Lies

On Mislaid Predicates

By John Taylor; 2007 Nov 22, 19 Qudrat, 164 BE

I have been bogged down forever at the confluence of justice and search for truth. Late last night I thought I might break the jam by reading Mortimer Adler's essay on truth in Britannica's Syntopicon, which starts off with Josiah Royce's definition of a liar as "one who willfully mislays his ontological predicates."

 That set me to thinking about our two kids. That is how I philosophize when it is that late at night.

 Whatever else you may say about them, and unlike just about every other child I have ever heard of, our offspring never lie. Even at that young age when toddlers discover they can lie, these two never tried out their new muscle, at least not that I can recall. To this day Silvie and Thomas remain surprisingly scrupulous about not intentionally mislaying their ontological predicates. They keep them close to hand. Thomas surprises me in particular, what with his being a headstrong, rambunctious, energetic eight-year-old boy, yet for all his mischievousness I could not recall a single occasion when I had caught him out in a lie.

 So this morning before they went off to school, I spontaneously awarded Thomas the same prize I give for getting an "A," twenty "rekompenso poentoj" -- exchangeable for a dollar, because he has been so truthful. I planned to give the same prize to Silvie to keep it from becoming invidious. So when as expected she protested at not getting anything I asked her, "Of course, you never lie either, do you?" Her response was more guarded than I expected. "Eble..." ("Maybe.") I realized that I had almost pushed her into committing the liar's paradox, which, when spoken by any but the Most Great Truth Teller, would probably create a spatial anomaly with unforeseeable consequences. Like her mother, she is if anything over-scrupulous about adhering to the literal truth. For her to say "yes" to that question would mean she never told a lie, ever, something only the likes of Abdu'l-Baha could boast of (and as we saw in a recent essay, boasting of sinlessness is itself a betrayal of truth). Her circumspection alone made her believable, and I awarded the same twenty points.

 Thomas's reaction to the reward was not gratification, as I expected, but puzzlement. "Is it a lie when you promise someone not to tell, when you are keeping a secret?" We gave the correct parent's response, that one must balance loyalty with truthfulness, and that all bets are off when it is a question of immorality, criminality or child abuse. But I have to admit that although I do not believe in being a literalistic truth teller as my wife is, I am often troubled about this very issue. Thomas proved his integrity just by bringing the issue up.

 My research is not the sort of thing where I have employers clamoring to force me to sign confidentiality agreements, but I often ponder over whether such contracts should even be allowed by law. I will come back to this.

 I think the reason both our kids are so truthful is not so much that their parents are so all fired truthful ourselves, but mostly because we are both such marshmallowy personalities. We do not go out of our way to call them out or accuse them of wrongdoing. And we are around them virtually all the time; there is not much kids can do wrong under such constant supervision. But mostly, we are wimps, willfully so. If they jump on the furniture or draw on the walls once in a while, so what? The furniture is junk and we will paint the walls someday anyway. As the Master said, the origin of wrongdoing is attachment; when it comes to children's wrongdoing, most of it boils down to the attachment not of kids but their parents, to putting love second to ephemeral material possessions.

 A bad attitude on the part of governments and parents provokes defensive lies; but it is all their own doing. The quickest way to create a liar is to condemn, to be overly accusatory. This in itself compromises love and truth. What non-wimpy, non-marshmallowy authority figures love the most is the inquisition. "Did you do it? Tell the truth, or else." The "else" offers the sadist the greatest pleasure. Both the Bab and Baha'u'llah were subjected to such inquisition backed up by the bastinado. And of course Jesus, when his answer to the high priest was not to the liking of his goon, was struck across the face. He responded,

 "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?" (John 18:23)

 Few have the grit to stand before a tyrant and tell the truth as openly as that. Unbelievably, many Christians forget this shocking example of twisted corporal punishment applied to their Lord and take the saying "Spare the rod and spoil the child" literally. But recall what Jesus had just said before being struck, "In secret have I said nothing." (18:20) This was quite true, as his frequent use of parables attests. The parable is the ultimate literary way to combine inner, hidden meanings behind an outer shell, rather as the world does.

 The fact is that avoiding lies and the violence in which they fester is not just a matter of personal integrity; it is the foundation of public order and security.

 In any case, Thomas was perfectly correct, the need to keep information confidential often does force you to willfully mislay your ontological predicates. Hence my aversion for confidentiality agreements. To me, signing such a thing is the same as explicitly promising to mislay your ontological predicates. It says, I am a liar, and thus calls the black cloud of the liar's paradox onto your own head. It is to declare, "Not only am I a liar, but I promise to be a worse liar in the future." The very fact that a company or other entity asks you to sign such an agreement is implicit admission that they do not trust your discretion; they expect and invite betrayal.

 Worse, like all secrecy, formalized confidentiality agreements not only willfully lay aside their ontological predicates, by so doing they actually embrace and invite wrongdoing.

 The Master once was asked how to avoid telling a lie; his answer was simple, never do anything wrong and you will never have to tell a lie. Any contract, therefore, which compromises our ability to speak the whole truth restricts our freedom and tends to be noisome of immorality and mendacity. This is because the very existence of confidentiality contracts is a standing temptation to increase wrongdoing. This lesson was learned the hard way among states in the Great War. They realized afterwards that a rat's nest of secret pacts had turned a local dispute in Serbia into a global death struggle. So secret treaties were emphatically banned.

 But this lesson has yet to be learned in the workplace.

 The very existence of confidentiality agreements threatens not only the integrity of the parties privy to the agreement, but also society at large. How do I know that any answer anybody gives me about anything has not been mischievously altered by some unknown contract they signed in the past? Secrecy breeds criminality, and criminality breeds yet more secrecy. And there is a fine line between confidentiality and secrecy. They breed in mutual dependency.

 As it is, corporations are permitted to keep secret pretty much whatever they please, even when it is a threat to public safety. For example, they have a right to keep the specific chemicals in the flavorings and preservatives that we all eat to themselves, since these are protected trade secrets. Same way, computer chip makers keep microcode as a trade secret. As reported in the press last week, an Israeli scientist warns that this creates a hardwired vulnerability in Intel chips to hacking, and this puts our entire banking system in imminent peril of collapse. Every electronic money transfer could be hacked by spies or criminals. And of course, what with confidentiality agreements rampant in industry, there is no danger that any whistleblowers will lightly expose such fatal flaws to broader scrutiny in the public interest. That would mean breaking their confidentiality agreements.

 Of course, it is undeniable that all power relations require some degree of confidentiality. I have been reading about the birth of the Baha'i administration, and in the early years, until at least 1907, the local Assembly held its meetings entirely open to community observers. If you had a private matter to discuss with them I guess you were out of luck. Later the Master's teaching that the Assembly should be like a loving parent to the community must have kicked in, requiring that the Assembly be like parents and consult privately in order to offer some degree of confidentiality both to themselves and the community, their children, both separately and together -- now the administrative section of the Feast acts as consultation En Famille, excluding outsiders.

 As a member of our local Assembly I am conscious that confidentiality acts like a belt constricting my usual all-too-open frankness. Ditto with being a parent and husband. But I appreciate that at least I do not have to sign any restrictive confidentiality agreements, and that I am trusted. The writings are there for all to read, plain, not even protected by parable. I appreciate the trust and try to live up to it. -- Oh, no! Look at what I just did. By writing what I just did I made up my own confidentiality agreement without even being forced to do it. Dang! So starts the slippery slope to mislaid ontological predicates.