On the second Tuesday of most months a group of us gather in the back room of a local restaurant. We order our beer or our coffee or our glass of wine and spend an hour discussing the selected topic/question for the evening. This past Tuesday the topic was Lying.
Is it ever okay to lie?
White lies?
Half-truths?
Among friends?
In business?
To protect a life?
To avoid conflict?
It was an interesting hour.
And, like many conversations like that, I find myself thinking about them long after we have all gone home. One of the nuances we discussed was the difference between a personal morality and a more corporate one. We generally agreed we should not lie to our partner or family or close friends, but in the larger world fudging the truth to one degree or another is often a part of the cost and accepted practice of doing business.
Being who I am, I wonder what that disconnect does do our psyches and our souls.
I value one set of moral principles here.
Another there.
If I am a friend I have one set of expectations for how we will treat each other, but if I am nameless or a stranger anything goes. It allows for behavior in the communities in which we live which we would never condone in our families.
What, I wonder, does that do to our communities?
And, our life together?
And, who are to each other?
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