7 ms·

Live Not by Lies (1974)

140 points by ogurechny 5y ago

elmerfud 5y ago
I've never seen this before, but I live in this way. I have found none others like me.
- ogurechny 5y ago
  You might see something familiar in a longer work, “The Smatterers”, that traced the changes in thinking people and their position in the society — applicable not only to USSR around 1974, — and provided the reasoning culminating in the rule(s) stated in the link above — also applicable not only to USSR around 1974. https://archive.org/details/SolzhenitsynAleksandrIsaevichFromUnderTheRubble/page/n241/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/SolzhenitsynAleksandrIsaevichFro...
baal80spam 5y ago
Sometimes I imagine what life would be if humans were incapable of lying. It boggles my mind how much money could be saved!
- Vecr 5y ago
  Depends what you mean by lying. Even if that includes lies by omission, you can be plenty evasive and confusing, without technically leaving anything out. People would probably also become very good at rationalizing (to others, but also to yourself depending on how the enforcement works) why they won't talk to someone for long periods of time, so they don't have to say anything at all.
throwaxryzs 5y ago
I feel sorry for people who lie. I don't. No, really. I just haven't developed the tools necessary, and I don't intend to. It's been a blessing for my relationships, my love life, at work, everywhere. I can't imagine how dreadful it must be to tell lies in daily life. (I mean, sure, I'm no saint, and lie by omission is a thing. But I take pride in my honest attempts at being honest and they served me well)
ISeeTheJew 5y ago
I am glad to see this here. Solzhenitsyn was not afraid to tell who ruined Russia - the Jew. The Jew Kissinger prevented him from telling this to President Ford. As Solzhenitsyn said - "You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators"
- dustintrex 5y ago
  That's not even an accurate representation of Solzhenitsyn's views. Solzhenitsyn emphatically denies that Jews were responsible for the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. At the end of chapter nine, Solzhenitsyn denounces "the superstitious faith in the historical potency of conspiracies" that leads some to blame the Russian revolutions on the Jews and to ignore the "Russian failings that determined our sad historical decline." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Hundred_Years_Together https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Hundred_Years_Together
ggm 5y ago
Isn't lying one of the classic evidences of higher cognition in animals? If-this-then-that cognitive planning, is the value of the outcome of the deception worth the social consequences? I'm not speaking in favour of lying as a conscious life choice all the time, just that it may well be a thought pattern deep in the self-aware mind. Dogs misdirecting where the best food is. Birds walking away from the nest with a fake broken wing.. Yes, Altruistic and social status truth-seeking actions are in the model too: sharing food equitably, waiting for the leader to take the choice morsel of food. Just sometimes, the choice morsel is the one you let them see, sitting on the one you will eat later.
- mrjangles 5y ago
  I think Solzhenitsyn's point here is about people who lie to themselves. In a way, people who do that revert to being no different to animals, acting on instinct, in no way in control and easily controlled by others. His point is that if you live a repressive society where you must lie to survive or to get ahead, and where taking a stand will achieve nothing other than destroy yourself, at the very least don't lie to yourself, to quote the piece: say plainly "I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill." Now obviously he intended this in part as a snide remark, and he would have hoped people would do more than this, but also I think it was getting to the crux of his point that this is still better.
  - ggm 5y ago
    I think Lying to yourself is a basic survival strategy. "this is fine" incarnate. But I agree with the sentiment overall. Nobody should wind up in the dock like Zinoviev or Kamenev copping a plea "for the good of the party"
ls65536 5y ago
Though written nearly half a century ago and in the context of what most might consider an otherwise completely antithetical system of politics and economics compared to what we believe we have in the West today, I can't help but see how this essay remains incredibly relevant to us today, perhaps even more so in recent years than prior. "And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill." It's important to stand up to lies and to speak against recognized propaganda for what it is, but how capable are we as a society even to recognize the propaganda and lies when we see them? And how many of us have the courage to do so in the face of it? When so many are in survival mode just to make it from one day to the next, this action tends to be deferred to some point in the future when those large masses of people have progressively less and less left to lose, with unfortunately often predictably violent outcomes, as history has shown.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I think this is a powerful indictment of a sector of the current young generation who believe that "violence is the voice of the voiceless," with perhaps even less knowledge of or regard for history than Lenin's generation in Russia had: "All the other fateful means resorted to over the last century of Russia’s bitter history are even less fitting for us today—true, let’s not fall back on them! Today, when all the axes have hewn what they hacked, when all that was sown has borne fruit, we can see how lost, how drugged were those conceited youths who sought, through terror, bloody uprising, and civil war, to make the country just and content. No thank you, fathers of enlightenment! We now know that the vileness of the means begets the vileness of the result. Let our hands be clean!"
- 4wsn 5y ago
  > It's important to stand up to lies and to speak against recognized propaganda for what it is, but how capable are we as a society even to recognize the propaganda and lies when we see them? And how many of us have the courage to do so in the face of it? Feel-good rhetoric aside, your impact as an individual is limited and your defenses are fragile. In real terms, speaking out in even the most diplomatic way leads you to being aggressively silenced for not endorsing whatever the Sacred Infallible Truth may be in the time period that you live in, and there can be very severe consequences that impact your weakest link; your livelihood. The best you can feasibly do as an everyman is try with the people closest to you; the people that trust and respect you. Your partner, your family, your friends, your children. This is your only feasible option. The issue with the passage you quoted ("And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul...") is that it's a call to arms yet it ignores the reality that you have no weapons with which to fight. Reading between the lines of your post; if your society insists on going down a certain self-destructive path there's not much you can feasibly do other than watch it and hope your perspective is the misguided one.
codr7 5y ago
Lie often enough and you'll lose track of your truth, that path leads nowhere worth going.
- mikojan 5y ago
  Lie often enough so you'll have to keep track of your truth, and it'll do wonders for your memory capacities.
  - codr7 5y ago
    Doesn't work, you will inevitably start believing your own lies to some degree; because it's often a version you like better, or else why put in the effort.
petra 5y ago
Isn't not lying, at least for the purposes of making a living quite naive? Because many sucsessful people, especially in tough economic situation use lying as a tool, and it seems to work. Heck the fields of marketing and sales often use some forms of lying. Yes, there's a price, but there's also a familt to feed.
- lvass 5y ago
  I wouldn't be spending my time here if my family was starving, or so close to that I'd need to lie for food. In fact if anyone here claimed to be in that situation I would question if they are lying.
lolc 5y ago
The book "Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification" by Timur Kuran offers a good model on this topic. It explains why revolutions are so hard to predict. Because the true preferences of members in a society can be effectively hidden for extended periods, and members all have their own threshold where they may feel compelled to reveal a preference, there is no sure way to foretell the dynamics of a revolution.
charbonneau2 5y ago
I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill

140 points by ogurechny 5y ago

elmerfud 5y ago

I've never seen this before, but I live in this way. I have found none others like me.

ogurechny 5y ago
You might see something familiar in a longer work, “The Smatterers”, that traced the changes in thinking people and their position in the society — applicable not only to USSR around 1974, — and provided the reasoning culminating in the rule(s) stated in the link above — also applicable not only to USSR around 1974. https://archive.org/details/SolzhenitsynAleksandrIsaevichFromUnderTheRubble/page/n241/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/SolzhenitsynAleksandrIsaevichFro...

baal80spam 5y ago

Sometimes I imagine what life would be if humans were incapable of lying. It boggles my mind how much money could be saved!

Vecr 5y ago
Depends what you mean by lying. Even if that includes lies by omission, you can be plenty evasive and confusing, without technically leaving anything out. People would probably also become very good at rationalizing (to others, but also to yourself depending on how the enforcement works) why they won't talk to someone for long periods of time, so they don't have to say anything at all.

throwaxryzs 5y ago

I feel sorry for people who lie. I don't. No, really. I just haven't developed the tools necessary, and I don't intend to. It's been a blessing for my relationships, my love life, at work, everywhere. I can't imagine how dreadful it must be to tell lies in daily life. (I mean, sure, I'm no saint, and lie by omission is a thing. But I take pride in my honest attempts at being honest and they served me well)

ISeeTheJew 5y ago

I am glad to see this here. Solzhenitsyn was not afraid to tell who ruined Russia - the Jew. The Jew Kissinger prevented him from telling this to President Ford. As Solzhenitsyn said - "You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators"

dustintrex 5y ago
That's not even an accurate representation of Solzhenitsyn's views. Solzhenitsyn emphatically denies that Jews were responsible for the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. At the end of chapter nine, Solzhenitsyn denounces "the superstitious faith in the historical potency of conspiracies" that leads some to blame the Russian revolutions on the Jews and to ignore the "Russian failings that determined our sad historical decline." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Hundred_Years_Together https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Hundred_Years_Together

ggm 5y ago

Isn't lying one of the classic evidences of higher cognition in animals? If-this-then-that cognitive planning, is the value of the outcome of the deception worth the social consequences? I'm not speaking in favour of lying as a conscious life choice all the time, just that it may well be a thought pattern deep in the self-aware mind. Dogs misdirecting where the best food is. Birds walking away from the nest with a fake broken wing.. Yes, Altruistic and social status truth-seeking actions are in the model too: sharing food equitably, waiting for the leader to take the choice morsel of food. Just sometimes, the choice morsel is the one you let them see, sitting on the one you will eat later.

mrjangles 5y ago
I think Solzhenitsyn's point here is about people who lie to themselves. In a way, people who do that revert to being no different to animals, acting on instinct, in no way in control and easily controlled by others. His point is that if you live a repressive society where you must lie to survive or to get ahead, and where taking a stand will achieve nothing other than destroy yourself, at the very least don't lie to yourself, to quote the piece: say plainly "I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill." Now obviously he intended this in part as a snide remark, and he would have hoped people would do more than this, but also I think it was getting to the crux of his point that this is still better.
- ggm 5y ago
  I think Lying to yourself is a basic survival strategy. "this is fine" incarnate. But I agree with the sentiment overall. Nobody should wind up in the dock like Zinoviev or Kamenev copping a plea "for the good of the party"

ls65536 5y ago

Though written nearly half a century ago and in the context of what most might consider an otherwise completely antithetical system of politics and economics compared to what we believe we have in the West today, I can't help but see how this essay remains incredibly relevant to us today, perhaps even more so in recent years than prior. "And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill." It's important to stand up to lies and to speak against recognized propaganda for what it is, but how capable are we as a society even to recognize the propaganda and lies when we see them? And how many of us have the courage to do so in the face of it? When so many are in survival mode just to make it from one day to the next, this action tends to be deferred to some point in the future when those large masses of people have progressively less and less left to lose, with unfortunately often predictably violent outcomes, as history has shown.

noduerme 5y ago
I think this is a powerful indictment of a sector of the current young generation who believe that "violence is the voice of the voiceless," with perhaps even less knowledge of or regard for history than Lenin's generation in Russia had: "All the other fateful means resorted to over the last century of Russia’s bitter history are even less fitting for us today—true, let’s not fall back on them! Today, when all the axes have hewn what they hacked, when all that was sown has borne fruit, we can see how lost, how drugged were those conceited youths who sought, through terror, bloody uprising, and civil war, to make the country just and content. No thank you, fathers of enlightenment! We now know that the vileness of the means begets the vileness of the result. Let our hands be clean!"
4wsn 5y ago
> It's important to stand up to lies and to speak against recognized propaganda for what it is, but how capable are we as a society even to recognize the propaganda and lies when we see them? And how many of us have the courage to do so in the face of it? Feel-good rhetoric aside, your impact as an individual is limited and your defenses are fragile. In real terms, speaking out in even the most diplomatic way leads you to being aggressively silenced for not endorsing whatever the Sacred Infallible Truth may be in the time period that you live in, and there can be very severe consequences that impact your weakest link; your livelihood. The best you can feasibly do as an everyman is try with the people closest to you; the people that trust and respect you. Your partner, your family, your friends, your children. This is your only feasible option. The issue with the passage you quoted ("And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul...") is that it's a call to arms yet it ignores the reality that you have no weapons with which to fight. Reading between the lines of your post; if your society insists on going down a certain self-destructive path there's not much you can feasibly do other than watch it and hope your perspective is the misguided one.

codr7 5y ago

Lie often enough and you'll lose track of your truth, that path leads nowhere worth going.

mikojan 5y ago
Lie often enough so you'll have to keep track of your truth, and it'll do wonders for your memory capacities.
- codr7 5y ago
  Doesn't work, you will inevitably start believing your own lies to some degree; because it's often a version you like better, or else why put in the effort.

petra 5y ago

Isn't not lying, at least for the purposes of making a living quite naive? Because many sucsessful people, especially in tough economic situation use lying as a tool, and it seems to work. Heck the fields of marketing and sales often use some forms of lying. Yes, there's a price, but there's also a familt to feed.

lvass 5y ago
I wouldn't be spending my time here if my family was starving, or so close to that I'd need to lie for food. In fact if anyone here claimed to be in that situation I would question if they are lying.

lolc 5y ago

The book "Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification" by Timur Kuran offers a good model on this topic. It explains why revolutions are so hard to predict. Because the true preferences of members in a society can be effectively hidden for extended periods, and members all have their own threshold where they may feel compelled to reveal a preference, there is no sure way to foretell the dynamics of a revolution.

charbonneau2 5y ago

I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill