As a child you're taught to tell the truth, at least that's what I teach my kids coming down far harder on them for lying about eating all the candy than for eating all the candy if they tell the truth about it. Yet when I sit back and look at the news I see that we often idolize those that do not tell the truth, or split semantics to try and weasel out of the lie they told.
My current prime candidates for this are Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Musk has been saying for years that full self driving would be coming to his vehicles. When I hear pundits talk about his claims and their lack of truth they always come up with some version of "well he's just marketing so we know not to really believe him". This is entirely a brush off of the fact that Elon lied about the capabilities of his vehicles. Musk has been caught in lies before so why would we trust him.
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Even worse is when Musk is challenged by authorities in their fields he does stuff like calling them 'pedos', ruining their lives and then winning in court on technicalities that only serve to further fuel his belief that he can do whatever he wants.
Trump is no better with an entire page on Wikipedia dedicated to detailing his lies.
Contrast these two very powerful people with the character we see described by Ryan Holiday in the first section of his book, dealing with personal justice.
Holiday talks about the easy path that evades responsibility1 because once we evade responsibility we also evade accountability. I've always said that it's easy to abdicate responsibility for our actions and their outcomes because it allows us to preserve the falsehood that is our own perfection. We blame lack of coach time for the reason we don't excel at a sport, ignoring that we show up and do nothing a few days a week, or just don't feel like showing up so skip practice times.
Holiday says that we won't even like the place we get when we cheat2, but when we look at the world around us and those that have success it sure doesn't seem like that's the truth of our world. Cheaters become presidents. Liars who punch down with their wealth become the wealthiest people in the world. Workers are exploited and we call it "capitalism" while making it impossible for so many to get out of exploitative situations because the capitalist owners complain and bribe (we call it donations to candidates) to ensure that just laws are not passed.
While I feel personally called to be of higher integrity, it's hard to look at the world and think that this mindset will get me far if I gauge my success by the world's standards. Instead I need to gauge it by my standards. Am I happy to tell my kids what I do and how I make money? Would I be happy to work in the places I'm a consumer because I treat people well?
My first insight is to stop measuring my success by what the world seems to value because then being a weaselly wordsmith is likely the best way to get ahead, but it's not the type of person I want me children to be, and thus shouldn't be the type of person I want to be.
