Column: Truth As A New Year’s Resolution
[Opinion column written by Martha Harris Myron]
Why is knowing the truth so hard, while lying and its cousins cheating and stealing, are rewarded – in the short term.
A reader poll on Answer Yahoo came up with the following statement on why: because a lie tells you what you want to hear, but the truth tells you what you need to know.
“We tell lies when we are afraid – afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.” – Tad Williams. “You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes, And your smile is a thin disguise.” – The Eagles.
It is an age-old enigma. We are scornful of those we perceive to be lying; we have no respect for those who can never bring themselves to be truthful; we may even argue that while we know they are lying, it really doesn’t matter.
In a highly erratic bi-polar fashion, we may impose sanctions on some liars, but not others, directly or implicitly. Is this reaction a subliminal backlash because we may be ashamed, that maybe, just maybe, we can just as easily step off the same path?
If friends, family, and community shun those who deceive because they cannot be trusted, what’s left? Hanging around with the same type of lying folks, never being able to trust anyone?
We humans are for the most part trusting decent people. We will give just about everyone the benefit of the doubt – at least the first time around, possibly a second. We will stretch our trust, settling for explanations that embrace half-truths, distortions of the truth, exaggerations of facts, and down right blatant lies – up to a certain degree.
The tipping point comes when someone’s reputation is slandered, someone is severely hurt financially, someone’s life is destroyed. Is truth equal to fiscal accountability, sovereign responsibility, social justice, and good governance? You bet.
An economy foundering on lies, dishonesty, lack of accountability, and disregard for any ethical standards, is no economy at all. It is a sham.
Sooner or later, when the real truth [read where the real money and power is, or lack thereof] comes to light, a shadow economy will crumble.
It is of vital national interest that integrity, honesty, ethics – all are employed to manage the affairs of a country because economies, finances, laws, and justice, yes, justice are based on the truth of the matter. Integrity is the backbone of a modern democratic society, vital to the operations of a country.
Imagine if every time you received your bank statement, it had different set of numbers on it, none ever matched, or correlated to your previous statements. How would you feel? Worse yet, how would you know where your money was and how much it is worth?
Financial statements have to tell the truth of the matter, for the value at that time, verifiable by an independent third party custodian. Let’s picture a different scenario.
You purchase a home with the assumption that transferring the property along with your hard earned cash from the former owner to yourself has validity, but on horrendous discovery, the entire process is a mirage. Someone makes off with the cash, the property never changes hands.
There was no integrity; there was no truth.Trust in the process was betrayed. Multiply this debacle [or similar versions] across the economic spectrum and what do you have?
Will artificial intelligence – Gemini, Co-Pilot, ChatGPT, etc – help in verifying the truth? I wonder – given that one of the gathering processes called scraping culls through existing information where lies easily commingle with the truth.
We’ve been witnessing the effects of truth distortion for so many years now, we are exhausted. Finding the truth, knowing the truth is becoming harder than ever.
It becomes far too easy to accept any media information as reliably authentic.
Then, an ethical question arises: if telling the truth is so valuable, why are truth tellers [whistleblowers] punished, often sacrificing everything, their relationships and lives ruined after the truth has been disclosed.
Truth journalists, the world over, whose very professional responsibility is to report the facts [the truth] have had their employers financially compromised, while they [and their families] have been personally threatened, maimed, and in horrific cases, killed, just for doing their job. I wonder – Do these people ever look back and think, “knowing what I know now, is telling the truth worth it?”
The brave and the true continue to do what is right. He/she who upholds the truth is an honorable person, exemplifying the most basic and noblest of virtues.
Find the truth in everything that matters to you. Truth is the only thing that counts. Isn’t that what our momma’s always said?
Embrace Life-long learning and continuing education. When you know the truth, the real facts, only then can you make the best life decisions for you and your family.
This is your challenge for the New Year 2025.
Martha Harris Myron is a former international financial planner, has preached, cajoled, and encouraged readers to learn factual information for more than 35 years.
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