From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 20:04:35 MDT
Various authors have attempted to derive a rational
defense of honesty with little success. David
Friedman, son of Milton, authored an article years ago
in which he postulated that the natural costs of
dishonesty - having to expend extra energy to deceive
ones victims - made it cost ineffective and therefore
irrational. David also gave a parallel argument for
not lane switching in traffic some years before that
at a local S. CA libertarian supper club.
With the same fallacy: Sure, if everyone practices
lane switching in heavy traffic, then there will be a
net loss in travel efficiency. And, if the average
driver attempts to improve his travel time by lane
switching, then he will find that he gains little for
his efforts in competition with the other lane
switchers who will also move into the faster lane
until it becomes the slow lane. All pretty obvious
and straightforward and almost utterly worthless as an
argument to convince anyone of anything. \
Becuz: Your typical driver is too lazy to expend
effort on what is clearly a waste. Perhaps a few
hyper types will do so anyway out of frustration, as
well as a few really stupid people, but the drivers
who lane switch will tend to be those who have found
over time that they personally can do so successfully
- or so it seems to them, anyway. And, for some of
them, this will be true. Better drivers with faster
reflexes and better eyesight and higher cabs to see
from and more experience in judging lane prospects
will tend to win out by lane switching, over drunken
senile octegenarians with a cold and cataracts taking
flu medicine and running on short sleep (and they ARE
out there ;) ). Some people do gain by lane switching
and do so reliably.
Similarly, some people will be on the high end of the
curve for criminal capabilities and they will profit
greatly by being dishonest, criminal, hypocritical,
etc.
The other pro-honesty arguments based on internal
consistency, etc., were nicely dealt with by Xerene
and Strackon in Invictus in the late '60's, when they
systematically took them on and showed them all to be
silly or religious.
However, there is another factor:
Psychological visibility is itself highly valuable and
desireable, as exemplified in how much effort people
put into relationships that provide it. People are
known to be willing to risk or even give their lives
for love. Psychological visibility, feedback,
perceptual reaffirmation, etc. are a key source of
pleasure as well as a cornerstone of sanity. Other
people are the only real mirror of your consciousness
(with the caveat that lower animals - dogs, for
example - can provide this feedback up to a point).
So, let's just throw a monkeywrench into the whole
process by which we get all that, by injecting the
element of dishonesty. The original dishonesty is not
really that important in general. Rather, it is the
ongoing need to cloak oneself, to monitor ones
expressions, to screen out aspects of ones behavior,
beliefs, etc, to exert a cognitive, conceptual filter
on the very channel that is supposed to bypass the
conceptual and provide an emotional grounding in real
perceptual, emotional responses.
This is devastating over time and a very high price to
pay for dishonesty in general.
Now, the problem is that we have learned - a la Freud
/ Judeo-Christianity - as a culture that we are born
with original sin. We are NOT supposed to let it hang
out. It's just not PC. Anymore. It used to be in
the late '60's, '70's, early '80's in certain
subcultures, such as those influenced by Wilhelm Reich
or Nathaniel Brandon. Now we are much more back into
the '50's style - hypocrisy as a way of life. Fashion
uber alles.
There is a certain thrill to creating a persona to
order. The 3-piece suit, with the little hidden
pocket for the coke stash. Screwing over good people
and forcing them to thank you for it. Derivative
thrills abound in the spiral away from the real. But
sociopathology has its natural dead end and limits,
and is, at last analysis, simply a form of cowardice,
a fundamental surrender of life.
With the caveat that sometimes (all too often in our
control-freak culture) that price is still lower than
the alternative. As in, being honest about one's
Jewish ancestry in NAZI Germany. How sad when we
force people to give up what makes life enjoyable and
fulfilling in order to survive. But then, that's been
the name of the religious/statist power game for a
LONG time.
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