Mendacity

One of my pet peeves in life is mendacity. Now I know, you'll be saying to yourself I could shave just said,

"I hate fucking liars!"

But that's not sufficient. Not to me. Mendacity is much deeper and the feel of the word evokes a sensation in me of being next to something truly evil. Even Merlin Ambrosius said when a man lies some part of the world dies. People slip into lies so easily that many times they don't realize they are lying, it's so ingrained. Some of what we hold dear as children requires not looking too closely, which in and of itself is a deep untruth.

Now if the first things out of your mouth to people are lies about certain subjects, you need to ask yourself how much you're actually contributing to the conversation or even to the world in this area. If you don't start you're going to regret it. Lying is a means by which we figure ways to justify bad behavior of all sorts. In the end you might just find yourself going from white lies to avoid explanations, to full fledged crazyfests where you just run hot and cold diarrhea of the mouth into your own brain and...well you end up doing something terminally stupid in an area you regret.

Some people I have known have done this kind of thing until eventually they cannot be open with ANYONE. They cannot give anything unconditionally, they cannot respect themselves and in the end they do things for motives they don't like anyone seeing, becoming even more reclusive...which defeats the whole original idea of lying in the first place to gain social acceptance.

I know I'm being rather vague, but that's because what I am describing ambiguously is not just one person. It's actually 11 real people and 3 fictional characters that I cannot watch on TV shows anymore. What's sickest about this group of people is that they do not, generally, know each other, at all, and that they all act so very similar I can literally group them into clusters of similarities.

Now, 5 of these people DO know one other in the group. When they got together for the first time it was a BAGFU (Blood and Guts Fuck Up©) from the start to the vile end! I'm not going to tell you that I have all the answers for this kind of thing, far from it, but I did warn these people of what it was I could see was coming at them like a speeding bullet.

Not surprisingly, I was not heeded. Hated. And in the end treated like a pariah for seeing things more clearly than they would all like. See, liars lie in order to avoid not only the truth but the discomfort of
being perceived for what they are, which in many cases the person who is lying does not like. They hate themselves. And they don't want you to know at the core they hate themselves.

Perversely, if you tell people you hate yourself they think you're sick, because everyone today has to love themselves. I have no idea if that's healthier, but you have to get through the hate to heal. I once hated myself terribly and hid it. Then I hated myself but hated others more. Then about 10 years ago I stopped hating myself and began hating things I did or how I was less than perfect.

Today I stopped even that. Not bad for someone who has a lot of issues.

Of course, I don't LOVE myself, but at least when depression saps me down and I want to die, it's just because it's from depression and not because I hate every part of myself. But to those of you who are lying liars from bullshit mountain, let me explain to you WHY you don't really want me around.

You'll eventually know what I know, but you don't know that yet. Every epiphany you have and reminds you of me brings you closer to who I was when I cared what you thought of me or if you even spoke to me. Our distance is not spatial, it's your lack of understanding.

The distance is understanding, and every day brings you closer. I don't need revenge on you. Eventually you'll just wake up, get treated like garbage and realize,"Wow, I did that, too! I'm an asshole."

And you're right.

You Know It IS When They Say It Isn't...

One of the many things that I get bashed in the head with daily, hourly, by the minute some days, is the mental gymnastics people use to justify their narrow mindset. Now I'm not going to sit down and explain that somehow I am immune to this, I know I've got my own blind spots and that is a fact. I'm watching for them, however and I think on them critically, even going so far as to chastise myself roundly for them. It's gotten to the point where I'll actually dissect them roundly until I remember them enough not to step in them on ACCIDENT anymore.

This however is not about my narrowness at the moment.

Something I do not use if I can avoid it are disclaimers. Disclaiming and using something that says either contextually that something is not like something else. Before I get to that, let me sidetrack a little and explain why I avoid them by explaining the mindset of persons who employ them, as well as to what end they do so.

Let's start with False Claims, because they are essentially straw men in a brief and childish form. Let's say you and I are talking and you look into the sky and voice this epiphany:


A zebra is like a cloud.

 I'm going to call bullshit on you. Not just because it's preposterous and very Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, but because it's demonstrably false. They aren't similar enough to say something of that type. I mean the closest you'll get to likening them unto each other is a possible similarity in ONE color. That's a stretch, a LEAP in fact that logically cannot be taken.

Groups of people will do this kind of crap in order to get sympathy or in order to shove their brand of logic in your face and insist it's valid. Frightening really when you see it for what it is, an attempt to rationalize bad behavior or bigoted mentality.

BUT the reverse of this is also true, and in my life I've noted that this precept is endorsed and utilized by the same people who willingly will run out and scream something isn't what it IS also. Let me clarify that for you:

The same people who will tell you something is something or is LIKE something it isn't will also tell you the reverse, that something ISN'T what it IS!

The best example I can give you is the recent attempt in Arizona to make laws that focus on immigrants from Mexico and attempt to focus on making them target of harassment. They prefaced this on radio, print and TV by saying "This law is NOT racist". With that disclaimer front loaded they proceed to rationalize that it's somehow needed and that illegal immigration is a bigger problem than the realities of why it's occurring or any of the other issues that create it. It's rather like a magician's act, subterfuge, to make you look in the area they prefer so they can get away with something else. Don't look behind the curtain, don't think too deeply, don't employ critical judgement.

So to what end are they used? Simple really.

They don't have the intellectual honesty to see they are what they wish they were not.

Remember that the next time you want to disclaim something. Part of being a better person tomorrow is owning your issues.