0 responses to “I read an article, which asked, are people truthful? – this is a critical question – most of our heartbreak, is as a result of trusting and realizing, our trust was misplaced; hence, needing to reevaluate our entire association to people – the truth is this, all people are born with the desire to be truthful, it is a basic human need to have a life in which our behavior is congruent with our ideals; however, two factors influence this equation – tremendously! – the first is desire, so the person who say is addicted to drugs, actually rationalizes his addiction – its effect on those he genuinely loves – his theft for it; as will an angry person, his harassment (bullying) of others etc. etc. In other words, it’s not that the person ceases to be honest; rather, his addiction to a certain desire, creates the rationalizations which make him think, he can still be genuine, while he is doing what he would never condone if he didn’t have this desire (which is why the Baal Shem Tov teaches, if you want to know how you truly feel about something, ask yourself, would I do it, if it gave me no pleasure whatsoever?) but then there is also nurture, For example – no-offence, but a well-known fact – Arabs are experts at manipulation / liars – heck for the past four decades, they claimed they want peace with Jews, yet when pushed to the wall, they refuse to even accept the existence of a Jewish state! they claim to feel for the poor Palestinians who they refuse citizenship in their own lands! and the fact that civilizations that lived with them for over two centuries coined the phrase “never trust an Arab twenty years in the grave (or forty” according to those with more experience) speaks a fortune – in this case: their role-models, themselves, suffering from low self-esteem, hence delusions of grandeur (for when your self-esteem is out of whack, we compensate through becoming “legends in our own mind!” which gives rise to the king-complex “I am entitled to anything!”) the bottom line quite simply: if one’s society, one’s parents or teachers etc. (aka misnagdim) are all liars, then one can hardly assume, that the product of that society, will not learn to forgo the benefit of their moral integrity; for the benefit of getting away with “murder.””