Living and lying

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As usual I make some reference to some good movies. The recent “Secret of Esra” a very good movie on post-war Bosnia and the story of a moving beautiful relationship between a mother and a fatherless daughter. The mother tells the daughter that his father died in the war and was an hero. In reality the girl was the result of a rape. Many tensions and an unbearable situation between the two: only the truth solves the problem and creates a beautiful reunification between mother and daughter. Should the daughter had known before? Perhaps not. But this secret weighs to the point of alienating the two irremediably.
As for being nice, it’s all right, at least until “being nice” does not become a way to take refuge into a formal superficial tie avoiding any depth.
In families there are often skeletons in the closet. Closets of which children, even grown up children have not the key and on which they stumble when, parents having died, you find a letter, a piece of paper, a document which they forgot to destroy.

"Being nice" is always a way of taking refuge in formal superficiality, isn't it? Well, that seems to be how it regularly ends up for me. The next step is always thwarted because as soon as I try to express something more interesting or sincere, people get offended or scared off by my alleged "intensity", or at best they find that things that matter to me don't matter to them, and vice versa. So what is one to do?

Skeletons in the closet and lying.... some 10 years ago my uncle told me that my "father" wasn't really my father at all, I was my mother's illegitimate child by another man (he didn't know who) but my "father" agreed to raise me. My parents are both dead and so I can't ask them. I asked another uncle, and a close friend of my parents, and they both said "nonsense". But the first uncle was very definite about it, and said the other two were just "being nice" and avoiding shaming the family. So now I don't know what to believe. I suppose I could ask my uncle to have a DNA test and then I would find out. But its not that important to me, I just am whoever I am, irrespective of who my biological father may have been.

Sounds like Uncle was a basic meany. My father once told us that Mom was going to die. I was about 8. Mom did die - 46 years later. People say all sorts of weird things to children.

I knew things piecemeal. A sister of my mother took her life after a messy life. I knew this decades later and I never knew this woman, who probably died before I was born. In appearance this tragedy was somehow “marginal”. And there is a strong tendency to hide suicides in a family, if anything because they throw shame on all the kin.
Once I got to school and my classmates made condolences to me for the death of my grandfather (who didn’t live in my city). There were obituaries in the newspapers. I went home and asked my parents: “Grandfather died?” “No, why?” “I received condolences from classmates.” “They made some mistake.” Only some time later I was informed that he had died “of a long sickness”. Why didn’t I know he was sick? I liked him. Only recently I began looking for facts. I found out that he died suddenly. But how? There is no one to ask anymore. These facts weighed certainly a lot in the climate of my family. It would have been very different if there was some sharing, not a put up of masks and secrecy. But there were other secrets, more serious than these. These, also I discovered very late.

In these days I am trying to read Wallace’s “Infinite Jest”. I’ll never go through it I guess, More than 1000 pages, now at page 11. he is a very good author and has much to do with our problems, It’s about the huge effort to construct and maintain appearances, like in “Good old neon” and the chronicle of McCain campaign in the primaries 9 years ago.

There are good reasons not to air the dirty laundry in public. There is not a easily definable “public”, but various circles of publicity. The more you extend the circle, the more you expose yourself to superficial morality of public opinion. On the other hand, if you restrict too much the circle, generally the couple or the persons who happen to know by chance the facts, like strict family members a even a condo, you risk to create some little rotting environment, where the secrets become a sick element of cohesion founded on the danger of blackmail. This is really a complicated matter and deserves to be better understood.
By the way, condos are the most horrific institutions of modern urban life. Gossip is an obscene practice, be it in the condo or in the place of work.
There should be an obligation to discuss openly things within the circle of affectionate involvemet existing in a family, a rule not always easy to apply.

There are also very good reasons for lying sometimes. I would lie to save someone's life if I had to, and I would consider it unethical to do otherwise. It's not totally set in stone.

There are certainly situations in which refusing to give someone an information appears absolutely necessary at least in most cases. When one is cheated or betrayed by his/her mate, it would be a very delicate matter to tell the interested partner what happens. Here you should not lie, but not inform. Another case is that of gossip. Gossip is some time true, but is despicable. A third case is that of spying. When spying is justified? If you belong to a community, be it even a mob, you must know the responsibility you take with informing. After all it’s always a matter of belonging or not to a community and to lie or inform only in a well understood and not selfish interest of the community. If you denounce a betrayal of conjugal life you must know that you are going to destroy a world and that when you are not capable to replace that world it’s not your business to destroy it.

So its better to keep a secret than accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions? How very selfish and disrespectful.



Gossip is only gossip because you are spreading information that you are uncertain of. If it is firsthand knowledge it is not gossip. So in that regards gossip is always a lie (even if by chance it is true).



Invasion of privacy is illegal for a reason.



Only a world based on lies can be destroyed by the truth and a world based on lies by definition is not real to begin with.

There are often not such clear cut truths and lies. There is the necessity to see things in their context. So what appears to you a “fact” may be a little piece of behaviour which should be interpreted. If you don’t belong to the complex action of which it is a part, you are not entitled to judge and circulate it as the truth, which is often elusive.

"When Hester Prynne bears an illegitimate child she is introduced to the ugliness, complexity, and ultimately the strength of the human spirit". "The scarlet letter"by Nathaniel Hawthorne. What a book on the subject! May advise reading or rereading it?

Anyone who doesnt understand that observations are subjective shouldnt draw conclusions.

No one said truth and lies are black and white. There is that grey area in between called "unknown" which shouldnt be judged or allowed to be judged by others until clarified.

But ultimately every statement is inherently boolean in nature its simply a matter of gathering sufficient information for determination.