A Man As Good As His Word

I’ve been beating on this next topic for over a year because I see a failure in society to maintain it for a while now. This is one of the core issues destroying America in addition to lack of accountability. Speak the truth with no deception, no ulterior motive or subterfuge. Make sure your yes means yes and your no means no. It seems such a simple thing for people to do but the failure to do it wholly and completely in society is culminating in societal breakdown. False or errant communication can ultimately lead to the demise of our structured society. Truthfulness with others and even one’s self.

In the past I’ve mostly hit it from a philosophical standpoint. I just showed how people’s statements are logically flawed. I now realize it runs deeper. This isn’t just a failure to think critically. It is actually forethought and based in malice that which I was attributing to stupidity. I no longer believe that most media and politicians are just using incorrect reasoning. No, they’re literally changing definition of words to allow themselves to appear to be speaking the truth but in reality are deliberately deceiving. They do so by changing commonly accepted meaning of words like tolerance, hate, and choice in purposeful lies or fallacies called equivocation.

Proverbs 14:5 An honest witness does not deceive, but a false witness pours out lies.

Matthew 5:37 But make sure your statement is, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil origin.

Ephesians 4:25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

Well, it turns out honesty is exceptionally important in sustaining a functional society or any form of organization for that matter. Truth is a measure of absolutism or at least a benchmark or touchstone of what is not. It is a benchmark of how much a person can be assured of a certainty. Without honesty laws cannot be passed that work. Without truth and honesty laws that are passed cannot be obeyed. Without truth communication cannot even be completed properly. This is part of what we are seeing unravel in society today. The failure to communicate honestly saying what one means and meaning what one says is instigating strife, conflict and violence. This deceptive communication is going on at grand scale as it is being broadcast in the public square (media). Corrupt politicians assist in articulating and propagating the lies by institutionalizing lies in the form of bad, flawed or contradictory laws.

It is strange that as a Capitalist society America doesn’t understand the intrinsic value of honesty anymore. The assuredness of the ironclad integrity of a ‘handshake’ deal. The old practice of sealing a deal with a handshake because a man was good to his word and that was his contract. His reputation rode on how he performed and dealt honestly. Honesty is the hallmark of integrity or a signpost. That handshake bonded your agreement in truth to the other person. If it’s not there the person without it has no integrity and you’re better off not dealing with them. Like then, so now…truth and honesty was/is important because most business transactions depend on trust. A business deal…the heart of the American capitalistic system. Business isn’t just business either. When I say business I’m not just referring to the act of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products and services. I consider ‘business’ also any type of interaction where there is an exchange of possessions, ideas or even spirituality through things like teaching and mentoring where truthful words and honesty are needed to complete a transaction with integrity.

Truth is required in everyday interactions or dealing with other people that are needed to maintain a healthy relationship. In our business, employment, neighborly relationships, family relationships and even intimate relationships we are failing at a wholesale level if we’re honest. I believe part of it is just failure to complete ideas and we communicate half ideas which are essentially incomplete thoughts. Not outright lies but truths with facts omitted leading to failure of some sort.  Why partial or limited communication?

I believe it is a lack of attention-span and distraction. The largest distraction obviously being technology. Most now gravitate towards and prefer depersonalized interaction on a device as opposed to face to face direct interaction. The past year of COVID has amplified this. Why? In a word: Accountability. The physical geographic separation the electronics allow removes direct immediate accountability for words and actions. The distance demands neither truth nor kindness. In their place deception and callousness. People speak without saying anything meaningful and listen but hear only what they want to. This fuels the masses in a dehumanized way. Once we have a large angry mass in motion…the mob rules. Bad things happen in mindless unruly mobs.

A businessperson has to trust that a supplier will deliver a product on the date that he specified or a with quality, integrity and honesty. Just as in a normal interaction in society, a person has to trust that another communicant will deliver a statement in a timely manner or a message with honesty. In business the end product are goods. Those agreed upon products will have the agreed quality and specifications. The supplier has to trust that the buyer will pay for the product when he promised to do so. This is the identical requirement in a civic or social interaction. They also need to have agreed upon qualities and specifications like honesty, intent and a pureness of purpose. One delivers goods and service, the other delivers integrity and ideas. Both are expected to be intact upon receipt by the recipient. If not someone gets angry, confused, disillusioned or all of these. Discontinuity ensues. Social Distortion. A slow erosion of truth/integrity happens en masse and spreads exponentially. The evil is no longer contained as the words spread this damaging contagion like airborne virus on the wind of their breath.

When a company's buyers and sellers are in the habit of telling the truth and keeping their word, business transactions run smoothly and the economy functions efficiently. Here in the business example we see how individual units of business affect a much larger whole. Now carry this analogy over to dishonest individual personal interactions. Similarly, a myriad of small immoral interactions or dishonesty in communication between two people can destroy a friendship, marriage, family, church, society or country. These individual dishonesties and deceptions start individually and amass into much larger issue. They become a massive writhing throng of confusion and disorder.

The parallel as a whole can be shown in the business imagery too. When a business is building a highly complex product like a phone or automobile, there can be hundreds or even thousands of suppliers and workers on which the company depends in order to make a quality product on time. If successful it profits the company. The issue of trust influences the outcome. As significantly higher levels of complexity are added to a product or series of communication, the more accurate the series of communication need to be to reproduce an accurate result. If at any time inaccuracies enter these sequence of events the end result is flawed. Furthermore the earlier the error, deception or lie enters the series the more it has time to distort and mutate. Again, this is what we are seeing in society. Distortions or lies placed early in the communication process then being exacerbated over time dramatically effecting everything and everyone downstream.

If a culture or business tolerates lying and breaking one’s word, then the entire moral and economic systems begin to break down respectively. Welcome to America 2021. Products are not delivered on time. Needed parts come in the wrong sizes or do not meet quality standards. Invoices and accounting reports are falsified so that companies no longer have an accurate picture of their inventories or costs of goods. Additional time-wasting procedures have to be built in to check and double-check the accuracy of every report. Economic productivity begins a rapid downward spiral. So too the outcome of societies that tolerate blatant deception from the individual level all the way up to the federal level or the breakdown of moral integrity. 

The end social product of a society littered with deceivers and liars is a need for more onerous laws to try and control them rather than allowing them to be guided by an internal moral bearing. That is what we're also seeing in America. People are no longer good to their ‘handshake’ agreements because there is no pattern of moral behavior to back it. Past precedence has shown that a society that honors God’s commands will value and expect truthfulness. Those that reject God or are in rebellion will see no value in telling truth even to the detriment of society’s downfall. That is why the Bible clearly opposes such a breakdown in trust in a culture by upholding a high standard of truthfulness in speech. It says:

Exodus 20:16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”

Colossians 3:9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices

In cultures and societies past and present where lying or manipulation of the truth is accepted we see that people’s integrity and value/worth will not be respected. I believe this is why we are seeing more frequently that people are being treated in a dehumanized objectified way; Demorats, Repubtards, uneducated evangelical (as epithet). There is no longer dignity or mutual respect. in the place of honorable passions we are seeing insults, violence and ignorance skyrocket while being encouraged by media and leaders.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that in nations that had been strongly influenced by the Bible and maintain a decorum of integrity, honesty or overall moral behavior...mutual respect is the status quo not the exception as we see now. In Biblical nations we see a people that have held to the positive values discussed above. In so doing greater economic growth and exchange of ideas prevails as we have seen in days past in America. As nations have drifted away from God the immorality, deception and evil has increased. So much so it is prevalent and widespread as we see today. Deception is now the de facto behavior.