face (polite) and then talk shit behind his back.

That's not me at all.  I can mislead you with politeness.  As far as I can tell, that's just being passive aggressive, though.  It's refusing to take responsibility for what one truly feels. It's no less aggressive or offensive than being direct with you.  It's not being kind, it's hiding one's unkindness behind a veneer.

If I think you're being a jackass, odds are I'll let you know.  That's either respect or disrespect.  Either way, though, you have the information to make that choice yourself.  If that makes me an asshole in your eyes, that's your decision, too.

As far as I can tell, if I have to lie to you for me to like me, you don't like me.  You like a lie.

If I have to lie to you for you to think I'm a kind person, that just means that the idea that I'm a kind person is a lie. Am I going to be "nice" because I feel sorry for you?  No, pity is just condescension.  And I'm not that arrogant that I think you deserve my pity.

You may think that this makes me an asshole.  As far as I can tell, it's just respect.

For the both of us.

If you want to check out Rich's essay, you can find it contained here.

I definitely recommend it.