Not Doing Them Any Favors.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: PSYCHOLOGY

Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? This ancient bit of wisdom, offered across the centuries as a guide before speaking, rests on words that are now used in corrupt and often useless ways.

"THEY'RE NOT DOING that kid any favors by letting him get away with that," an adult would remark with a headshake. Any other adults present would nod sagely. The child's obnoxious behavior, overlooked and perhaps even slyly encouraged, would lead to an adolescence marred by runins with coaches, teachers, and the police, the dislike of peers, and avoidance by the opposite sex. The youngster allowed to get away with offensive behavior by a craven parent was being set up for a young adulthood of rejection and simmering resentment towards the world.

This is, of course, nothing new: Jordan Peterson, in 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, describes in much more precise and robust ways the importance of not letting your children behave in ways that cause you to dislike them. It is unhelpful to everyone, in the short and long term.

Saying something about offensive behavior becomes problematic when one believes one's primary job is to be affirming, to be encouraging, especially when the grasp of definitions and logical thought is weak. Being good has been replaced with the requirement of being nice.

Then there is definitions creep. The "archaic" definition of nice was picky, fastidious: a person unpleasant to be around because that individual was never content. A modem reader, opening a 19th-century novel and finding, for example, someone was dismayed that Aunt Mabel would be visiting for a month because of her dreadful niceness, would wonder why being nice, or kind, was a problem. Well, no, Aunt Mabel's not kind: she is the opposite, casting her skeptical, displeased eye on everything from a morsel of food to your choice of parasol. You do not need to go back to Georgian era literature to find definitions that creep.

Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? This ancient bit of wisdom, offered across the centuries as a guide before speaking, rests on words that are now used in corrupt and often useless ways. When it is used as an excuse for action, or inaction, and the speaker is relying on unctuous, current slang word usage, it is a standard perhaps more profoundly evil than wise.

What is truth? One is tempted to join Pontius Pilate in ferocious hand-washing; there is nothing but political danger ahead.

Truth is truth. Truth are facts; truth can be transcendent assertions on which honest and good people concur. Truth does not mean, "my particular set of opinions," or "my experience as I interpret it." The phrase, to speak one's truth, meaning being honest about one's stance and intentions, has even been twisted to mean that whatever I think or believe is true, is, in fact, "true for me," and from there elevated to the level of transcendent truth. There is a difference between personal taste (potatoes, along with black beans and rice, are some of...