Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts

July 7 - Tell the Truth Day

Posted on July 7, 2020


Oooh, boy, this is both necessary and hard!

July 7 is Tell the Truth Day, and honestly, honesty is very important. It's hard to make good decisions if you don't have the facts, so other people telling you the truth is crucial - and of course you telling THEM the truth is just as important.

Basically, the truth is important because facts and evidence are important. 

The most important people to tell the truth are in three groups: leaders, reporters, and experts. 

Political leaders and elected officials need to tell their citizens the truth about everything from dangers from a new virus to dangers from a foreign nation, from how tax money is being spent to how a new policy will affect the nation. 

Religious leaders, principals, and corporation presidents - all the movers and shakers and deciders - should also be honest and trustworthy, if our societies are to be happy and functional. Reporters and journalists and broadcasters owe it to their readers, viewers, and listeners to dig for, expose, publish, and air the truth - and to find out and tell us if our leaders are being as honest as they should be! Of course medical experts and scientists and academics should all be telling the truths of their own fields.

So, how are we doing on the whole project of telling the truth?

I would say that, by and large, experts and scientists do tell the truth. Some have lied, of course - fudged data, spun results, buried data, sold out for $$$ - but the mechanisms that exist in science and academia tend to push toward the truth. For example, there is peer review of scientific articles, before they are published, and any published article that is later proven dishonest is formally retracted. Many times other scientists try to replicate experiments, and sooner or later experiments with procedural problems, falsified data, or improper conclusions are overturned.

Check with fact checkers and media
bias raters to see if your usual
news sources are biased or neutral,
reliable or propaganda!
There are mechanisms to keep reporters honest, too - other reporters or the general public pointing out errors or lies can damage the reputation of a newspaper or TV news broadcast, for example. However, these mechanisms require that people care about the truth, and the growth of niche media, social media, and extremely biased media sources all show us that some people really care more about hearing (reading/viewing) what they want to hear more than they care about hearing the truth!

It's time to focus on electing honest
women and men, people of the U.S.! 
Same with elected officials. You'd think that lying to voters would be swiftly met with losing elections - but there are way too many people who are too easily fooled, or who gladly fool themselves...and so politicians and other governmental leaders are too seldom pushed to be more honest.

We can and must do better. Do your part, today, to both tell the truth and to insist on the truth from others.



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May 29 – Truth Speaks Truth!

Posted on May 29, 2017

Who, in the mid-1800s America, was even less powerful than black men?

Black women, of course!

Born into slavery Isabella Baumfree, Truth experienced most of the miseries of slavery - being sold, being mistreated, being beaten...

Possibly even worse than beatings: being being torn from those she loved, being forced to marry against her will, being promised freedom that never comes...

Isabella Baumfree walked away from her master in 1827, and she became a preacher and a human rights activist. She changed her name to Sojourner Truth in 1843, and she worked in both the anti-slavery and the women's rights movements.

During the Women's Rights Convention, held in Akron, Ohio, on this date in 1851, several white, male Christian ministers argued that women didn't deserve the same rights as men. They gave the following reasons:

1) Women are weaker than men. 
2) Women had less intellect (in other words, were less smart) than men. 
3) Jesus was a man, not a woman.
4) The first woman, Eve, sinned. (This is from a story in the Abrahamic religions - of course there was no one "first woman.")

Sojourner Truth hadn't prepared a speech to deliver that day, but she rose up to answer the ministers' arguments. Some of the white women at the conference started to protest, to hush her, thinking she was going to talk about the abolition of slavery (and they didn't want to get distracted away from women's rights), but Truth forcefully began to address the conference, anyway.

And she quickly destroyed each of the ministers' arguments.

Here is the most famous portion from Truth's unplanned speech:
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?

Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?

I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman?

I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Read her entire speech here. Or check out this video.

After Truth was done with her short, impromptu speech, almost all the conference attendees rose up on their feet and applauded wildly.

(By the way, there is more than one account of what Sojourner Truth said. Since there were no audio or video recordings of her remarks, of course, we cannot be sure exactly what she did or did not say. Check out this website for another version of Truth's speech.)




Also on this date:



























Anniversary of the first successful climb of Mount Everest










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April 30 – Honesty Day in the U.S.A.

Posted on April 30, 2014

A writer named M. Hirsh Goldberg was writing a book called The Book of Lies: Fibs, Tales, Schemes, Scams, Fakes, and Frauds that Have Changed the Course of History and Affect Our Daily Lives.

He was so bummed at the negative effects of all the lies he was writing about, he decided to declare April 30 Honesty Day. Why that day? Goldberg figured that April begins with the Fool's Day, which is often full of tricks, pranks, and for-fun lies – so it should be balanced out by ending with a holiday celebrating honesty in all of its forms.


There are lies and there are lies...

Of course, there are such things as “white lies,” which are the polite untruths people tell in order to help everyone get along. When your mom asks you, “Does this dress make me look fat?” you don't want to say “yes,” no matter what. But there are more honest ways of dealing with tricky situations. In this example, if your mom hasn't bought an unflattering dress yet, you could say, “Well, it's not the most flattering on you. The others you tried on, honestly, look better.” If your mom HAS bought the dress and you are halfway to a party, you would say something completely different. Maybe something like - “Oh, gosh, Mom, you always look nice. I just love the color of this dress – it's so flattering to your skin!” In other words, you don't have to be blunt and insulting, but you don't have to completely lie; instead you can find something you like to honestly and kindly comment on.

Another kind of lie we often don't count as a lie is called the “lie of omission.” You don't say a lie, because you don't say anything at all. You either don't correct someone's incorrect assumption, or you don't come forward with important information. Once again there are many situations that are tricky AND sticky... But most of the time, coming forward with the truth is better than sitting around quietly benefitting from the assumptions or ignorance of others.

Here's an example: Let's say that a blind student named Sharon accidentally broke the collectible Star Wars figure that Barry took to school and carelessly left on the playground. If Barry complains to his mom about the the breakage without mentioning the circumstances, and allows his mom to go to school with a complaint about Sharon, that's definitely a lie of omission. He left out some pretty important parts!

Here's another example: Let's say that Carla borrowed her sister's iPod and then lost it. That day, Carla's sister happened to have a whole bunch of friends over, so when that evening the sister discovered that her iPod was missing, she assumed that one of her friends took it. If Carla doesn't say anything to correct that mistaken assumption, that's a really bad lie of omission!

Goldberg wrote in his Book of Lies that the average person lies about 200 times a day, if you count lies of omission and white lies. TWO HUNDRED! Yikes! We can all do better than that. 

(Hmm...I'm not sure I believe it. I think that maybe one to five lies daily is more likely, even counting lies of omission and polite fudgings-of-the-truth.)

Former President Richard M. Nixon
was caught covering up wrong-doing
AND lying about it.
The sorts of lies that Goldberg wrote about in his book were about lies told by or to powerful people. We should all hold our politicians and other powerful people accountable for their lies, and call attention to those who tell the truth. 

Goldberg gives out Honesty Awards every April 30, choosing companies, organizations, groups, and individuals who have acted honestly.


Also on this date:














Queen's Day in the Netherlands







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