Something felt a bit off lately, and I wanted to sort my thoughts, so I'm writing this.
This post gets fairly abstract, and a bit critical — thanks for sticking with it.
A while back I became aware of a well-known person I only knew one-sidedly.
Their words and thinking seemed solid, so I respected them from a distance — but recently their words and actions had a fatal contradiction.
This time it happened to surface, but I'm not only talking about one case — it happens now and then.
Someone you thought was admirable speaks in an irresponsible, definitive tone, or offers a shallow opinion.
I don't demand purity from others or myself (I'm not pure either), but when I see words and actions that are that thoughtless, I get disappointed.
It's hard to put into words cleanly, but if I use the ordinary phrase: "lying" is one of the things that really disappoints me.
A lot of people might agree. But the "lie" I mean here is a little different from what most people picture.
Fraud and deceiving people are out of the question to begin with — and it's also different from hiding a mistake you made.
In other words: words and actions that don't line up. More precisely, I dislike the state where your words don't line up and you don't even notice.
If the person lying were defiant about it, or malicious, that would almost be better — but often they aren't. They stay contradictory, feel nothing about it, and keep believing their opinion is right.
(As I said, this isn't only about one specific person or one event.)
There are many reasons people "lie" like that, but I think the biggest cause is not using words you thought through yourself.
Staying too abstract forever isn't helpful, so here's an extreme example to make the image clear:
Saying "Studying isn't something you learn from others — you do it yourself!" while also saying "I can't speak English because Japan's English education system is terrible."
It's only an example, so please don't get stuck on that pair alone — but you can see those two statements contradict each other.
And the point I care about in that misalignment is that the speaker doesn't care about the contradiction at all, and thinks "it's just a casual remark — you don't need consistency every time."
I personally can't understand that mindset. I think "being fine while producing this kind of contradiction" is what "lying to yourself" means. (I'd heard that phrase for years and never had a clear picture of it.)
And if you don't use words you thought through yourself about facts and problems, you speak without deep thought — and because your own thinking isn't in the statement, you don't notice the contradiction. That's my guess.
To concede: making every action and statement consistent is probably extremely hard, and views shift a bit over time. I fail at this too.
Even so, if you get used to living comfortably with contradictions, I think you'd stop being able to trust yourself at all.
And — this is uncharitable speculation — once you're used to that contradiction, you no longer need to discipline your words and actions, so it becomes comfortable and fun.
But if you get there, I think you're done as a person. At least, the people who really matter and trust me would leave.
From the outside, organizations and people can look clean and cool — and still be full of fatal contradictions, or people who enjoy them. I've been reminded of that again lately.
And people who don't lie to themselves are extremely rare. So when I meet one, I trust them a lot more than average, and I want to take care of that relationship.
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