Ch 8. Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie

During training at Douglas Hospital, a long-term inpatient 住院病人 approached a student with a simple, friendly question: “Can I come along with you?”
The student, unsure how to respond, turned to me for guidance.
Two possible responses:
- A white lie (“We can only take eight people”) to protect feelings.
- The truth (“We are training to be psychologists, and you can’t join us”), which acknowledged the painful reality.
I chose the truth, despite its harshness. The patient initially looked crestfallen but quickly accepted it.
This moment reinforced my growing realization: truth, even when difficult, is preferable to deception.

Years earlier, I noticed that almost everything I said was untrue.
Motivations behind my dishonesty:
- Winning arguments.
- Impressing people.
- Manipulating situations for personal gain.
I decided to stop lying and say only what my conscience could accept.
This proved useful when facing uncertainty—if unsure, tell the truth.

Language can be used to manipulate reality, a practice common in politics, marketing, and ideological extremism.
Examples of manipulative speech:
- Writing an essay to please a professor rather than to clarify one’s own thoughts.
- Speaking in a way that gains approval rather than expressing truth.
- Using words to climb the social hierarchy or avoid responsibility.
Alfred Adler’s “life-lies”: Self-deceptions people tell themselves to justify actions or maintain illusions of control.
Core assumptions behind life-lies:
- Current knowledge is sufficient—believing one’s worldview is final.
- Reality must be manipulated—believing the world is unbearable as it is.
Result: A life lived in distortion and avoidance, leading to deeper suffering.

People distort their lives around rigid goals formed in youth, failing to reassess as they mature.
- Example: A woman fixated on retiring at 52, warping her life to fit a teenage fantasy.
- Example: A man whose dream is to sit on a beach drinking margaritas—not a life plan, but a shallow, unsustainable escape fantasy.
Ideologues simplify reality into one flawed axiom:
- All government is bad.
- Capitalism is evil.
- Patriarchy 父權制 is oppressive.
- These views reduce complexity and distort truth, often leading to totalitarianism.

Sins of omission (what we fail to do) can be as harmful as sins of commission.
Example: A woman who avoids conflict, never speaks her mind, and seeks invisibility becomes a tool for others—living without meaning.
Hiding from the world suppresses one’s own potential, leaving them unfulfilled and vulnerable.
Avoidance creates weakness:
- If you never say “no”, you lose the ability to say “no” when it matters most.
- This is how ordinary people become complicit 同謀 in great evils—by failing to object.

Untruth weakens character, making people vulnerable to manipulation and adversity.
Self-deception leads to broader corruption:
- A small workplace rule is unnecessary, but you ignore it.
- Another unfair policy follows, and you accept it again.
- Soon, you’ve helped build a corrupt institution by remaining silent.
Complicit silence fuels oppression, leading to authoritarianism 威權主義.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s insight: The Soviet Union’s oppression thrived because citizens denied their own suffering and maintained ideological lies.

Totalitarianism arises when people refuse to question their beliefs.
Communism did not attract the oppressed, but intellectuals—those so convinced of their own correctness that they disregarded dissent.
The “perfect system” never comes, but suffering follows.
Viktor Frankl’s conclusion: Deception in individual lives fuels collective tyranny.
Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung all agreed:
- Lies distort the soul.
- Lies destroy societies.

Hell is not just a place—it is a state of existence, created by lies.
Signs of living in hell:
- Miserable, resentful people who lash out at others.
- Street alcoholics avoiding eye contact, unable to face their own decay.
Milton’s Satan embodies arrogance and rebellion against truth.
- “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
Refusing to change in the face of error is what condemns people to suffering.

Deceit caused the worst horrors of the 20th century:
- The Holocaust, the Gulag, the Killing Fields.
- Millions died because of ideological lies.
Even today, deception remains the greatest danger to humanity.
Truth is the only antidote to hell.