M. Scott Peck on Dedication to the Truth

What follows is my abridgment from pp. 44-62 of “The Road Less Traveled.”

The third tool of discipline or technique of dealing with the pain of problem-solving, which must continually be employed if our lives are to be healthy and our spirits are to grow, is dedication to the truth.

Superficially, this should be obvious.

For truth is reality. That which is false is unreal. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world. The less clearly we see the reality of the world–the more our minds are befuddled by falsehood, misperceptions and illusions–the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions.

Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.

While this is obvious, it is something that most people to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be.

But many do not want to make this effort. Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy, their views of the world narrow and misleading.

The biggest problem of map-making is not that we have to start from scratch, but that if our maps are to be accurate we have to continually revise them. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful, sometimes excruciatingly painful.

And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind.

What happens when one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world, a seemingly useful, workable map, and then is confronted with new information suggesting that that view is wrong and the map needs to be largely redrawn? The painful effort required seems frightening, almost overwhelming. What we do more often than not, and usually unconsciously, is to ignore the new information.

Often this act of ignoring is much more than passive. We may denounce the new information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it, and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than try to change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality. Sadly, such a person may expend much more energy ultimately in defending an outmoded view of the world than would have been required to revise and correct it in the first place.

This process of active clinging to an outmoded view of reality is the basis for much mental illness. Psychiatrists refer to it as transference. There are probably as many subtle variations of the definition of transference as there are psychiatrists. My own definition is: Transference is that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood environment (indeed, often life-saving) but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult environment.

Truth or reality is avoided when it is painful. We can revise our maps only when we have the discipline to overcome that pain, To have such discipline, we must be totally dedicated to truth. That is to say we must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort.

Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and, indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth.

Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.

What does a life of total dedication to the truth mean?

It means, first of all, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination.

We know the world only through our relationship to it. Therefore, to know the world, we must not only examine it but we must simultaneously examine the examiner.

A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged.

The only way that we can be certain that our map of reality is valid is to expose it to the criticism and challenge of other mapmakers. Otherwise we live in a closed system–within a bell jar, to use Sylvia Plath’s analogy–rebreathing only our own fetid air, more and more subject to delusion.

Yet, because of the pain inherent in the process of revising our map of reality, we mostly seek to avoid or ward off any challenges to its validity. To our children we say, “Don’t talk back to me, I’m your parent.” To our spouse we give the message, “Let’s live and let live. If you criticize me, I’ll be a bitch to live with, and you’ll regret it.”

For individuals and organizations to be open to challenge, it is necessary that their maps of reality be truly open for inspection by the public.

The third thing that a life of total dedication to the truth means, therefore, is a life of total honesty. It means a continuous and neverending process of self-monitoring to assure that our communications–not only the words that we say but also the way we say them–invariably reflect as accurately as humanly possible the truth or reality as we know it.

Such honesty does not come painlessly.

The reason people lie is to avoid the pain of challenge and its consequences, including revising or redrawing our maps.

We lie, of course, not only to others but also to ourselves. The challenges to our maps from our own consciences and our own realistic perceptions may be every bit as legitimate and painful as any challenge from the public.

Of the myriad lies that people often tell themselves, two of the most common, potent and destructive are “I really love my children” and “My parents really loved me.” It may be that our parents did love us and we do love our children, but when it is not the case, people often go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the realization.

I frequently refer to psychotherapy as the “truth game” or the “honesty game” because its business is among other things to help patients confront such lies.

One of the roots of mental illness is invariably an interlocking system of lies we have been told and lies we have told ourselves.

These roots can be uncovered and excised only in an atmosphere of utter honesty.

To create this atmosphere it is essential for therapists to bring to their relationships with patients a total capacity for openness and truthfulness. How can a patient be expected to endure the pain of confronting reality unless we bear the same pain? We can lead only insofar as we have gone before.

Because it is a never-ending burden of self-discipline, most people opt for a life of very limited honesty and openness and instead opt for closedness, hiding themselves and their maps from the world. It is easier that way.

Yet the rewards of the difficult life of honesty and dedication to the truth are more than commensurate with the demands.

By virtue of the fact that their maps are continually being challenged, open people are continually growing people.

And through their openness they can establish and maintain intimate relationships far more effectively than closed off and dishonest people.

And because they never speak falsely they can be secure and proud in the knowledge that they have done nothing to contribute to the confusion of the world, but have served as sources of illumination and clarification.

And, finally, they are totally free to be. They are not burdened by any need to hide. They do not have to slink around in the shadows. They do not have to construct new lies to hide old ones. They need not waste effort covering their tracks or maintaining disguises.

Ultimately those dedicated to the truth find that the energy required for the self-discipline of honesty and transparency is far less than the energy required for secretiveness and dishonesty. The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again.

By their openness, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear.

(End of abridgment and excerpt)

…..

My comments:

There can be no actual Love between two people if both are not firmly dedicated to truth. There can be infatuation, limerance, romance, but not actual Love. A fraud or liar cannot love, only use and exploit and then move on and abandon. — And total dedication to the truth may not be a strong enough qualifier, total devotion may be what is required. A complete leveling up, sanctification, may be required. Truth must be that central, that essential, and that highly regarded and respected to both, if Love is to genuinely actually exist.

Dedication/devotion to truth requires many things, including that one is self-examining, self-observing, self-confronting, especially in disagreements. Or else there will be no Love. For to self-examine and self-observe and self-confront are in themselves acts of Love and self-extension. And they are based on us having a highly functioning conscience, that we are honest, self-aware, transparent, virtuous. The capacity to be genuinely Loving (and not just exploitatively and narcissistically crave being loved and receiving love) requires that we are basically a decent human being and not just a self-serving petty ego in a skin bag.

Devotion to truth means that we recognize something greater than us and are willing to submit to it. And most of us do not actually recognize anything greater than ourselves, than our own ego. We may say we do, but typically our actions betray us and show that we actually do not recognize or submit to anything greater than the self. For instance, when we argue and disagree, it’s ultimately about who is right, not what is right. When two people argue about what is right it means they are also humble enough to admit where and how they were wrong. In other words, devotion to truth requires that we are truly humble and teachable.

Most of us are not actually devoted to the truth, reality, courage, mental health. Rather most of us are devoted to comfort, our fears, our false personalities and our fraudulent self-images. And we do not want to be corrected or have it suggested to us that we are in any way blind to ourselves. The vast majority of us abhor it when others, especially those others like our spouse and friends who are ultimately optional and expendable to the ego, refuse to mirror back to us what we want (demand) they see of us, and instead try to mirror back to us what we refuse to see of ourselves. This refusal to see ourselves honestly and to see in ourselves what would be painful for us to see and confront is what makes a person what Peck terms in his follow up to “The Road Less Traveled” a “person of the lie.”

And the implication Peck makes here by labeling some people who at all costs will shield themselves from Truth and Light and scrutiny is crystal clear —

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” – John 8:44

Peck even subtitled his book “People of the Lie” thusly: “The Hope for Healing Human Evil.” People of the lie are those who are devoted to their sick selves (Fromm’s term) and to avoiding Truth and scrutiny and any wounds to their vanity at all cost. And especially irrelevant and inconsequential to them is the cost to others of this avoidance.

This betrayal and abandoning and collateral damaging of others is inescapable when one is devoted to the lie and not to the truth.

But when one is devoted to the truth, one’s conscience is awake and involved in all aspects of one’s life; it monitors everything. Thus there is no place our conscience does not see us or see in us and confront us.

But when one is a devotee of the lie, then one’s conscience is either asleep or has been put to sleep and killed. For that is what the devil, the father of lies, the murderer from the beginning, is ultimately seeking to do — to have us destroy / kill / murder our own conscience — the “aboriginal Vicar of Christ” in us.

When our conscience is gone, the devil reigns in us.

When our conscience is awake and alert and active and fully engaged in our lives, Love and Truth and God are reigning us or we are well on that path.