Late Night Fiction Necessary for the evolution of mankind

Why Not to be Fake

My teacher in philosophy today finally put it into words for me. First, at the base of "you," you have your values. When evaluating why your values are good or bad, right or wrong, you have to look at the sources and why those are good sources. Sources for your values are environmental factors, such as your parents, religion, society, and other authoritative figures. Well, when thinking critically about why you should blindly follow what those sources have said about why you should believe them, you need to look at your beliefs and desires. Besides, this is what comprises your basic values.

When evaluating why a belief you hold is good, the only criteria it should match is being either true or false. Would anyone say that they want to willingly believe something that is false? When evaluating if your desires are good or bad, you should see if those desires will help you to be consistently happy and live well.

Now we could say one very basic desire of ours (among other things) is to have friends/relationships. And by having those relationships, we will be happy and be able to live well. However, we like to say we desire money and status as well (because these will make us happy). This is one of those common American ideas that is widely accepted. Because if we have money, for example, we'll be able to have friends and trophy wives, etc. But why will those friends like us? It's also commonly accepted that those friends will be our friends and like us solely because of this feature we present to them that is nothing more than superficial: a wealthy person. And if this is the case, how can you truly be happy? You're not showing them what your personality is really like, because they're probably not going to care that much about getting to know you. And when the money and everything that people "like" about you goes away, you're left with who you are. And if they never liked you for who you really are, how can that relationship continue work? Even if that all didn't disappear, how long would those "friends" stay around? Unless we truly like another person, what purpose do we have in staying around them, or again, even forming a connection with them.

So, it seems, the way to remedy this would to be yourself. Because being "fake" or doing whatever you need to do to "fit in" and "be cool" and "get people to like you" is doing the exact same thing as in the money situation: giving the people you "desire" to be around you a facade that doesn't accurately represent who you really are. So why be fake? It doesn't make sense to say that you will truly be happy by providing people with a different version of you that they "like" or that is the most-easily compatible with them. Because happiness shouldn't be fleeting, as in winning the lottery; true happiness should last.