Why we lie

How comfortable are you with lying?

Exodus 20:16 “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” I always thought why it was never “Thou shalt not lie.” Many of the other commandments are straight forward like “Thou shalt not kill.” Or “Thou shalt not commit adultery”. So why not state plainly “Thou shalt not lie.” I think this is deliberate, and that there is a difference between lying and “bearing false witness.”

Many people say that “Honesty is the best policy.” While this may be true there are situations in which it is possible to be too honest. Brutal honesty can be very hurtful, it is often better to tell a small lie to avoid any trouble and benefit both parties. For example, when your prom date walks down the stairs, no matter what you actually think, you are going to compliment them. When you say “You look great!” you are technically lying, but in the process you are raising their self-esteem. This is why the commandment is not “Thou shalt not lie”, it is sometimes the better option to lie. I would take the small lie over brutal honesty any day. Like with anything, take this with a grain of salt. Continuous “white lies”, as they are called, can destroy your credibility and be a hindrance to serious relationships.

So what does “bearing false witness against thy neighbor” mean anyway? The key difference is the way the deceit is used. Bearing false witness means to plan or devise lies designed to hurt others. It is the intent to hurt others that sets it apart from simply lying. For instance, if I needed a 4.0 to get the scholarship I really wanted, I might be motivated to cheat and lie to get there. I might make a plan to break into a teacher’s laptop to change everyone’s grades. Give myself a perfect and give all the people I dislike 0’s. I then proceed to lie to the teacher when they ask me if I changed the grades. Most people with a decent set of morals wouldn’t lie and cheat in this way.

These two types of lies are the extremes, and of course there is a variety in between. Lies really do depend on the situation, it is hard to write a guidebook with a perfect balance of honest and beneficial lies. It also depends on personality. As I see it lies are just gateways to worse things. I’ve seen it in my oldest sister, I remember when she became a teenager that she began to lie more and more to my parents. It started with small things like practicing the piano. My parents would ask “Did you practice while I was gone?” and she would answer affirmatively. Well, I knew for a fact that she hadn’t, but I didn’t want to rat her out. In a sense I was helping her lie. Soon she began to lie about what time she was going to come home. Or where she was going, or who she was hanging out with. Of course she also kept everything from me, so it I don’t know exactly what went on. The one thing that I could notice is her relationship with my parents. Remember how I said that you begin to lose credibility, well that’s what happened. My parents couldn’t trust her, they couldn’t tell the difference between the truth and the lies anymore. Trust is hard to win back, and I just saw them growing further and further apart. I’m pretty sure she was thrilled to leave home and be free from the constant hovering of her parents.

After seeing this example, I knew that I didn’t want to have that kind of a relationship with my parents. I want to be trusted, I want people to be able to rely on me to follow through and get things done. That’s why I try my best to tell my parents exactly what is going on. Peer pressure, especially in high school, can be to rebel against your parents and “live a little”. I would encourage people to listen to their parents more, I’m not discouraging anyone from “living a little” or having fun, but at least listen to what you parents have to say. The last thing you want is a parent to say “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

Assumptions and Judgments

What assumptions do people make about you? *Help me with transitions please.

In it’s early history America became known as the “melting pot”, immigrants and ex-slaves and everyone in between came to the new world for a better life. However, things didn’t always go the way people wanted. Stereotypes began to arise, ideas like Asians have “squinty eyes” therefore they have bad eyesight, or blonde people are ditsy and clumsy. We still have stereotypes today, and whether or not they are offensive we still make assumptions when we really don’t know much about the person.

Well, I’m a white Caucasian male. I’m sure there are many stereotypes, but I have never really been subjected to them. There are broad general stereotypes, but people also make assumptions on a personal level. For pretty much as long as I can remember I was the “goodie-two shoes” the “teacher’s pet” or what have you. I don’t intentionally suck up to teachers, it’s just sort of my personality to be nice to people. I’m pretty sure I have never been hated, that obviously sounds incredibly arrogant, but I think it is true for the most part. I can’t remember anyone who despised me and was always rude and angry with me.

This is the point where you are expecting some cheesy line like “If everyone was kind we would live in a much better world ”. Ya whatever, everyone is different and if we live in a place where everyone had the same ideals and same morals the world would be pretty damn boring. The world needs some sort of contrast. If everyone was perfect there would be no evil, if there was no evil there would be nothing to compare perfection to, and thus perfection would be a neutral concept and we would know no real happiness. Basically what I am beginning to understand is that the world needs to have these stereotypes to succeed. Don’t think I am promoting stereotypes, or advocating bullying or anything of the sort. I’m merely stating that they assumptions and judgments we make are what make us human. We all have the natural instinct to compare ourselves to others, and for better or for worse it's part of our society.

Getting back to myself, as I said I have been classified as a nice person, a trustworthy friend, a agreeable individual. While these traits have some truth, it is not exclusively true. I, like many others, have different personalities or at least different ways of acting around certain people. Around my friends I think I am the closest to being “myself”. However, we all do things to impress other people, and this happens the most among our peers. Whether we call each other “posers”, “fake”, or whatever, we are all guilty of it to some degree.

A lot of people know me as a Mormon. People assume that because I’m a Mormon I act and doing things differently. Parts of my religion my religion may seem different but they don’t define me as an individual. In our society we group people all the time, whether it be race, economic status, gender, religion, we make judgments about a person based on all these characteristics. As a Mormon I probably get more questions about religion than an average person does. It is probably because people know less about my religion than say Catholicism. There are also many generalizations made about me because I’m a Mormon. Things like having multiple wives, which isn’t a thing anymore by the way, or being rich. These assumptions don’t hurt my feelings and I am always glad to correct stereotypes. We shouldn’t be offended by these assumptions. You are the only person that knows you perfectly, and therefore only you can define yourself. So don’t let others hurt you or bring you down based on their impressions and assumptions.

Hover Plants (Not parents)

Do you have helicopter parents/guardians?

*Note I was sick when I wrote this. Sorry if it is incoherent.

The hot air on my ears, the constant breathing behind me, the occasional “Whatcha doing”; these are the characteristics of a hover. We all have someone, whether it is family or a friend, who loves to hover. It could be your little sibling, or even your overprotective older sibling, but most of the time it’s your parents.

When we are younger it’s our parent’s job to hover over their kids. They don’t want 2 year old little son to find the bleach under the sink. They are programmed to keep watch over you. However, as you grow older some parents don’t want to let go. They continue to treat you like little kids who need constant protection, they lurk in the background constantly checking your activities and making sure that you are alright. They micro-manage every single thing in your life, they tell you exactly what to do 100% of the time and leave you with no freedom or privacy. As a teenager this can be quite annoying. Teenagers need a certain amount of privacy, give them too much and they will do whatever they heck they want, give them too little and they are going to hate you the rest of your life.

I would like to characterize our development to adulthood as a seed growing into a tree. When you are born you become a seed planted in the ground. It is your parent’s job to nurture the seed and allow it to grow.  Let’s imagine that teenage years are the most vulnerable years of the plant; when the plant is sprouting and is easy to destroy by accident. When a tree first begins to sprout often times gardeners will tie the young sprout to a straight stick. The stick is meant to help guide the tree to grow straight upward, however if you remove the stick too soon the tree will begin to grow sideways and it will inhibit it’s potential. If you remove the stick too late then you also damage the plant as it will grow short and stay the same height. Parents are the stick in this analogy. They have the option to allow you to grow sideways and do whatever you want. Or they can be the hovering micro-managing parents who leave the stick there and inhibit the trees growth. Personally I think my parents are just a little bit on the hovering side. They do give me responsibilities but they also monitor my time spent on the computer and tell me to spend more time on my homework and less time playing games.

Parents aren’t the only people who are allowed to hover. I know that one of my favorite pastimes as a younger kid was to bother my older siblings. The best times were when they were on Facebook. I would often stick my head close to their shoulder, enough so that I could read what was on the screen, but not enough that they could see me in their peripheral vison. After about a minute or so they would notice my breathing and yell at me. They said that they were talking about “older kid” stuff, stuff that I wasn’t allowed to see. I learned to breathe more through my nose and breathe out very softly, I became quite good at hovering. I didn’t know how annoying it was to my two older sisters. All I knew at the time was that it was really fun. I soon became the “older kid” and it was my sister’s turn to hover. It realized how annoying it was when your siblings are trying to snoop in your business. Sibling hovering is different that parents hovering. Parents do it to protect you and to try to help you. While siblings just do it for the fun of bothering their older siblings and getting attention from them. 

You Nerd!

Have you ever been embarrassed by something you used to like?

 “The Uni High Illineks?” my friend asked mockingly, “More like the Uni High Nerds!” Most people at Uni have probably been subject to a similar situation. We probably all know what it is like to be called a nerd. There is no inherent reason a “nerd” is an insult. As members of society we are surrounded by people who attempt to get by with the least possible amount of work. Anyone who goes above this standard is called a “try-hard” or “nerd”. One definition of nerd is “a single-minded expert in a particular technical field”. Despite the definition we give the word bad connotations to the point where it becomes a hurtful insult.

In elementary school I, like many others, was accused of being a nerd. This accusation came with good reason. I was obsessed with elements, rocks, minerals, anything about science that my brain could understand at the time. I spent countless hours copying down the periodic table or recording the hardness of different minerals. I remember turning in a five or six page document about the solar system. Even though I was part of the gifted program my classmates thought I was trying too hard and I can recall getting called a nerd more than once. The first few times I took it as a compliment. I figured it meant I was really smart and intelligent.

After a few more exposures to the word I could tell by their disparaging tone that they meant it more as an insult than a compliment. I don’t think they meant it in a harmful way, and it was more of a joke at first. As with any joke, the accusations soon became more hurtful. Embarrassment and humiliation set in. I lost interest in my hobbies. I didn’t check out as many science books from the library and I hid all my documents in a drawer.

It wasn’t until years later that I stumbled upon them again. I had forgotten about them for the most part. When I pulled them out I had an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia, similar to when you pull out an old journal and read the entries from many years ago. You know the feeling when your mother pulls out old baby pictures and shows them to all your friends? Then all your friends say “Aww, you were so cute.” They just complimented you, but at the same time you feel slightly embarrassed. I had the same type of feeling when I pulled out all my old projects. They represented all of my hard work but I was embarrassed all the same. Looking back, we probably all classify our early selves as immature to some degree. Some of us don’t really like to talk about all the stupid things we did as a kid. I was one of these types. I told myself that I wasn’t a nerd anymore; that I had moved on.

In spite of “moving on”, I wasn’t done being a nerd yet. I applied to a new school and was accepted. Uni High was a totally different place than public school. Everyone at Uni is exceptionally intelligent in some way. I was surrounded by people that probably went through situations similar to mine. Uni had a unique atmosphere and it wasn’t filled with the constant air of judgement. People weren’t afraid to be nerdy and show their talents. In other schools you don’t really want to be classified as the nerd or you will get picked on. Uni was different. I wasn’t as scared to be a “try-hard”, because plenty of other people were trying their best too. My embarrassment for my old self began to wane and for the first time in a long time I was content with being a nerd. Now whenever I am called a nerd I take it as compliment because I have no reason to be embarrassed.

Reverse Metamorphosis (Open Genre)

Ezra Johnson

Open Genera Project

The Reverse Metamorphosis

One morning, Rufus woke up all by himself. Normally the pheromones from his neighbors awoke him, but today he just woke up. He sniffed the air to catch a waft of the morning pheromones. Nothing. “That’s odd,” Rufus thought to himself. He tried again in vain. Rufus opened his eyes, but everything was all wrong. He looked around to the back corner where he kept his secret possessions collected while foraging. Rufus looked in the pile for his new shiny bead – Rufus had found it in the trash pile a few days ago while foraging for food—but his eyes couldn’t focus on anything. He was determined to make sure it was there, so he began to move towards the pile. As he began to move Rufus realized something was amiss. He looked behind him to make sure all six of his legs were in working order, but instead of six thin legs he found just two soft, thick, pink legs. He thought that maybe his vison was acting up again, so he tried to move them. The right one twitched but then went limp again. Confused, Rufus looked down and found that he had two smaller legs close to his head. These legs were different. They had floppy things at the end which each spawned 5 tiny stick-like appendages.

Rufus’ thoughts returned to work when he heard scurrying in a nearby tunnel. “If I’m late one more time Archibald will kill me!” Archibald was head-forager, specially bred for administrative roles. Rufus resented Archibald. While Rufus was out foraging all Archibald did was emit anger pheromones and scare the foragers. Rufus pondered his options. He knew Archibald would come scurrying by with his anger pheromone completely maxed out if he didn’t get up soon. He willed his new form to move, but all he got was a lot of twitching. “Maybe if I emit some help pheromone, Zoey will come by and help me get to work,” Rufus thought. He tried, but felt no odor being emitted. Rufus was at a loss. He couldn’t call for help or move his new body. “I guess I will just wait for Archibald to come by,” he thought.

As he was waiting, Rufus couldn’t help but fall asleep. When he awoke, he found Archibald standing above him his antennae in a flurry over his body. He sniffed the air. “No anger pheromone,” he thought “Why is he not emitting any anger pheromone?” Again Rufus made an attempt to communicate. However, in this attempt rather than emitting a pheromone he felt an odd sensation inside of his neck. It was a small vibration that reverberated through his body. Not only did it reverberate but it made an audible sound. Archibald was still feeling around when Rufus accidently did this, and it caused him to scurry away in panic and fear. Rufus could hear his scurrying get further and further away. He resolved to just wait for him to come back.

After a while, Rufus could hear lots of scurrying, it got louder and louder until seven workers came and approached him. Rufus attempted to communicate again, but it only sent the entire group of workers cowering away. Rufus made no more attempts to move or communicate while the workers picked him up and carried him away. He had only visited a few sections of the colony. It just wasn’t his business to explore the nursery or the workers area. All the same, Rufus was being carried through unknown territory and he couldn’t help but be curious. He wondered where they were taking him. “Maybe this happens often and they have a special food to fix it,” he thought optimistically. The tunnels seemed to go on forever and he began to wonder about the life ahead of him. “There must be some way that I can go back to work,” he thought. “I want to find more shiny beads to add to my collection.”

The tunnel slowly got wider and emerged into a large room with a dark endless pit in the center. “Oh, no!” he thought. He began to struggle – or attempt to struggle—with the workers. He sensed that he was unnerving them with his small movements, so he began to vocalize and squirm as much as he could. Rufus could smell the stench. Every single dead member of the colony was dumped into this pit. Every corpse was thrown down to rot and decompose. “They think I am dead!” he thought as he wrestled free of their grip. Rufus fell to the ground. His soft pink skin was punctured by the sharp rocks he fell on. Rufus felt a hot gooey liquid begin to flow over his body. He didn’t know what the liquid was and he realized that his soft pink skin was useless for protection. After he fell the workers, who were past uncomfortable, quickly rolled Rufus’ limp body into the pit.

When Rufus woke up he was ready to put the nightmare behind him and go to work. Except when he opened his eyes he saw nothing but utter darkness. He realized that it wasn’t a dream. He really did transform into a soft pink useless monster. He took a whiff of the air. It was so putrid and repulsive that he could hardly breathe. After collecting himself, he discovered that he had some control over his large lower legs and smaller upper legs. It was enough that he was able to scoot himself over to the wall through all the slimy corpses. After feeling around with his new appendages, Rufus realized that he had grown to about twice the size as he when he first got thrown down. His body felt incomplete, like it needed to stretch out and expand. There was nothing Rufus could do but sit and wait for something to happen.

As Rufus’ form began to grow, the pain from the wound returned. One day he was able to muster enough effort to reach around and feel around for the wound. As soon as he touched it his entire body shuddered. The wound had gotten worse. Rufus felt dizzy and went back to sleep. With each day Rufus grew larger and larger, but so did the wound. One day it was only a small spot on his back. A week or so later the wound had grown so large that it overwhelmed his entire back. Rufus tried to move as little as possible. He began to drift off to sleep more and more often. He slept for longer periods of time and soon forgot how long he had been in the pit. Sleep became the only thing that comforted him.

After about a month Archibald came to check up on him. Archibald emitted so much panic pheromone when he saw the giant pink skinned monster that the whole colony stopped to come see. Archibald had an idea, rather than letting all this soft decomposing flesh go to waste he would use it. He commanded the workers to start to dig a hole in the center of the soft-fleshed thing. “That’s a human,” one of the workers responded. “I have seen them up on the surface.” Archibald emitted a little anger pheromone “I don’t care what it is,” he said “Just make a hole in the center!” Archibald would use the new hollowed out area as a nursery. “It has all the perfect conditions,” he thought. “It’s warm, damp, and the larvae can just feed on the flesh rather than eating the foraged food.” After about a month the nursery inside of Rufus was ready. It was as perfect as Archibald had envisioned. Archibald was promoted in the social ranks of the colony and everyone prospered.

Craziness and the Past

Let's set aside Milkman for a moment and just look at the people in his life. Macon, Ruth, Pilate, Hagar, Guitar; they all have some insanely crazy story. Milkman is stuck with these people and can't seem to break away. Early in the book we established that Milkman was stuck in the past. On the Sunday drives Milkman was forced to look backwards (symbolizing the past). We see the same dynamic at the end of this novel. As an adult Milkman is driven to explore his past so that he can uncover and get rid of all the craziness in his life.

 

Even before Milkman was born he was surrounded by his crazy parents. Ruth, who is already crazy because Macon refused to sleep in the same bed with her, goes to Pilate and asks for a potion or drug that will allow her to sleep with him again. Pilate agrees and Ruth becomes pregnant. Macon, who is totally confused as to why Ruth is pregnant, tries to make her abort the baby. I'm pretty sure normal people don't ask their sister-in-law for a potion to have another child. On top of this Ruth is crazy to start with, she had a "different" relationship with her father that made us all super uncomfortable. Macon refuses to love Ruth because she had this odd relationship, but this refusal only causes more problems later on. 

Macon is not with out his own set of problems. His past seems to be a mystery for the most part. Milkman knows that he murdered a man in a cave when he thought the man was a ghost. Again this is totally insane, but with all the other insanity going on we sort of pass this an average thing people in this novel would do. 

Now Hagar's type of craziness is a little different than the others because it was provoked. A good portion of the fault is assigned to Milkman. He broke off a lifetime relationship with just a letter and a wad of cash. However, there ways to communicate that do not involve killing your lifelong friend. 

Milkman leaves his home to "find the lost gold", and at first it seems like it will just be another errand for his father. His whole life his father would tell him to do something, and the naive young little boy would go off to complete his father's work. However, part way through his journey Milkman becomes his own man. He realizes the reasons people dislike him, and the reason why Hagar is trying to kill him. The book becomes a coming-of-age novel. I think we see Milkman make the first steps to becoming his own person and escaping all the craziness that has been placed around him. Milkman has journeyed away from all the craziness and is now discovering and uncovering his past. Instead of this quest for gold Milkman's motive switches to finding out about his family. His ancestors seem to be heroic and well-respected, almost the opposite of his current family. Milkman is driven away from the craziness so that he can embrace his past and finally get rid of the insanity that surrounds him. (I haven't finished the book yet, but I guess I will find out if Milkman really does "solve the puzzle" of his past and get away from all the crazy people in his life.)

I'm with Rochester (mostly)

It is really hard to pick a side in this novel. I think I'm 60% Rochester 40% Antoinette. Here is why I sort of lean towards Rochester. The only thing that Rochester did wrong is have an affair with Emile. I think that this was really not that bad of a thing. Don't get me wrong, I think that sleeping with other people when you are married is a terrible thing to do, but I think he kinda had the right to retaliate in some manner. After all it was Antoinette who started it. All she wanted was to be loved, but she went to pretty desperate measures to get it. She gave him the love potion which is just a little too far in my opinion. This made me lose a little sympathy for Antoinette. 

Micheal brought up a point in class that he shouldn't fight fire with fire. I think that this is in general a pretty valid point. He did have reason to be angry though. I mean if someone gave you something like rohypnol I think you would get pretty mad. Yes I totally understand that you shouldn't sleep with other people, especially when you are married. However what did Antoinette think was gonna happen when the "poison/love potion" wore off. I think she kinda had it coming. 

Another reason I sympathize with Rochester is that never had any ill intentions, he just ended up in a bad situation. I think it is similar to Meursault in a lot of ways. It says Rochester was feverish and hallucinogenic when he first arrive in Jamaica. I think it is interesting to draw a parallel between Rochester's hallucinogenic feelings when stuff happened, and Meursault's  hallucinogenic feelings when he shot the Arab. Both Rochester and Meursault didn't really know what they were doing and they had to suffer the consequences because "life happens" and they couldn't control it. I feel sorry for Rochester in this sense, he sort of just got roped into a marriage that he maybe didn't think clearly about.
I also feel sorry that he got the bad end of primogeniture and has to work to get money. Those sorry feelings sort of got canceled out when he marries Antoinette and realizes that he gets all the money and that he is no longer a disappointment to his father. I understand completely why people think he is a jerk and side with Antoinette, but in my opinion I think he is a good guy that is just trying to make his way in the world. He wasn't deceptive to try to get Antoinette's money, it just sort of happened that way and he seems happy that it did.