Only Engage With People who Tell the Truth
Good friendships can only be authentic, if people are truthful. We’re not talking about a little white lie (no, of course you look good in that!). But being honest with each other, and not telling fibs or lies. Because honesty in friendships is paramount. Because without it, it’s not a friendship. Period.
We have enough people in the world who tell lies. We can’t be doing with friends who lie too.
I’m not upset that you lied to me. I’m upset, that from now on I can’t believe you. Friedrich Nietzsche
Sometimes we only see how people really feel about us, when we stop being useful to them. Anon
When trust is broken, sorry means nothing. Anon
Surround yourself with honest friends
Choose a circle of friends that value truth, even if it means just having one or two. Or even have none, and wait until a true friend shows up. Be your own best friend! It takes quiet courage to set kind boundaries, but it’s a good idea.
Choose settings where honesty thrives. Hobby clubs, book groups, hiking meetups, or volunteer projects put you beside people who care about something real. Shared work builds trust.
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. Mark Twain
Some people arrive and make such a beautiful impact on your life, you can barely remember what life was like without them. Anna Taylor
How modern dishonesty creates national scandals
Of course, whatever the outcome and jury decisions (if it should come to trial), the Peter Mandelson scandal is all over the news, due to quite shocking deceptions found in the Epstein files. Same with some members of the Royal family, and many other ‘big names’ of the world.
But while the news and media fawn over all the juicy details, many of us are shocked that – people are shocked.
This has been a long time coming. Modern society is now all about the very things that the media are now ‘disowning’ in their feigned shock about the saga:
- Greed (which seems to have been the main motive in this case).
- Dishonesty (yet it’s difficult these days to find honest people)
- Deception (what’s the most popular TV program? The Traitors)
- Disloyalty (even ‘fun’ TV programs are about bullying others)
- Lack of accountability (how many MPs have ‘fallen on their sword’ in recent years to save their party and country?) Happened years ago, today if found out, they cling on for dear life until booted out.
We have people who lie and cheat and ghost and gossip – and yet it’s all seen as ‘fun’ or modern culture, not realising the horrific damage left behind.
‘It’s all about me’, is the general thought, if someone is brought to book. Thinking of the other person and ‘doing the right thing’ seems to belong to the era of our parents and grandparents.
Some people ‘gossiped’ about Virginie Giuffre, when she committed suicide.
But in her case, this young beautiful girl had been groomed and raped since age 17, she obviously was a mental mess. And actually left behind an organisation to help other girls, a legacy that may change the whole of how society treats women and girls.
Today, the ‘modern person’ often thinks ‘how can that person benefit me?’ then lies and cheats to get his or her own way, rather than the previous golden rule of ‘how can I help?’
Apologies are fake, and real motives are unkind or unclear. There is no longer any shame in lying, cheating, faking, humiliating, taking, bullying, gossiping, deceiving, ghosting or never providing explanations for hurtful behaviour.
And yet as a society, we feign ‘shock and surprise’, when something like the Mandelson scandal happens? When a toxic society is allowed to fester without lancing the boils, this is what happens.
We have allowed ‘media’ to win over basic decency. One young mother in Wigan has had to send one child away to live with relatives, due to a massive dump of illegal waste near her door, leading to rats in the roof.
A Channel 4 expose found that this belongs to the Duchy of Lancaster (owned by King Charles) which is trying to offload the land to the council, so taxpayers (including her) have to pay to clean up the mess.
- On Dartmoor (owned by the Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall), wildlife campaigners have begged for more land to be given over to help endangered species, but get no more than ‘small potatoes.
- Game show contestants commit suicide due to being humiliated on TV.
- Politicians abroad who maim and kill, are fawned over by TV journalists, instead of being held to account.
- The ‘church of shopping’ means we sit back and watch a world become consumed by greed and money, then wonder why people lose their careers and reputations, by selling their souls for pounds and dollars.
The fiasco of Epstein (money, power, girls, greed, rape) is not the shock in itself. The real surprise is why it took so long for people to become shocked by it all. Why have people not been shocked in recent years in the society that we have become? The writing has been on the wall for years, if not decades.
