Living life is a complicated process because no one seems to be quite happy with what they get. By the same token, advice on how to lead a life is as common as leaves. Careers have been made out of teaching people the art of living. It is one of the strange contradictions where everyone has something to say, yet no one seems to have complete answers.
There are two extremes, where one polar point is that truth must always prevail, and the other is that nothing matters except success. The truth is each one tries to find one’s own path. Much has to do with the genetic code selection of four generations on the father’s side and four generations on the mother’s side. While this is known, there is not enough known on how the selection has taken place within the elements of the genetic code. Thus, the predictive validity of what little is known as established fact is still doubtful. Nevertheless, the game of adviser-ship continues to flourish. Decades ago, the title on How to Win Friends and Influence People became a semi classic because everyone wants to win friends and influence people. What worked and what did not remains a matter of conjecture, but the profession flourished as never before. It almost went hand in hand with the growing frustration of people with their own rate of success and their sense of disappointment when they compare their success with their neighbour, (for what it was worth).
There are some simple truth which influence all of us, and the author of these lines had written an editorial decades ago on what he then captioned “Whether we like it or not, we need each other”. Hence, one simple truth is that it is difficult to lead life alone, and one needs companionship, sharing, identification and a composite approach, which can be at times termed friendship.
What is not equally easy to articulate is the need for friendship to survive and the nature of inter-dependency, which is at the root of human civilization.
Keeping things basic helps create clarity. Put simply, the very act of life needs a collaborative approach. A child when born, needs the love and care of the woman to whom it is born. The woman, in turn, needs the support and companionship of a male figure, very often, a person who can respond to the child’s father image. This basic collaboration between the mother figure and the father figure is central to the child’s growth and this replicates itself down the line. Hence, in the very nature of human civilization, honest collaboration is the core of success.
This collaboration and relationship can only be on the basis of truth and honesty between the parties involved. The mother figure has the key role because she identifies the father, wherein honesty of word and integrity becomes essential.
Therefore, one would hold that honesty and truthfulness is one of the foundations of relationships between people and central to the creation of civil society. The story does not end there because, whereas honesty and truthfulness are certainly the foundation stones in certain aspects of relationship. They cannot be equally intense and essential in all other parts of human interaction. Just as honesty is essential, not sharing the full truth is also an ingredient of life. Not sharing the full truth may not always amount to dishonesty because total honesty in many cases is simply not possible.
Thus, it is that complication begins, and dishonesty, whether intended or otherwise, occupies a central role in all relationships. One must hasten to add that dishonesty comes in various shapes and sizes, if not hues and colors.
Quite simply, one may not oneself know the full truth, or truth itself may have so many layers that it may not be comprehensive or communicable.
It is there that complication intensifies and one has to recourse to various levels of reality. To deal with this reality, civil society has entered into many formats, and ethics and morality become part of the general narrative.
It is then that the human narrative deals with concerns of morality, legality, law, and indeed crime and punishment. This is something which has many shades of civil society. People to come to terms with this and seek to have some kind of clarity of thinking.
Since time immemorial, books on ethics, religion, law, punishment, and more have tried to look at various shapes and shades of truth. An attempt has been made to convert these into courts, rules, regulations, frameworks, guidelines and the list is almost endless.
At the end of the day, conclusions are confusing and debates inconclusive.
It is therefore worthwhile in various manners to try to take stock of the situation. It is also necessary and worthwhile to clear one’s own lenses, on truth, reliability, and relationship because almost everything in human interaction at some stage touches on this issue.
Clarity is still elusive. However, not with standing this elusiveness one’s personal ethics have to be clear to oneself and preferably, also, to others with whom one deals with.
This is the foundation of a civil society. This is fundamental to all interpersonal dynamics, and this is a foundation of effectiveness to and peace with oneself.
