It is currently (at the time of this writing, September 18th, 2019) the Canadian federal election campaign. I have been following some of the action so far, mostly by listening to a couple well-informed podcasts. Today, on the podcast, Power and Politics, (which I highly recommend) one of the panellists said that when she ran for office she declared to her constituents that she would make “no promises”. She decided that it would be unrealistic to give people the expectation of certain change if there was nothing else but uncertainty in the future. This runs contrary to the status quo in politics. All they seem to do while campaigning is make promises. Forgive me for the eye-rolling language, but we only need one promise in our lives, the promise to be honest.
But before we get into what promises and honesty are, I’d like to welcome politicians.
What are politicians?
They seem to be people who stand up in front of other people and talk, usually about what they are doing, or how they will solve some problem. They get asked a lot of questions, and cameras take a lot of pictures of them. They tend to travel around smiling and waving as if everything was okay. This is probably to hide the fact that we often see them getting into trouble for something we call lying.
This is where it gets interesting. It seems to be the case that politicians lie a lot. But what is lying?
Lying is a misrepresentation of our soul. It is a denial of our truth. We all have thoughts, and it is these thoughts that carry information from our souls to the outside world (or to ourselves). If we share information with another person, and we either add extraneous facts (embellish), or we withhold details (omit), or both, we are misrepresenting what is inside of us. This is called lying. Imagine trying to walk a tightrope while someone tickles your ear with a feather. This added aspect is going to make it very difficult for you to focus on the next step, and undoubtedly will be the reason you fall. We must try to be as honest as often as we can, it’s the surest way to stay balanced.
At its most fundamental level, lying develops the habit of misrepresentation. Lying is to efficacy as tickling is to balance; the better we get at misrepresentation, the easier it will be to believe our own lies, therefore tripping ourselves up. Furthermore, developing the habit of lying makes it harder and harder to tell the truth. This is because, like with all habits, the more we do something a certain way, the more certain we can be that we will do it that way. Eventually these habits become unconscious and function without our knowing. That’s when we become politicians.
I am being facetious. Politicians are commonly known as liars, but that doesn’t make all politicians liars. To stigmatize a person because of their label (i.e. job, race, sex, clothing, age) is to lie; it is a lazy misrepresentation of their soul, one that comes from our lack of patience and compassion. We must either withhold judgement until enough information can be given to us by the person so that we can make an informed decision about whether or not to trust them, or withheld altogether. Unless we know a politician well, or are one ourselves, to merely declare politicians to be liars is to be a liar ourselves. The sooner we admit this kind of behaviour exists within us, the sooner we can begin developing the habit of honesty.
However, what we see when we investigate the stereotypical politician is the habit of saying one thing while thinking (and sometimes doing) another. We call this breaking a promise.
But what is a promise?
When we make a promise, we look into the future and tell another person (or ourselves) that we will make that imagined reality come true. There are plenty of reasons why promises are broken, and they aren’t always because the person lied; accidents do happen. Indeed, we must look at lying not so much as a black-and-white moral issue, but more as a grey efficiency issue. When we lie, we are simply not sharing helpful data with ourselves or others. This leads to confusion and mistakes, not to mention alienation and mistrust.
Promises are, by default, uncertain. Unfortunately, when we make a promise, we tend to focus on creating the exact reality stipulated; and as a receiver, we tend to focus on getting exactly what we were promised. This is fundamentally flawed behaviour, and leads us towards lying more because we associate not getting exact outcomes with failures to be honest. When we make promises, must be less focused on achieving exact outcomes, and more focused on building an honest relationship with others (or ourselves). Whether or not a promise comes true is besides the point. When we make a promise to someone (or ourselves), we are merely saying we will try our hardest to make that reality come true. Understanding that it may not come true is what is needed in order to develop the habit of cleanly representing our souls. In other words, of being honest. Being a good politician is not about fixing problems, but more about helping others keep their balance as they make their way through reality.
It isn’t that politicians shouldn’t make promises. They must simply be honest about what they are trying to accomplish with their promises. It seems to be the case that politicians are more interested in getting elected (that is, gaining access to power) than informing the general public of what is really going on. Instead of telling people that they promise to address the climate crisis, perhaps they can honestly try to explain what the climate crisis is in the first place. Sharing clean, unadulterated information – that is, by trying our best to clearly represent our souls to ourselves and others – leads to the habit of cleanly representing our souls to ourselves and others, which improves our ability to do so. The more we are honest, the more honest we will be in the future.
With all that said, the onus to be honest does not fall upon the politician alone. Sure, they can lead by example, but an electorate that hopes a politician can solve their problems for them is being as dishonest as a politician promising that they will. If there is, in fact, a climate crisis, and we do genuinely care about solving it, we all must do as much research as possible into what it is and how to fix it. We cannot simply say the Conservatives or the Liberals or the Greens will fix the problem. Nor can we, by ourselves, fix the problem. We all need to be honest and make the promise to address the issues of our time. We must make the promise to share the load, take responsibility for our private lives, and be as honest as often as possible. These patterns of behaviour, no matter the issues – famine, war, plague, or all of the above – are the surest way to make reality better. There is only one commitment we need to make in our lives: The promise to be honest.
