The Truth is Not Enough: the Art of Not Misleading Your Audience.

it's so easy to portray online that like
you have everything together and your life is so great and that's probably how my life looked but there was a point in time where i was just so unhappy and i felt like i didn't have anything i'm sure like you'll probably have heard this from so many different people online and it's nothing new but i just wanted to remind you that everything that you see online is not real and a lot of the times people behind these social media accounts are going through some really real stuff i never heard anyone blame the technology of the telephone for the lies they told i never heard anyone say well you know it's really easy for people to get the wrong idea when all you're doing is communicating with them by telephone to update them about what's going on in your life i never heard anyone try to shift blame onto the printed page or the humble pen by saying well you know it's really easy to mislead people it's just really easy for people to get the wrong impression about what's going on in your life when they only communicate with you you know through the written word and of course there's some truth to that i think it's easier to lie to people over the telephone than face to face it's probably easier to lie in the written word than the spoken word right but we don't forget who it is that's doing the lying who it is that's misleading and who it is that's being misled what i find disturbing about maddie's approach to this issue here is the extent to which she's willing to shift the blame onto social media out of the technology itself right oh it's just it's just so easy for people to get the wrong impression about what's going on your life it's so easy for people to get misled they get misled because you're misleading them right they get lied to because you are the liar and you don't learn from making this mistake you don't learn from your own past duplicity because you don't even recognize it as your own you don't look back on it as your responsibility you just see it as a funny thing that somehow your audience got the wrong idea or that somehow the medium itself is misleading and you know what there is a sense in which the telephone is misleading there's a sense in which the newspaper article is misleading there is a sense in which if the only way your parents knew what was going on in your life was through handwritten letters probably you would have a huge struggle just to let your parents know what really was going on your life to really get it across to them what the situation is through the written word and to not let them be misled i think all of us have to face up to a higher level of responsibility than just not lying right then just not being you know not being a scam artist right i think all of us actually have to deal with a much higher level of responsibility of not misleading people or not allowing people to mislead themselves not allowing people to be misled maybe when you have no no bad intentions yourself right one of my most directly felt reasons for being honest with people may be a strange way to put it but i mean it one of the reasons i have for being disruptively honest with people that i feel keenly and immediately in those moments when i'm dealing with them is the element of the unknown a lot of times there's social pressure on me to just tell kind of convenient half-truths and lies right and then we all know what's going to happen next in that conversation everyone's going to say oh oh good for you good to hear that um yeah good conversation is kind of going to come from nowhere and go nowhere because of the lack of honesty and again i'm not just talking about outright lies here right just allowing people to be misled sometimes in ways that nobody is gonna nobody's gonna complain about afterwards as having been a lie i remember i spoke to a young woman who was studying to get a phd in anthropology and she told me that she was just buying an airplane ticket to go and do some kind of special internship for lack of a better word kind of a study placement with a certain university in thailand where she was going to learn all about buddhism well at that time i was deep into whatever my decade of being a scholar of buddhism was pretty much at the end of it and i'd been to that university and i'd met those professors i'd been in that department i'd been to that university with my own interest being in in buddhist studies and of course it would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to say good for you oh i'm i'm happy to hear that or i i could have even you know done sort of name dropping and say oh say hello to professor so-and-so when you're there i remember i had a cup of tea with him the last time i was it was that last time i visited the campus you know oh oh really hello yes you know you could have this kind of polite society level of perpetually dishonest discourse all right and i didn't do that all right i was honest i was honest in a way that wouldn't allow her to mislead herself and i told her that she's probably going to the one place in thailand where she will learn absolutely nothing about buddhism where she could learn more by staying in the airport lobby and interviewing airport staff about what's going on in buddhism in thailand rather than going to this university and dealing with the particular professors there right now i could hear digress into why that is but she was going to a really terrible situation and i knew it i knew it would be a disaster and i also knew i'd never hear back from her about what happened afterwards so she went away to thailand months later she came back and my wife bumped into her i wasn't there we shared this conversation my wife now my ex-wife um my wife bumped into her and she said so you know how were things with the the placement the special assignment you did in in thailand of course this woman she stiffened right up and you know told the most unconvincing lie in the world which certainly in british culture is you know requisite oh oh fine it was it was great everything was really oh it's you know um one of the fundamental reasons i have for honesty is that i think people don't learn from the exchange of lies and i think that we really do learn and we learn unexpected things from being honest with others and being honest with ourselves now this same woman was a phd student at the time you know she had an article that she co-wrote she was part of a circle of authors who wrote this terrible article and she'd shown that article to a huge number of people before publication not just formal peer review and she showed it to me right and i told her this is through email correspondence i i think this was probably the last conversation we had by email because she never taught me that i told her in no uncertain terms this is garbage and very fundamentally you are illiterate in the language that you are quoting which was pali whereas it's a language i can read you're lying about what the text says you're lying about what it means this whole article is based on a series of of lies and you're not even aware of the extent to which you're lying because you can't read the text you're quoting from like everything about this article was mind-blowingly awful and i wasn't i mean i wasn't being cruel to her right i was being honest and it wasn't i wasn't just being honest i was putting her in a position where she couldn't mislead herself now there's several different elements of honesty and dishonesty that follow soon after this one of them is in her reply to me by email it was very brief but she just said something like well you know um nevertheless this was a good heuristic device for exploring the issue she made this completely nonsensical uh academic this statement coached in needlessly obscure academic language uh that you know nevertheless this was uh despite everything that may be factually wrong with the article nevertheless this had some kind of tremendous positive value um all right same woman some number of days or weeks later i forget bumps into my ex-wife in a grocery store my wife of the time all right she bumps into her in a grocery store she knows who she is she knows her connection to me and in no time flat no contacts in the like vegetable aisle she breaks down weeping right she breaks down weeping to my ex-wife about how dramatically this email i sent impacted her where i was pointing out here's what's wrong with your article bang bang bang bang and not not stating it in any uncertain or equivocal or flattering terms it was honest but it was factual it was bored and she's weeping in the produce section when she bumps into my ex-wife and well actually i told me she said one of the main things she said here is you know you know isil is really honest with people like he's trying to help you and when he said in that message that he's telling you this because no one else will tell you and there were very few other experts alive who can tell you and the ones that are alive the other experts that they won't tell you they won't be able to you know he's really honest like you have to know this like he's really honest of course if you can value it right that would make me uh that would make me uh valuable for my honesty right so already there's an interesting gap there right she could have sent an email to me she could have said to me honestly that this was extremely upsetting for her right she could have had that conversation with me right she didn't she repressed it she sent me a totally dishonest email and then this you know repressed maybe she wept silently with no one hearing her before this maybe she wept alone in her apartment but then obviously this came out when she happened to bump into my ex-wife and they were not friends they weren't just not close friends they were not friends period the two of them this is her breaking down weekend with a complete stranger at the at the grocery store right now if she had but if she had been honest with me you know if she had written back to me honestly with email you can imagine that conversation could have gone further right same thing about that university in thailand she was going to if she had been honest with me we could have had a really productive conversation or series of conversations about doing research on buddhism in thailand and what she could do with limited limited time unlimited money so like they're really a lot positive right but she couldn't be honest now another thing caught my eye about that article and there was a professor whom i knew um thanked in the footnotes he and i had gone through different periods of talking a lot about our research and then not talking at all for it's not but he was someone i had an intense and uh tempestuous friendship with he was someone i met face to face just once we talked for several hours and otherwise the whole relationship was by email um he was a very passionate deeply flawed scholar of buddhism but i'd known him already at that time for many years and you know what he probably regarded me also as a very passionate and deeply flawed scholar but to be fair right um he had some disadvantages compared to me though uh he had a phd which is a big advantage but uh he was dyslexic i don't think he really had any ability in the languages concerned like pally but if he did you know he had really severe dyslexia his ability to use that knowledge language would be very limited road to man said look you know i just had this young scholar this phd candidate here show me this article and you know i see your name thanked on it i can't believe i can't believe you signed off on this like when she showed this to you i couldn't say why didn't you tell her what i told her i can't quite say that but i could say um you know i could say why weren't you honest with her why weren't you honest there about how bad and wrong this is you know and you know what in that conversation too at first he wanted to just make the question disappear with some vague pleasantries and not in a rude way because i i assumed he just kind of told her nothing i assumed he had just sent her like the equivalent of a twitter response he sent her a two sentence or something saying yeah yeah whatever publish it like that was what i assumed um so i was just trying to have a productive conversation and said well look here are the things i really found outstandingly wrong about it and here's why i think it's really important to let people know you know i was talking through in a meaningful sense why it's important for people like him and people like me but personally i came in a position of power to really let students know when they're factually wrong about this kind of thing and they're on the wrong track going further so i kept in effect kept pressing in this conversation and then he took the time to write me a long email saying that look when he received that essay there was so much wrong with it and he said this this this this and this you know pointing out what's wrong with that and he said if she took that constructive criticism and then flushed it in the toilet and ignored it that's none of his business but he did what he could because he thought and then that moment so he hadn't seen the final published article you'd only seen it when should and i said well look this is hilarious i'm so glad you told me that all the things you just told me the criticisms you gave her what you said was wrong with her article right that she caught she copied and pasted that out of your email and she put it in a footnote because there's a footnote here like it's like footnote 7 or something which basically says like oh yes well um it may be that like every single thing claimed in this article is completely false like it was just the most surreal footnote it's like it says like well some scholars may uh contradict this point about this like it was like this footnote indicating that somebody somewhere knows that this is complete [ __ ] you know but nevertheless we're going to continue this right here's the problem whatever wording he used when he told her this he might have thought he was being honest right in a sense he was right but he wasn't being honest enough his way of putting it to her was delicate enough was discreet enough was indirect enough or was even dishonest enough that she could continue to mislead herself right there's a difference between just telling the truth it's different between just not lying just not being a scam artist and really being disruptively honest in a way so that people are not misled or so that people can't continue to be misled because they may already want to believe something without you coming out and lying to them right it's easier to visualize this when we're talking about one-to-one relationships like your relationship with your own parents right again if you were writing letters longhand you've moved to a new city you've started a new life and you're trying to let your parents know what's going on think about what a creative writing challenge that is and think about how different your parents impression might be if they were receiving those letters for a number of years and then suddenly they showed up at your apartment and saw the reality of what you they show up unannounced uninvited unexpected and they say whoa this was the impression i got from the letters and now here i see how you're really living and what your life is really about right for better or worse right and you might feel that you weren't trying to mislead them in those letters but maybe you weren't being honest enough right and it does take creativity and it does take energy and effort and frankly it takes a willingness to make people break down crying in the [ __ ] supermarket in the produce section right you have to be willing to really take it that far right i got fan mail last time the last time i talked about the difference between mere honesty and this higher level of not letting people be misled you know i think every single piece of fan mail i got related to people's romantic lives wasn't that i forget it was four people or five people nobody wrote to me about their professional lives that way probably some people not something yeah i know what it's like to have a boss or an employee or a co-worker and the difference between telling the truth and making sure people aren't being misled about a work situation that brings a lot of stories to mind for me also right like look do you have any idea how many situations i've been in where i could have made a lot of money just by letting people be misled right do you have any idea how many situations i've been in where i could have had sex with a very attractive woman just by letting her be misled like i don't even have to lie because she's already lying to herself like she already wants this i just got to let her tell the lies yourself and it's like no i've got a commitment to my personal integrity where i'd rather live in poverty than make money by living a lie or i'd rather live in relative celibacy i'd rather not have sex with someone at all if it's going to be on this basis even even if the lies you know are lies that i have not told right but when i'm in these situations i've got to say i personally i don't feel temptation i don't when i'm in these situations what i feel most immediately is that question of what's unknown because if i lie even if i lie just a little bit i'm just a little bit dishonest and give someone a pleasant answer that lets everyone kind of go home and you know enjoy the lets everyone shake hands and part company on good terms and nobody breaks down weeping at the grocery store you know if i do that i'll never know what would have happened next what would have been revealed if i'd really been honest that's always what i feel you know urgently in the moment is if i'm not honest about this now you know then i'll never know i'll never find out and part of what you're finding out is who that other person really is and how they really feel and who you really are a little bit too a little a little tiny part of yourself that you might have concealed from yourself a little tiny part of how you feel right you might be confused you might be concealing some of your own feelings from yourself even right and that will also you know uh come to the surface i had a brief conversation was very memorable with a woman who had a crush on me five years ago before i'd met melissa well this is my current super high commitment long-term partner right and truth be told five years ago or whatever the hell it was now it might be closer to six years ago now you know what i was interested in her too and at that time neither one of us admitted to the other right so we were we were just friends right a million years go by we don't talk i have a long term high commitment relationship she has some number of long-term i can't remember you know whatever you know she gets back in touch with me and the reality of the situation is i'm talking to her and i'm interested in being just friends you know and this this most recent conversation and he just like that woman getting a phd in buddhism maybe i'll never hear from her again because i chose to be honest right i still choose that i'd still prefer that silence than having a friendship that's based on phoniness and lies and deception and self-deception right this most recent conversation i had with her you know right at the beginning she was writing to me and asking in effect what kind of relationship we had and what kind of relationship we could have going forward and i was saying look i'm i'm out here looking for a kind of intellectual relationship and i sent her a link to a youtube video where i was talking about the books i was reading and what kind of research i was doing what was going on in my life i said yeah i was saying in effect look we can be friends but this is what's going on in my life intellectually and if you want to be a part of that you can jump in and you're welcome but you know that's that's all that's there for you and i said several times in several different ways that no there was no possibility of a romantic relationship between us and i you know i'm also not single but i mean that's not enough you've really got to be honest with people because trust me if you're not honest there are people who will wait for years for when you are single right like like if you just say oh well i'm not single some people are going to interpret that as oh okay i'll call back when you are you know that's not the best you want the other person picking up here right so this this conversation you know went on to a point where she was getting more insistent and more demanding about what kind of relationship she wanted to have with me and she said right at the beginning you wanted to be an exclusive relationship also and like as i remember i was i'm dialing up and looking at the earlier messages like nothing i was saying before this was unclear you know like i don't think i've been leading around i'm not leaning like i'm going back and looking it's like okay you know what i'm gonna really be honest because if i'm not honest i never know you know i never know if i could be friends with this person if there is you know i'd never know you know whatever what i meant to her in the past or why it is she thinks this way but now if i'm dishonest right and i said to her look the truth is yes you know more than five years ago i had a crush on you and you had a crush on me and we really didn't know very much about each other you know i know you a lot better now and the truth is it's not possible nothing like this ever was possible between us there is no parallel universe in which you turned out to be the mother of my children there is no alternate reality in which you and i ended up as a couple and you were raising my daughter that that just doesn't exist that's just not possible we just don't have that much in common and i think it's fair to say she is never going to talk to me again from my perspective i'm being really honest on social media all the time i'm not misleading i'm not claiming to be single when i'm attached i'm not you know i think there's no smoke screen whatsoever but one thing she said really briefly in passing during that conversation which was a mix of voice and text she said really briefly well i don't even know if you're single because i mean looking through your social media it looks like you said some words to that effect and when she said that it struck me it was like whoa it has never occurred to me that someone could like scroll through my youtube videos and like just read the titles and through the magic of like seeing only what you want to see you know engaging in cherry picking the same way christians read the bible and they only pick out the pastors that suit their own agenda right that someone could scroll through that you know and see me as single or see me as indicating that i've broken a mother or that i'm available or that i'm looking for or anything like that right but that's the situation we're so often in here on social media right people find you they have some clear notion of what you want to be in their minds and if you aren't disruptively honest with them if you don't take the time and make that effort right they will be misled the deepest problem with what maddie lin berner is doing here is that she is disclaiming responsibility for her own life of active deception she's not coming on camera and saying that she now recognizes she has spent the last five years making money by deceiving the world she is continuing to lead this much deeper lie she's living this lie that she's being completely honest but that somehow through the vagaries of social media the people in our audience are deceiving themselves [Music] maybe we can we can practice