Deception, Honesty and Finding Meaning in Life

Taking a bit of a break from all the ongoing drama — and researching old silver souvenir spoons I need to list on eBay — to clear my head by doing one of the things I enjoy most:

Contemplating and commenting on the quirks and foibles of the Human Experience.

I find it fascinating how generally accepted cultural values can be so different in different countries.

In very broad general terms, in my native Denmark most people tend to trust the government. Here in the US, most people MIStrust the government.

In some countries, the default assumption when someone approaches you, is their intent is assumed malicious. In other countries, intent is assumed to be benevolent.. or at least neutral.

I was taught — and also believe, as an expression of my personal experience of being alive — the honest, open and truthful dealings are the best way to go.

Yet, there are also cultures in which deception and cheating are not only accepted, they are even seen as positive, because if you can cheat someone and get away with it, it means you are "clever."

In some cultures it is considered outright rude to ask a merchant to make a better deal on an item for sale. In other cultures you are considered an idiot if you don't ask for a discount.

For the purposes of this article, I simply observe that these things "are," and they are authentic expressions of being alive, within the context of the cultures in which they represent an accepted paradigm. I am not here to judge them; I merely state "they exist."

Yet — somehow — as we increasingly move towards a global and borderless economy, all of these different attributes somehow need to find a way to mesh; to work together.

On Finding Meaning in Our Lives...

I think it was yesterday I cam across @andrarchy's exploration about finding meaningful work. It got me to thinking about so many of my own moments of exploring that topic...

... going back all the way to waking up one day — at about age 32 — and recognizing that I was having a "Crisis of Purpose." I was "successful" by most conventional measures, but also quite unhappy with my life.

Then, this morning, I found myself listening the the music of one of our world's great street performers, Morf, who's so much more than your average busker out there.

For one thing, he's a busker with a TED Talk, which I watched. So here you have a guy with a "good job" who consciously quit that to become a street musician.

But the important takeaway was his observation that you can look at "successful" people and recognize that they have success, but when you really look at them you might also notice that they are not smiling; not happy.

Do you love what you do? Does what you do make you wake up and work with a smile on your face? Because having that smile is usually connected to having found meaning. How do you derive your meaning?

Then I got to thinking about cheating, deception and dishonesty. Specifically, I started to consider the deeper issue of whether I could still be authentic and happy in a world — or culture — whose values are substantially different from my own? Perhaps even a world that sees my values as stupid, weak, worthless or something similar.

Is the finding of the deeper meaning in our lives purely internally driven? Does it operate independently of the greater world? Or is there some kind of synergy there... where our happiness gets hitched to the wagon — at least in part — of the majority paradigm?

Moreover, can I "live with" being part of something driven by values I find it difficult to stomach, because they feel diametrically opposed to my own? Or will I be like the guy with the very successful IT job who says "no" and becomes a street performer... by choice?

Where do we each draw our lines in our sand?

Thanks for reading!

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Created at 20200307 23:54 PST
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