By: Megat Harris Iskandar
“If you
tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything”
It is a wonderful quotation
from Mark Twain. That’s so true, if we’re always telling the truth, we don’t
really have to remember anything, because we’re always going to be honest not
just with others, but with ourselves.
Being truthful is one of
the main virtues of being human, and being truthful always implies being
trustworthy, which is the second highest virtue of being human. Nowadays, all
these virtues are absent from our culture and existence. We want to learn the
facts, but we don’t want to be truthful, fact and integrity go hand in hand.
Look around us, corruption
has been rising too far, and lies are the biggest source of corruption. Lying
has given birth to so many evil activities all over the world. People have been
too vain, too greedy. 247,365 days, we lie, sometimes to our boss or colleague,
sometimes to our own family, friends and sometimes to ourselves. Terrorism,
human trafficking, poverty, corruption, bribery and the list is never ending.
All these heinous crimes are directly or indirectly related to truth. Telling
lies can be something really unhealthy.
We’ve been so resistant to
lies that we don’t pause for a second, what if we get caught red handed by
lies. This is because our social system has lost its equilibrium. Families are
falling apart too. Truth and integrity are missing from marriages, whether
between husband and wife or parents and children or some other partnership.
Lying is one of the main sources of unethical conduct and misbehaviour by young
generations today.
Lying has had a negative
effect on our culture that children have become increasingly abusive and
offensive. They can’t digest the truth, which sometimes leads to suicide, or
the worst to a crime. For example, the Delhi Gang Rape, the juvenile would not
be hanged since he was not 18 at the time of the offence, but are we honest in
giving that judgment? Obviously, we are not and we will never. His offense is
so horrific that he and the other responsible parties will be hanged, yet no
one was fair and sincere in making the judgement.
Imagine a world in which
everybody expresses just the facts. All this greed and violence would have only
become the topic of the past. Imagine a future where every person will be true
to himself. Our fast-paced life is going to be easy and smooth. We will
continue to honour our families and loved ones. Also, children will be able to
understand and follow moral ethic and values. People will start keeping their
promises, jobs and businesses will also be booming. Poverty and unemployment
problems will disappear and this planet will be a wonderful place to live in
peace.
However, every coin has two
sides; a world that is too honest and truthful will bring its own problems, as
shown in the film, The Invention of Lying. No one wanted to marry Mark Bellison
in that movie, because he wasn’t looking good and he was a big loser, yet as
soon as he begins lying, everybody begins to trust him. Well, there were a
number of other issues that were often illustrated in the film that was related
to fair and honest individuals.
Somewhere we need to have
the right balance between the truth and the white lies. Even if we would, we
cannot remove myths and corruption and abuses from the universe, for all this
suffering has taught us the value of being real. It’s almost because you can
really enjoy the good times in your life as you’re heading through the tough
periods of life.
Today, the world is
becoming an immoral place to live in, and we need to wake up and bring in more
change in society. This is the right time for everyone to value the sight of
truthfulness and honesty. We ought to find a compromise between facts and lies,
and often to resolve the negative you have to behave and talk like an evil-minded
person and here, integrity will play its part perfectly.
Also, it has been stated in
our holy books that, ‘To fight evil sometimes you have to become evil, it will
hurt the moral values of few, but path of future generations will become smoother’
and you cannot bring a change in this world only by being truthful; sometimes
you need to walk on the wrong side. Like these police officers, they often take
the help of criminals to solve the most difficult crimes. Now they are not bad
people or are they.
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