peace was invited to dinner

If you are an individual participating in society you are required by the culture or law to adhere to specific social constructs or instructions.

George Carlin said there were only two commandments he adhered to. "Thou shalt not kill and thou shalt try not to lie."

Those commandments are perfectly suited to most social and cultural interactions. You definitely don't want to kill and if you didn't lie you never have anything to cover up or remember. On the other hand, if you don't lie, you can also injure others to the core with your brutal honesty.

So could leaving out salient details be acceptable?

Yes. Sometimes!

If you are not asked directly about them you don't have to contribute information that may confuse the issue or injure the other person. But the minute you are put on the spot with a focused question that might cut to the core of the dispute you have to fess up and reveal all that you were keeping under wraps to suit your story. That is if you are trying to follow the do not lie commandment. Of course if you didn't lie as part of your personality or stories there wouldn't be much to fess up to anyway.

So what more should you do to lead a life that didn't harm others and is that enough?

Unfortunately not lying can get you in trouble and hurt others also. When a person is so honest, brutally honest, sometimes friends or associates may not really want to hear truths in such a raw manner. The teller of the truth has to confront the very real possibility that the friend or associate's anger at hearing some truth may create future strained encounters. One can get tired of brutal honesty especially if you are put on the spot concerning a story that had become demonstrably false to one or the other. What if two people see the issues in such opposite manners that they can't agree on what is truth and what isn't? The lies they have absorbed become an integral part of their story and it is hard to let those lies go.

If you distance yourself, because you no longer trust that the friend or associate would also lie about you if it suited some final outcome they had anticipated, are you creating more of a problem or solving the problem?

Some would call this a basic human device used to accomplish something for the self. The human "instinct" being to get whatever they could for themselves first before thinking about others.

But is this really an "instinct" or something that develops over time, a learned response to adverse situations?

When i have observed preschool class in the past the children there had seemed more concerned about their playmates than themselves. Worrying about their feelings, helping them when they found someone crying, getting their things if they couldn't find them.

Was self interest really "instinct"? The preschool class certainly didn't indicate it was in fact it indicated the exact opposite.

There is a great quote by Black Elk that goes:

Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

So how do you repair something like this when you know your friend or associate has created a story to suit them?

Should you go to war?

Maybe you should just get rid of them and that will solve the problem.

Not likely.

Today we have armed conflicts all over the world that might not be happening. i could believe that if these two commandments were respected
1. Do not kill and
2. Do not lie.
the number of violent conflicts might be reduced significantly. Don't you think that if we taught our children these two rules and encouraged their innate sense of compassion maybe earth would be a more peaceful place?

Go to www.change.gov and vote to create a Peace Department. Peace has not been extended an invitation to dine at the governments table, it is time to set a place and ready its chair.