Like the Trojans who soon learned to be wary of Greeks bearing gifts, and of wooden horses in general, I have been all too surprised when my opponents have wrapped their deceit in a sweet promise, all to get through my gates and take advantage of me. But is becoming cynical and not trusting another living soul the solution to this problem?
I want to speak to this from the perspective of one who has had Greeks piling out of wooden horses into my life to cause chaos all too many times.
I have been taken advantage of in life by lying liars who always surprise me when they don’t say what they mean and when they don’t mean what they say. Taking people at face value only, sometimes the next day, to find they meant none of it, happens because for me not being transparent and honest is a gross mark of uncivilized behavior that threatens to render us worse than the most rabid and diseased of starving predators let loose in the paddock!
I remember being ambushed in a large, critical proposal meeting when I learned, to my shock, that sone of the participants were prepared to use deception, lies, and mischaracterization to shoot fake holes in my proposal, mostly by diseneguinely seeking “proof” any professional knows is irrelevant and impolitic to even ask. Indeed their questions belied their own vaunted skills as no professional person would ever ask such drivel!
The mark for their fraud was a technologically-challenged person who was impressed with their word salad, but who also failed to disclose that these people were actually in direct competition for their spending. I didn’t get the contract but the “mark” didn’t get anything like the results I could have given him and the entire effort remains, it seems, stalled.
(I have not forgotten this unethical performance nor the bad actors who played the lead roles.)
This doesn’t amount to a claim I never lie or exaggerate, nor that I don’t think there are times when deceiving the other side is essential and morally justified. I have been engaged in military intelligence subterfuge and levels of opposition research and guerilla marketing tactics against real bad guys for which I lose not a single wink of sleep. Deceptive tactics against bad guys are justified in this war against the freedom takers just as military actions amount to unacceptable violence in normal discourse but they are acceptable in war.
Have I lied under pressure and strain? Yes. But I felt awful and more often than not, when feasible, I have made it right, even to my embarrassment. I find being disenegnuine to be very disturbing and I am hardest in myself. I don’t like it and, what is a problem for me, I really don’t expect it.
Recently a client wanted me to assure them I could be certain about something I wasn’t certain about. I would have looked good to say yes and there is no way they would know, but I adamantly refused and told them nobody could know at this stage. Just as when I was young I could never back down from a fight because I would literally preder death to being disrespected, I feel strongly that being disingenuous, let alone lying, and not being teansparent are things savages without a human soul might do, but I’d rather stop breathing this air than disrespect my own self by such a stoop.
Sometimes I am too transparent, people might say, but I find it best to let people know who and what I am upfront. I don’t want to find out later I invested so much in them and yet they can’t stand me or what I am about. I am not sure if my sometimes stupid transparency is better for my life and business overall, but, while I want to be liked, being liked for things I am not is akin to not liking myself, to disrespecting myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I am also good at keeping secrets and confidences. I have taught people who wish to report news that being a keeper of secrets is essential to the gig. If people can’t trust your “this is off the record”, sourced dry up. I know amazing things about famous events and people, many confided by said people, precisely because they know I don’t tell tales out of school.
I am getting better. Mostly, what I have begun doing is observing more what people do and using my own skills in opposition research to sort out fact from fiction, as opposed to just believing people. Sometimes people who know of me and my reputation for using the web in occasionally dark ways to sort fact from fiction ask if I have oppo’d them, to which I often say, “we’re talking, which means whatever you’ve done, I think we can do business.”
This is the thing about me you should know: while I won’t violate my confidence, or the law, any rule or norm that I find useless and that hinders me, I disregard. I am always willing to take things to a level of insanity my opponents cannot even imagine and usually if they figure this out, even if they are stronger and more dangerous than me, they choose avoidance over conflict. I generally won’t stop pursuing you until you make nice or I win.
And yet, I will accept even a loss, something difficult for me to admit, ever, rather than violate my commitment to honesty and transparency, unless I am engaged in a digital or political war, in which different rules of engagement apply.
What I have learned is that the number of people who will lie, who won’t tell you what they think, and who will hide their true motive and intent and other facts, such as they might be competitors acting as gatekeepers for a potential client, outweigh those who would never stoop that low. I don’t know what the ratio is, but I do know that the norm seems to be this penchant for lying liars to deceive and thieve their way through life, seeking unjust advantages they do not deserve.
We cannot take everyone at their word, people tell me. But while trying to validate and confirm what they say may be wise, and necessary, starting from a point of distrust doesn’t seem justified to me on moral grounds. If I had done due diligence in that proposal, I would have recognized that all the previous nice words were not legitimate, that I needed to keep things closer to my vest, and that I had better be prepared to expose their flaws and mistakes in a brutal takedown as soon as they started their pounce.
But living your life always expecting to be lied to, and about, and doubting people’s motives and intentions without a cause, just out of a default position of cynicism, doesn’t sound like a fun and happy existence. It also may reveal a bit of projection, albeit I am weary of how cheaply that claim of projection is used when you lack an argument for your ideas. I still take people at their word, but now I tend also to watch more closely for signs they are being truthful and I do certain due diligence meant to confirm the truth as opposed to assuming I will find the lies.
Perhaps if you too are often surprised at how badly people lie and deceive it is because you would not do so, in such a manner, for such important things, yourself. Perhaps you are projecting a certain innocence some may equate to naivety. But it is far better to occasionally be a sucker than to be a liar.