The Truth Game - Ante In

Many of us have encountered bullshit artists. They can be entertaining - for a little while at least - but you know that you can’t trust what they say.  Perhaps there is such a thing as “harmless bullshit.” But when the bullshitter isn’t deterred when confronted with evidence that their statements are untrue, they move from bullshitting to lying.  

“A man is only as good as his word.” There’s a truth to that idea that strikes deep within us. Truthfulness is called for in all great moral and ethical systems that I’m aware of, from the Ten Commandments of the Abrahamic religions to the yamas of yoga.  “Be impeccable with your word,” is how Don Miguel Ruiz put in his book,  “The Four Agreements.”   Who wants to be lied to?  Who trusts a person who lies to them?  Who would put their fate in the hands of someone they couldn’t trust?

How do you separate truth from bullshit from outright lying?  How do you decide if it’s worth your time to listen to someone who is making a statement, asserting that something is true? I suggest thinking of it like a poker game.  If you want to be in the game - you want your statements to be believed - you have to ante in.  In this case, the ante is credible evidence.  If someone wants to claim a statement as fact, ask for the evidence.  If they have no credible evidence, then no seat at the table - they’re not in the game.  Facts get you in the game, unsubstantiated claims do not.

Assume that any statement made without evidence may be either bullshit or a lie.  It’s true that there may be multiple pieces of evidence that aren’t clear or that conflict to some degree.   Then you look further - what is the nature of the evidence?  Is it from a credible source - preferably one without an agenda?  If you follow the trail back do you find solid ground, objectivity?  

Claims without evidence may just be bullshit.  Claims that contradict the objective evidence are lies. Sometimes people make statements that aren’t true, and we let it slide as bullshit because they weren’t aware of the available evidence.  But when someone is in a position of authority, it’s fair to hold them responsible from the very beginning.  They’re in a position where it’s their responsibility to know.  In this case there’s no free pass to consider a false statement as simple bullshit if there is readily available evidence available to the contrary.  It’s not just bullshit, and it’s not an alternate fact.  It’s just a lie, plain and simple.  

When someone has a track record of being truthful, it is natural to trust that the next thing they tell you is true.  But when someone has a track record of consistent bullshit or lies, the presumption shifts.  The proper perspective is to assume that the statement is likely false, and insist that they demonstrate its truthfulness by presenting credible evidence.

I can respect someone I disagree with, but I can’t respect someone who has no respect for truth - who doesn’t respect me enough to be honest with me.  

I'm Sorry

I heard a cardinal singing in the yard this morning.  It seems early, but the increasing sunlight and warmer temperature today inspired him to call out his territorial claim.  Looking out the front window, I saw a mockingbird, a starling and a pair of robins.  In the early afternoon I set out for a walk in the park, intending to follow the hillside downstream, staying off of the main path.  But as I entered the park, I saw red and white plastic in the little stream to the left.

I walked across the ivy covered ground and carefully down the rip-rap rocks.  I looked for secure footing on the rocks, and thought that my yoga practice served me well, keeping my 60 year old body in shape for taking a wide stance on some rocks and bending down to pick up a plastic bag.  Just a couple of steps later my left foot slipped off its rock.  I had a quick flash of worry about falling on the rocks, but instincts were in charge and my balance was good enough.  I ended up standing in about six inches of water, upright, but with wet, cold feet.

I made my way a little farther downstream, picking up several bottles for my recycle bag.  I needed to get rid of the several other pieces of trash I'd found, so I climbed out of the creek bed and walked down to the nearest trash bin.  Then I went back to the stream to see if there were more bottles.

In the park, the stream tries to hold onto its original character as a pretty forest stream.  It used to flow from about Georgia Avenue a mile to the south, but developers turned it from a stream into a storm sewer, burying the pretty meandering creek beneath a layer of asphalt, hidden until it exits a culvert at the end of Edgevale Rd and flows in its own stream bed down to Sligo Creek.  Where the water flows, it looks fresh and clear.  But in the still pools there's an oily grayness and odor, from the vehicle residues that accumulate on the roads and wash downstream with each storm.

As I made my way upstream, finding more plastic bottles, Red Bull cans, and other refuse, I startled a pair of mallards that had stopped in the stream for a rest.  They flew a little ways upstream and settled in again.  It saddened me that they had to swim in the gray, oil stained water, instead of a clear, flowing stream.  

This little tributary of Sligo Creek is no different than dozens of others.  The watershed paved over, the streams confined to underground pipes that carry the oily waste and litter of us - who, no longer blessed with the beauty of a flowing natural stream, forget that it every existed and give no thought to the impact downstream of what we throw away.

To the pair of mallards:  I'm sorry that I disturbed you, and I'm sorry that we didn't give you a clean, healthy stream to rest in.  I hope you find better on your journey.

Helter Skelter Genes

We see the world from the perspective of our individuality.  We celebrate the years of our life, and mark the presence of a person from their birth to their death.  But we're each just a bubble that rises out of the vast pool of life, organizing matter into our individual form for a few years before giving way to time.  We are each a living thing, and we share certain qualities with other living things.  The mechanisms of our existence, the genetic material and biochemical processes that construct and sustain us, are common to almost all life.  Every individual life ends, but life continues.

We value ourselves so highly.  Would each of us not like to think that we had the ideal genes - the best genes to thrive in our environment?  And yet, the way life works, even the most perfectly adapted individual will die, and if they procreate, their genes will be diluted by half, perhaps for the better, but more likely for the worse.  Why does the sexual strategy rip apart even a successful combination of genes and roll the dice for the next generation?

I was reminded of Thoreau writing in Walden, about his observation of a red squirrel in winter, approaching a feast of corn ears Thoreau had laid out.  In the snowy carpet of winter, the dark-coated squirrel is much easier to see than in other seasons.  He wrote:

"One would approach, at first warily, through the shrub oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his 'trotters," as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him..."

And perhaps they are - the eyes of the hawk, the owl, the fox.  The strategy of rapid, helter-skelter  movements is programmed into the squirrel's being, the unpredictability making survival a bit more likely.

Our genes are a program to create an individual being, one of whose functions is to pass the genes on to the next generation of life.  It is key that the individual be successful at procreating, but the sexual strategy hedges its bets.  Like the squirrel darting either left or right, our strategy sends a random half of our genes forward into the next round.  Even the genes of the most perfect individual are, heading to the next generation, divided, shuffled, and combined with the equal contribution of the mate.  A darting, helter-skelter strategy to create a new individual, perhaps with a fortuitous genetic makeup that proves fit for the environment of its life.