Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

Sounds like the mental health version of:

> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

We're all imperfect beings.



sort by: page size:

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Shafting people has been around for aeons


That's even worse - "Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him" - if you're looking for guilty-seeming people, you'll find them.

And if you're trying to prevent atrocities, you'll convict them before they've done anything wrong.


"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

He was 16. I'm sure I could find a picture of you as a kid covered in mud. (Blackface!!! Stone him!!! )

Given time you can find something offensive about everyone. Its become a convenient way to eliminate competitors, jealous retaliation, or attempt to signal your great virtue.

The mob will burn anyone they just need an excuse.


"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

People who actually achieve something are just subject to more scrutiny.

Also changing social mores means you are almost guaranteed to have done something improper if you have been publicly exposed for several decades.


"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - Cardinal_Richelieu

You need to ask yourself "what about..." and make sure your target truly is the worst offender and not just the most publicized offender, or you become the attack dog of the media.


There’s also this to consider:

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

– Commonly attributed to Cardinal Richelieu

I.e. any fact or action can be willfully misinterpreted to fit almost any narrative.


If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. --Cardinal Richelieu

Persecuting people for not stripping personal accounts of details that happen to match forbidden stereotypes seems rather oppressive. And like something that will tend to de-legitimize the cause you're using to justify said persecution.


>If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

-Cardinal Richelieu

If some people want to use the internet to destroy your reputation, they will, and there's very little that you can do about it. You can't prove anything to anyone, and once people smell blood, they frenzy on you, regardless of the truth.


>A sane smart person given the options of: persisting on a trivial truth OR not being sent to a psychiatric ward, must always pick the second one.

> Smart people know what a psychiatric ward is, a sane perso recognizes a serious threat when confronted with one.

Lying is a mortal sin. I try to avoid sin, even if doing so seriously harms me.

Plato said something like: "All sin is a form of mental illness that seems to make one or a few people better off in the short term but makes all humans poorer in the long run."


> having a deeply flawed moral fiber that enables you to sleep at night after doing unusually cruel things to everyone else

I don’t think this is necessarily true. You might just be really good at lying to yourself.


That quote, and the mentality behind it, used to drive me to obsessively parse my language to avoid having something twisted out of context. Since then I've realized those efforts are largely for naught: anyone who would judge you based on six lines lacks the compassion or wisdom that would merit giving any weight to their judgment, anyone who twists your words and is powerful enough to do so won't be hindered by your care in trying to avoid it.

I think the real lesson in there is to be slow to judge and not let others suck you into joining the outrage mob based on thin arguments or weak evidence.


> People claim to want complete honesty from their partner or spouse, but I have found they aren’t always happy when they get it, especially when that honesty is coming from a sociopath.

I’ve seen many people use this as an excuse to not be honest. But, the value in the honesty isn’t happiness.

It’s trust, integrity, respect, and allowing the other person to make choices with all the facts. It’s in letting go of the burden of lies. It’s showing vulnerability and weakness. It’s in being honest with yourself, which you must be, in order to be honest with your partner.


> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. Cardinal Richelieu

There’s no need to lie in a hit piece. You can select your material, shade the truth and quote people who hate your subject on their opinions. Lying leaves you open to libel and slander too.


> This is really the heart of it isn't it?

It might be a good time for you to pick up the dictionary and look up what "deception" or "misleading" means.

> even if [...] you probably still wouldn't have read it.

Wow, so you've read a few words of my writing and you already know me so well, so much better than myself? Well, even if you look those words up in the dictionary, you still probably won't understand what they mean.

(And FYI, no, I would have read it if it didn't look like another of the same login page.)


> He means to fool small minds with meandering language, confusing the herd so they let him regain the status he desperately craves.

Believing you can read someone else’s mind is a diagnostic criterion for psychosis.


> provided they're internally and externally consistent.

People claiming to be "brutally honest" is usually a red flag because they are almost never consistent about it. Its usually a phrase used to self-justify brutality with little regard for honesty.

Its sort of like the whole "if you dont accept me at my worse you dont deserve me at my best". There is nothing wrong in principle if it is taken literally - everyone has bad days and its unreasonable to expect perfection all the time; humans make mistakes, etc. But pretty much everyone using that phrase uses it as a self-justification to do what they want without regard for who they hurt.

Idk, im always wary of any phrase that can be twisted to justify behaving badly towards others. Some people hurt other people, and they'll take any turn of phrase, twist it, in order to self-justify to themselves that what they are doing is ok.


> They're judged for the actions that they take

I wish that were true, but it more often seems they're judged by the worst dirt that can be made to stick. And they know it.


> Lying is literally what enables us to work and live together.

That's actually a pretty tough indictment of human nature, if true.


Author: > It is often stated that people who lie have a tendency to add too much superfluous detail to their accounts.

Goes on to provide too much superfluous detail to his own account. /s

next

Legal | privacy