Why is it so much easier to lie than it is to be honest? Why so much easier to steal rather than earn? Why so much easier to betray rather than be honourable? Why do much easier to kill than to live?
The Grand Cosmic Joke which is our lives makes the easy way the wrong way, and we have overcome that to be more ‘human’.
Only those who understand know that happiness requires effort, and that the hard path brings happiness – some of the time.
Fourteen Twenty 
because dishonesty for the preservation of self is as natural to mankind as breathing.
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Someone once said, “You can’t try to walk down two different roads, and look to both of them to bring you home.”
Either you choose the hard road: being honorable and true to yourself and your beliefs (even though it doesn’t always bring pleasure)
–OR–
you choose the easy one: lies/betrayal to satisfy your own current desires. There is selfishness in us all…but do you give in or are you strong?
Lies and betrayal may be easy….but do you still feel human at the end of them when they are exposed?
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I think once they are exposed you feel uniquely human, as humans are at thier core selfish, and guilt and shame is a selfish feeling.
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Shem, it sounds as tho you are saying that humans then are basically masochistic. If guilt and shame are selfish, and at the core, humans are selfish…
I do not agree however that shame and guilt are selfish. Even if you mean they serve no purpose other than to make their owner feel better, I cannot justify that as selfishness.
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I think it’s important to examine what guilt actually is: it’s the conflict within oneself when one has committed a wrongful deed, it’s introspection and focusing on ones own feelings, and it is completely seperate from the afflicted parties. When someone has betrayed, they are affected more by thier own feelings of morality (or lack of it) and cease to be concerned with those outside of themselves.
Shame is more of an emotional reflection of who we are, a contemplation of our own flaws and defects, concern that revolves around ourselves, and only ourselves.
And human beings as masochistic? Certainly, we find great pleasure in counting our woes, considering our sins. It is control in that we do it to ourselves.
I hope all that makes sense, it seems clear in my head, but my dialogue stumbles when I try to write it down.
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I think it’s important to examine what guilt actually is: it’s the conflict within oneself when one has committed a wrongful deed, it’s introspection and focusing on ones own feelings, and it is completely seperate from the afflicted parties. When someone has betrayed, they are affected more by thier own feelings of morality (or lack of it) and cease to be concerned with those outside of themselves.
Shame is more of an emotional reflection of who we are, a contemplation of our own flaws and defects, concern that revolves around ourselves, and only ourselves.
And human beings as masochistic? Certainly, we find great pleasure in counting our woes, considering our sins. It is control in that we do it to ourselves.
I hope all that makes sense, it seems clear in my head, but my dialogue stumbles when I try to write it down.
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Why bother trying to be honest then if lying makes one feel so good?
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‘Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You’.
We as conscious beings have the ability to imagine the feelings of others. We can therefore imagine how it would feel for those pains to be inflicted upon ourselves. So instinctively we know what is right and wrong. Someone who commits wrong may find it pleasurable to control, but ultimately they choose to ignore the principles described above, which creates conflict on both a sub-conscious and conscious level.
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