Desperately Seeking Honesty
The things you are certain about are certainly not as certain as you think. Put another way, the thinks that you think you are certain of, are certainly not as certain as you think. The best thing to think about thinking is that thinking is one of the most unreliable things in the world.
I am not kidding. I mean this sincerely.
We have an abundance of scientific proof that the mind is unreliable. We know with a relative degree of certainty, that most of what you and I “know to be true,” particularly in our personal lives, probably isn’t, and at a minimum, cannot be depended upon. Your mind cannot be trusted, just like all other minds.
The antidote to this lies in our ability to:
pay attention to our experience
share what we notice and what we think about it
pay attention to each other
pay particularly careful attention to the way our minds are just working away at all times to manufacture and sell a personally biased and attached to—false and inaccurate alternative to reality
Getting trapped in thought, on the other hand, will make our lives suck more and more, on a daily basis, both individually and collectively, until we are all sucked through a long stupid sewer of misery into oblivion.
This is why we desperately need each other’s honesty on an ongoing basis to even have a chance to occasionally find our ass with both hands.
So, given the uncertainty about certainty and the unreliability of individual minds to come up with accurate judgments and assessments based on anything other than random associative prejudice (self-defense, self-image defense and other bullshit), what really counts?
The most important thing
What is the most important thing to know and practice on an ongoing basis for every human being and amongst all people on earth?
What counts is our ability to make some corrections together on an ongoing regular basis. That’s what we call co-hearted co-intelligence.
Put in a slightly more succinct way, we are all as full of shit as a Christmas turkey. And to have any hope in hell of a minimally adequate life, in a moderately happy world we need regular check ups with each other with regard to our mental capacity, mental health, life orientation, judgments and assessments.
The truth is, to do anything as complex as say, buying a loaf of bread, without dying or getting killed on the way to or from the store, is a fucking miracle. And to do it three times, without it costing the lives of innocent children and people as guiltless as the sky is blue, is simply impossible. (Growing wheat, grinding flour, hauling it all over hell, mixing it up, baking it, wrapping it, hauling it again, and selling costs about two dead babies a day, and we come one day closer to the end.)
Even with ongoing corrections applied amongst us, a lot of incredibly bad choices will still be made, and mistakes that hurt a lot of people will still occur with regularity. And that is the best we will ever be able to do.
What’s a human being to do?
So, other than having the good grace to commit suicide, what is a human being to do? Honesty.
Honesty, that encourages an openness to feedback from others, and allows you to develop a healthy sense of uncertainty without fear, gives us all a chance to get wiser and figure out a way of creating deep democracy. That’s co-hearted co-intelligence in action, and our best shot at not living a miserable life and dying a miserable death. And even that is not certain. Admitting that, is what we call Radical Honesty. At least, that’s what I am thinking right now.
How about you?
Brad Blanton, Ph.D. Author of Radical Honesty, Practicing Radical Honesty, The Truthtellers, Radical Parenting and other books