[Ailist] Lies, True Lies, Truth and Sustainable Outcomes

[Rob Voyle]

Hi Folks

I have found the idea of Life Lies thought provoking.  Something doesn't seem 
quite right about building a life on a Lie.  But it also reminds me of Walter 
Mischel's research on depression that indicated depressed people had a more 
accurate sense of self than happy people who had a positively distorted or not 
true sense of self worth. Perhaps all therapy was about was getting people to tell 
better lies about themselves.  However while that may make one feel better I 
wonder whether there is any sustainability and resilience in such lies and 
whether the outcome is truly lifegiving, especially for others in our environment.  
Perhaps we in the USA should be depressed when our greed, rather than being 
life giving to all of humanity is life destroying. Telling better lies keeps us 
destroying life rather than enriching life in sustainable ways. Better lies may feel 
good but they just allow us to blindly keep strip mining our physical, social, and 
spiritual environments and leaving the mess for others to clean up.

I think AI has an alternative.  
AI recognizes that life is an organic complex of "good" and "bad".  It is not an 
either or. Just because 51% of me might be bad that doesn't make me a bad 
person. I have been both but what I will become and grow toward depends upon 
how I see myself.  I can compassionately own the bad, letting it teach me what 
to do in the future, without letting it destroy my sense of self and I can use the 
good as a foundation for the future. AI recognizes that what we focus on 
becomes our reality. We ask people to tell stories of the good, because that is 
what we want to build our life story on so that the good may grow.  Even if it is 
only a small part of our experience we want to find that and focus on it and grow 
it.  Now the life story is not a lie, but something we know to have been true in 
the past.  If we have done it once then it is replicable.  Our life story based on 
these experiences becomes provocative, calling forth that best from us.  A 
personal provocative proposition based on the best of who we have been is no lie 
or fantasy affirmation that has the hollow ring of inauthenticity that many self-
help mantras have.  The provocative proposition does not deny all that we have 
been but it deliberately chooses what part of our selves we want to use to inspire 
our future.  From this perspective the alcoholic does not need to fake it until they 
make it.  They can remember periods of sobriety or serenity, even if only 
momentary.  If they have had no experience of sober serenity they would not be 
able to make serenity a personal goal. They can base their actions on the truth 
of these experiences, however minute, rather than on a fantasy or lie that they 
have no way validating or calibrating.

Rob
  
Robert J. Voyle, Psy.D.
Director, Clergy Leadership Institute
For Coaching and Training in Appreciative Inquiry
http://www.clergyleadership.com/
503-647-2378 or 503-647-2382