Tag: honesty

Honesty and kindness

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What principles define how you live?

Why not live by these principals?

By sticking to them you can try and do good.

Honesty and kindness means not being cruelly honest, to balance the truth and it’s outcomes. Kindness is probably the most important of the two. Honesty can be used to hurt.

So the two can cause moral dilemmas, but perhaps the best use of them is to combine them with the doctors’ oath “first do no harm”, at least that can help point you in the right direction.

I remember also, the two wrongs don’t make a right, even if in mathematics two negatives can make a positive (I think I remember?). Revenge and hate don’t make the world better even if it can make people feel better. It can only worsen the situation. Given that, I’m not talking about appeasement. What I mean is that more truth and reconciliation commissions should be created. It may take many years before they can try and work, but it seems like a better idea than violence and war cascading down the centuries.

But what can I do? Try and keep to my principals, avoid anger if I can.

Honestly? Honesty

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What quality do you value most in a friend?

I almost said loyalty, but if I do something wrong I hope a friend would let me know. I do think that’s really important. I guess I need to think about it though. One person’s honesty might be someone else’s severe criticism. I would prefer to know what a friend honestly thought without it breaking our friendship.

What that means is that we could mutually agree to disagree if politics or some other belief was coming between us. For instance having mutual respect if you followed different religions. I can’t see why that would end a friendship. Unless of course one of you had inhumane ideas. In which case I don’t think we could be friends in the first place.

By the way I apologise for pontificating in these prompt posts. But they make me think about things, and they are here to be answered….

Why not loyalty? Because that might mean the friend backs you up even if you’ve done something wrong. I’d prefer them to nudge me and say they think I’ve made a mistake. OK I’d prefer constructive criticism in that case (what a polite world I want to live in)! Sometimes though I honestly need a serious criticism. Nobody is perfect after all…..

Athletics

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What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?

I actually like a lot of the sports in the Olympics, and that includes some of the newer sports such as mountain biking and climbing. But I guess my favourites are track and field events (including para athletics). I think that’s because I grew up watching people like Mary Peters and Sebastian Coe among others. So often you would see people beating World and Olympic records. My only regret was when they may have been found to be cheating. Using drugs to enhance their performances. Also I think more modern athletics has too much hype. I know the athletes need to fund their careers, but I liked the simpler times. One of my favourite films is Chariots of Fire. Where athletes were far more moral and honest than some of them appear to be now, or maybe that’s just my perception?

Virtue Signalling?

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I’m having a discussion about various political issues and I suddenly realised when I share my opinions I could be said to be virtue signalling. Then I thought who comes up with these phrases and why?

I really do think we have entered an age of Orwellian ‘newspeak’. I think it’s always happened, but the phrase collateral damage, instead of saying innocent casualties was the start of it.

People weave words to obfuscate (hide their meaning). It might be to save people’s feelings, or to confuse people by misleading them. Perhaps the tricks and cons that advertisers have used have spread into politics and ordinary life.

I may be being harsh. But with climate change and the damage to the Earth from pollution, its about time we cut out the confusion and started being honest again!