I get so insanely pissed off when people try to replace common sense or morality with some stupid little saying, or with tradition. For instance, I'm trying to figure out whether or not to be honest with someone, and I'm considering both my happiness, the other person's happiness, and the general affects the dishonesty might have, and I ask someone for help, and they say: "Honesty is the best policy" like it solves my problem. :bang: Or when "Its traditional" is an apparently appropriate response to the question: "Why do you do that even though you hate it?" :bang::bang:
But honesty usually is the best policy. And some people value tradition! It's hard to fault someone for that.
Honesty is the best policy. If the other person can't handle the truth, that's their problem. Dishonesty will cause people to make decisions based on faulty information. That doesn't help anyone. If you want someone to sympathize with your predicament (whatever it may be), that I can get behind. But I will never tell you that lying is Ok.
*sigh* You've missed the point. My point was, does anyone ever get annoyed at people using tradition or quotes as a substitute for common sense or morality? The truth is that the truth does not always have beneficial effects, and there are a great many times when it might be better to lie. And if you come to the conclusion that in this particular circumstance, telling the truth is the best thing to do, you do so because of logic and ethics, not because someone told you that "honesty is the best policy". And if anyone was curious, the "thing" is my trans history, and it is not as simple as honesty is the best policy. You may just be trying to annoy me, its difficult to tell online.
If people used "tradition" to substitute for common sense, America would still be an English colony right now. So I do get kind of ticked when people cite tradition as an excuse for denying common sense and morality. I also believe honesty is best to a point. Sometimes, it is better to lie than to tell the truth
If this is about you being trans, then just come right out and say it. But my point still stands that lying to people causes then to make decisions based on incorrect information. All lies come out eventually, and all you're left with is explaining the problem on top of why you lied about. You can believe that telling the truth does not always have beneficial effects. But lying will always have detrimental effects somewhere down the line.
:bang::bang::bang::bang::bang: That was just an example. There are other sayings that people use to substitute for common sense/morality. And no, coming out and saying I'm trans would be the stupidest thing ever.
I do, in fact, with several friends who will try and comfort me with cliched expressions 'it will get better' or 'time will tell' when they have nothing else to offer. It just seems a way to avoid the real issue and to placate the other person's expectations at once, but ends up doing neither. A lack of thinking, especially if they have no way of seeing the situation from another persons' point of view? In other words, the path of least resistance.
Haha!! ^^^ But I get the OP. it's annoying when tradition trumps common sense or just likes and dislikes. I also think both tradition and honesty comes down to who you're trying to please. It may not be easy to be honest, or break tradition.
Yees, I do! OMG, my mother is the queen of those little phrases and you have no f'ng clue how many times she has said "Honesty is the best policy" over something as little as a debate on whether I should tell a couple white lies on a job application or not. Ohh, or yay, when I'm feeling depressed I get the old "Happiness is a choice". Weell, gee, if I would have known it were that easy it'd be a regular fucking carnival up in here! *ahem, composes myself* excuse my language, but your post got me a little carried away.
I don't think honesty is always the best policy. If I had Anne Frank in my attic, and a Nazi asked me if I knew where some Jews were hiding, I would not answer honestly.
People often think they can solve a problem with fortune cookie wisdom. It takes logic and life experience what to say and when. People often fall back on there old saying when want to help but don't know what to say
Well, technically common sense does not exist. Common sense is just a phrase people throw about, and to be honest when someone says "use your common sense" I get a bit annoyed as I view it as a cop out to explaining why what they believe to be common sense is the right course of action. Some of biggest issues in health and safety are caused by people who assume common sense is something that is shared, rather than something individuals develop. It's the same thing with morality; it is not something that is common to people, and while there are similarities between the morality of a group there are always things that differ significantly enough for people to note that how you are raised/your personality can play a huge part in morality. However I would say that those little says are, in a way, portraying common sense in a neat little package. It is also a way of trying to explain something with as little risk of offending someone as possible, as well as simply being phrases that people throw out because it's a natural response. If someone was to ask me if they were to tell the truth, I'd probably say "well, honesty is the best policy" because it is the best policy. As much as it comes across as a meaningless little phrase some of these meaningless little phrases hold far more meaning than perhaps you're giving them credit for. And truthfully the reason these little phrases are used is because the logic and time needed to craft a genuine response often require your average person to walk away from the situation then come back with a reasoned dialogue. Again they are pulled out when people are seeking an answer that someone else just cannot give them. Either they do not know enough about it, have not been given enough details, or lack the ability to give any other sort of response. Not everyone is capable of giving the sort of responses you prefer, they just do not have the resources available to them to do anything other than say things that have comforted them or say what they're trying to say. With tradition it's simply because some people care about tradition, and just as you find it frustrating that they say "it's tradition" they find it frustrating when people don't care that it's tradition. If it frustrates you, that's fair enough. I'm sure a reasoned conversation on why you want more than a stockpile of phrases will help people understand that you require more than what they're offering.
I know what you mean. My sister is the queen of this. She always says the reason she doesn't do something is because it's "not the Christian thing to do". And yet she's a gossipy bigot. If you ask me, that's not the Christian thing to do. She's a hypocrite, and it pisses me off because she really thinks she's right! I hear "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" a lot, which also really pisses me off. I remember going to a wedding with my ex-husband, and I told him that I hate weddings because they're so sexist. He just said that it's tradition, and I should stop shitting on it. Whatever. I wanted to get married in a tux and have my best guy-friend as one of my bride's maids, but nooooo, my family said I couldn't. That's bullshit. Maybe just straight-up raising a middle finger to tradition makes me happy. Anyway, Hexagon, it's really up to you. It depends on how close you are with that person and whether or not you trust them not to freak out on you. I can honestly say that there are some things people just don't need to know. I lie to my family all the time about things, and I don't see a problem with it. They don't need to know that I'm genderfluid and that I smoke and that the reason my last marriage didn't work out was because I had an affair. People are better off just not knowing things sometimes. But if you trust this person and want to be honest with them, go for it, and if they flip out, you're just going to have to bite the bullet. Anyway, I hope that your situation works out in a positive way. You don't have to tell them if you don't want to, but the option is there. I will say that I eloped with the man I'm married to now, and when I finally told my parents, I felt a lot better. You just have to weight the situation and figure out the best option for yourself. Like I said, sometimes it's not worth saying anything.
I always think of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" when I think about blindly following tradition. Yes I know this seems to contradict what I was saying on another thread, but I'm ok with that lol.