Un-beautiful Truth
“Truth is beauty and beauty truth and that is all you need to know...” so said Keats (nearly) in the poem “Grecian Urn”. But there are times when truth is not beautiful. There are times when it can be painful and difficult. When it can be used as a weapon to humiliate, shame and emotionally injure as a tool of rage, manipulation and insecurity. Like all powerful experiences it is not the things, or actions, that are the problems, it is the context and the use in relationship that can transform truth into pain. Are honesty and truth the same? You can be honest to the feelings and needs of a situation by withholding the truth, stretching it, even with white lies.
The problem with truth and honesty is righteousness. People will often feel they can say things that can be very hurtful and humiliating just because they are true. They justify their insensitivity to the emotional, power and status consequences of what they are saying because to them they are being honest. They can then feel righteous leading to a closed mind to other considerations that are the consequences of their actions. Most importantly it can close their minds to their own intentions and desires in exposing the truth in the particular way they have done it. Righteousness encourages simplistic thinking. “True or false”, “for or against” competitive dualities which cut away the emotional and human complexities of relationships and the larger truth of the whole context and of the many options available for how to use that smaller truth more positively for all concerned.
For instance, if you take a traditional series of questions every researcher/journalist learns as a starting point for understanding a situation. Asked about the way something is said they can give great insight into the function the truth-telling is serving for the teller. These questions are the Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? of the sharing of information and knowledge.
- Who is present when you share. Hurtful information maybe better talked about with someone in private either with only the two people or with someone supportive for the person who maybe hurt by it.With someone there who is supportive of the teller it can look like the listener is being ganged up on even if the reason for them being there is the teller is uncomfortable telling it. In this case a neutral person should be there.
- What is the information and What will it mean to those who are present, including the teller. This latter refers to the why question below. Different sorts of infornation need to be shared in different ways. Righteously honest people often don't consider there is any need to think about how the truth is shared because the truth is the truth as far as they are concerned. The content doesn't matter, it's the category that matters, that is it is the truth.
- Where and when are about the physical context, but more importantly they are about the emotional context. Emotional time and space goes beyond objective clock time and measureable space. That is what events have happened before and will happen after the telling are the time aspect – time as history. Things like body language and relative social positions and power relationships can all be expressed in spatial terms including things like where people are sitting or standing and what does that mean to the power exchange taking place and to the feelings of those present. It can also be about the emotional meaning of the place of telling for instance is it on the teller's home turf or on the listener's home turf or neutral ground.
- How you talk about the issues in question can be about all of the above mentioned things but also includes the tones of voice and the way you talk about it – like using that old chestnut saying two positive things then a negative things then a positive out of consideration of the person's feelings. Or is it told as a joke that will lead to humiliation for the entertainment of all present or angrily or condescendingly.
- All these can lead to Why the truth was so important and why it was told in the way it was told at the moment it was and its function in the social context in which it was told. This may allow other truths to be addressed that are bigger and more complex or it may just allow a defence against the way the truth is being used or misused.
An example is when one of a married couple or close friends tells something about their relationship that is personal, and true, at a dinner party or a gathering that includes strangers. They may make a joke about it. Its truth makes it hard to deny or to defend, even though it can be humiliating and hurtful. The truth of it acts as a trap for the victim with the teller protected from acknowledging or feeling their own pain and that of their partner's by their righteousness. Their righteousness in turn hides their anger and pain from themselves.
A person can also use telling truths about themselves as a way of avoiding responsibility for their actions and trapping those they are involved with. This is not to say they are fully aware of the consequence of their actions. For example a person who turns up late for most appointments can just say it is a truth about them that they are always late to everything. Just because it is a true observation about their punctuality doesn't make it acceptable. They expect everyone to tolerate their tardiness because it is a truth about them and if you want to be around them you will have to live with it. They are setting up a situation where you have a choice - accept who they are as nature made them or not. A not negotiable point of the relationship. They are also saying something about your value to them. If they valued you as they do, say, their job where lateness might be punished or a movie they were very excited to see and could turn up on time to them they would give your time and energy at least the same respect.
I'm not saying that we should lie or mislead. I'm saying that there is more to the truth than simple facts. As someone once said information isn't knowledge, and knowledge isn't wisdom though they are each can be part of the other. When people talk about truth they are usually talking about fact/information. It is a safe and easy place, simple and secure lacking the complexity and mystery of emotional realities and the unpredictabilities of human relationships involving empathy, listening, negotiating shared power and mutual consideration.
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