BY GABRIEL ZACARIAS

In print | September 25, 2008

In my last column, I discussed many things, ranging from different reasons to be honest to the extent the Hadron Collider will change scientific knowledge as we understand it. I will focus more on the former in this column (sorry), in which I will discuss Truth in general. I was re-reading my column several times, mostly for egotistical reasons, when I realized my next column would logically present more arguments in favor of the truth. For all my lambasting of lies and snide comments regarding deception, I have yet to present the truth as something truly desirable. Let’s see what I can do—the easiest argument first.

If you have a brand spanking new, amazing haircut, wouldn’t you want to know? Better yet, wouldn’t you want to know that when people said, “You have an amazing haircut,” they actually meant it? Compliments are always nice, especially if you delude yourself into believing they’re always truthful (guilty), but compliments you know are honest seem better somehow. It might just be me, but the knowledge that someone is not lying to me when they are saying something nice warms my soul like I have meningitis, but then I realize I don’t have a stiff neck, if you know what I mean.

There is at least a simple argument in favor of the Truth: compliments will be maximally “good-feeling-giving,” which is nice. Now consider the opposite of compliments—those evil things called insults, or as I like to call them: “Love salt.” Allow me to explain. People who navigate this world alongside me are split into two categories: people I care about and people I don’t. This is a great model, in case you were wondering. Imagine that someone said that your outfit was reminiscent of the great Orangutan Polka Dots/Horizontal Stripes fracas of ’72, clearly not intended to be a compliment. This person is clearly not a fan of your commercialized Che Guevara shirt with American Eagle shorts and New Balance sandals. Now let’s fit them into our model.

We need to fit this person into our dichotomy, so we’ll use different names for each type of person. Judgmental Jennifer is a person I don’t care about. Whether it is her personality, her body odor, her musical tastes does not matter (the reasons I like and don’t like people are both voluminous enough to fill books, or at least pamphlets, and at the same time is likely uninteresting to everyone except Ken Jennings and Google, who would review it for indexing purposes only); what matters is that I don’t care about her. Thus this Judgmental Jennifer’s comment is easily dismissed, caroming off my shield designed specifically to deal with unhelpful comments from people I don’t care about. So truth certainly did not hurt me; it really just did nothing, which is definitely no less than a neutral. It is quite different for Jolly Julie.

Jolly Julie is someone I do care about, and is quite pleasant overall. While Julie might not reference 1972, she would certainly say something if she thought my clothes were horrendous. Here is a crucial advantage of the Truth: If Julie were consistent, she would always say comments of a given nature the same way. In other words, she might be gentle, caustic, loud, quiet, etc. when it comes to things she thinks the other person might not want to hear. However, since I care about her, I have come to accept that this is how Julie is and appreciate it, not ask her to change.

Julie is a wonderful presence in that I know exactly how she feels and exactly how she chooses to express it. Even when it comes to the hard Truths, I’ll know the general style in which she will communicate them, and I’ll know that I can listen to them. I might hear things from Judgmental Jennifer, but I’ll listen to things that Jolly Julie says, good or bad. Allow me an anecdote. The vast minority of people at this school understands this dynamic of the Truth, and thus I have taken it upon myself to model the way. Those who know me know that I usually say exactly what I want to, drawing upon the nebulous and frightening entity known as my mind. This is quite polarizing to people, and if you have ever been with me the first time I’ve met someone (I call it “initiation”), you know it alienates a lot of people. It doesn’t scare away everybody, and the people who stick around usually become at the least a good friend and at the most my best friend.

My point is simple: always be truthful. It not only allows you to put greater faith in the things people say but also allows you to know other people. The harsh truths are easier to handle if you know that a) you like the person and b) you like his or her communication style. I won’t go so far as to say the world will be a happier place, but darn it all, it will be a more honest place and words might have meaning again. Take that sarcasm. Take that in your ugly face.

Gabriel is a senior. You can reach him at gzachari1@swarthmore.edu.

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