My Conflicted Feelings about Public Honesty

I have a tricky personality. Since I was a kid I’ve been obsessed with the quest for capital-T Truth. (Some notion of objective truth.) I’ve never understood the superficiality of human society—the lying, the cheating, the pretending. I’ve also been sober for twelve years and I have been in 12-step recovery since then; honesty is a huge part of that program. (I don’t in any way claim to always be 100% honest. That said: I do try my best, even [especially] when it’s unpopular.)

I’m also a big fan of vulnerability—telling the truth and rendering yourself woundable by others. Taking a risk. Putting your heart on the line. I have always worn my heart on my sleeve. I want to tell you “my truth,” and I want you to tell me yours. I want us to mutually practice compassion with each other, understanding that all human life is nuanced, complex, layered, confusing, difficult.

I am sensitive, insecure, want people to like me, am deeply afraid of being hated or rejected or humiliated…and yet I am simultaneously extremely opinionated, will risk my ass every time to say what I honestly think, and am a natural contrarian, skeptic and free-thinker. Yeah. Just be glad you’re not me J Conflicting survival impulses are dangerous and yet juicy.

But what about our current politically divided times in 2022? What do you do when you’re supposed to “pick a side”? Does your truth trump my truth? (Bad pun there, re “trump.’) What if my truth “offends” you? Because I am a white straight male, if I write about something I did in the past that involves harming women: Is that now not allowed? Do we care anymore about redemption, about people’s ability to change and become different?

Being sober, I have seen hundreds of people honestly, legitimately change their lives for the better. Some of us have done terrible things, and that extends from men to women, young to old, American to non-American, all genders, all races, etc. From tax fraud to domestic violence to murder and everything in between. Not all of us have done all of these things, obviously, but many of us have done some of them. (For the record I have never murdered anyone, haha!)

True vulnerability—honest conversation, what one might call love or forgiveness—involves a word that gets thrown around a lot nowadays but I think inaccurately and politically: Empathy. I see this lack of understanding all over the place. An easy example is online dating. Clearly, there are things women experience which men could never understand. (Monthly periods; pregnancy; being physically less powerful/dangerous than most men.) But the culture now seems to act as if men have it 100% easy, as if women understand all the issues men struggle with and they don’t buy it. For example: Sex. Men wanting sex often and with many different women is seen not through a biological and evolutionary lens but rather through a moral lens. Men are seen as sex-addicts and “pigs.” But women have no idea what it’s like to be a man seeing and being rejected by women.

In our culture men must pursue women, and many men are not good at this. This is no one’s fault, of course. But why the lack of empathy? I can picture many of you already rolling your eyes. But: Do you know what it’s LIKE to be a single man, lonely and afraid and desperate for love and unable to get it? Most women never struggle with this, not in the same way. The truth is that there are a lot of women pursuing a tiny proportion of men and leaving most men out to dry (check out the latest Bill Maher discussion where they talk about this). But women aren’t as sexually-driven as men (Watch Dr. Carole Hooven explain), so it’s not as much of an issue for them. They tend to be more emotionally-driven versus sexually. (I am speaking in broad strokes here, calm down. There is obviously a TON of variation and complexity involved in women’s needs, wants, desires, etc.)

Another example. When [white] people say: “I won’t comment on what it’s like to be black because I can never grasp that experience.” Well, fair enough: I myself being white can also never know what it’s like to be black. That said: I myself, and most of the white people who say this, tend to be upper middleclass. So my rebuff is: I also can’t judge poor and working-class white Trumpers who haven’t grown up with college as an obvious choice; who have had to work hard physical labor most of their lives; whose families are addicted en mass to opioids; whose jobs have been more and more shipped overseas and replaced by AI; etc. The problem with the general line of “I can’t judge because” angle is that, if you follow this rabbit hole to its logical conclusion you end up here: Not one human being can judge another human being’s experience, because no one can be inside of another person’s mind.

And this is true, technically speaking. Yet, I feel we have to give ourselves permission to make basic human judgments based on our individual-yet-collective experience being alive on this planet. The truth is this: Whether white or black, Asian or Hispanic, etc: We all have a lot more in common than we have differences. We all share the same organs and blood flowing through our bodies. We all suffer and experience great love and joy. We all want to be loved and accepted. We all must grow up, grow old, and die one day. Everyone has personal biases. We all do, everyone of all races. To be human is to be biased. We notice differences. We bring all of our genetics and nurture to bear on what we experience and think about. If we were to rate differences in America (or the globe), I would argue it’s less race and gender and more class-based. We relate more to the class we come from.

So, for writers: I think we deserve to be seen as fellow human beings, wildly complicated. We deserve to be taken seriously; the way to take us seriously is to respect the fact that we need to write our “truth,” whatever is on our minds. Sometimes this will not be “politically correct.” Writing isn’t about making people feel safe. Stephen King, in his memoir “On Writing,” said: “If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.” King nails it. The very best writing pushes you to THINK, and thinking, especially in 2022, is not the norm. We live in a technocratic era full of easy binaries and tribal culture war. Everyone desires social peer acceptance so too often people sever their true values, their integrity, for a trade with being seen as “one of us.”

This isn’t writing, though; the one-way non-empathetic judgment from others because you risked your literary neck to say what you truly felt. Before Facebook and Twitter and the proliferation of the internet this was so much easier to understand. Now you’re just supposed to “stay in your lane,” or “pick a side.” People are always going to change their views (if they do at all) through rational persuasion, not through policing thought. Telling people how to think, what to write, what language is ok or not ok will not work. The Nazis tried it. Stalin tried it. The Wokies are now trying it. Doesn’t work. This has been historically tested. The verdict is in.

No. I reject that. Fuck my lane. Fuck your lane, too. (And you should feel the same!) Let’s be respectful…but also get real. Isn’t that what everyone’s been yapping about for the past two decades? Telling the truth? Risking emotional vulnerability? Being willing to get offended? Let’s bring back ART! Fuck your feelings. Fuck MY feelings, too. If I get hurt by something you said, that’s an opportunity for me to look more deeply at something within myself. Critical thinking, which is looking deeply at a subject and unpacking it as far as you can from all angles, has now become another empty catchword for political football.

When it comes to myself: I would rather be waterboarded than lied to. I can handle it. Will the truth sometimes hurt me? Absolutely. Does that change how I feel? Not at all. Give me truth or give me nothing.

Safety is for middleclass mothers. Not being offended is for too-sensitive babies. *(But please like me and praise my writing and subscribe to my Substack!)

As John McWhorter says as the last line in his brilliant book “Woke Racism”: Stand Up.