Do not express your innermost thoughts even when you are alone
Somewhat recently, I read through James Pritchard's The Ancient Near East. It's a pretty large anthology of ancient texts which may have some relevance to people who study the Old Testament. The translations are a bit partial and archaic, but it is still considered a seminal text on the topic.
Now admittedly, I got very partial value out of this. It's a technical text and expects you to have a strong grasp of much of the context of ancient history and ancient religions. I only have a tenuous grasp on these topics, so I got pretty variable value out of the book. Nonetheless, I find the whole area of study really fascinating even if I'm missing a lot of context and finer points. There are a few very interesting texts in the book, but only one text has haunted me and my mind comes back to it frequently. It's titled "Counsels of Wisdom" and is written in Akkadian and Sumerian. I'm unsure when it is dated.
It is effectively a list of maxims, many of which sound fairly biblical:
Be friendly to your enemy ... Do not return evil to your adversary; Requite with kindness the one who the one who does evil to you
Others seem very interesting, in a dated and funny kind of way:
Do not honor a slave-girl in your house; She should not rule [your] bedroom like a wife. ...,do not give yourself over [to] slave girls. If she goes up your ...,you will not go down. Let this be said [among] your people; "The household which a slave girl rules, she disrupts."
(although I'm sure we could translate the general problem expressed here into perfect modern terms)
The last half of the document is mostly focused on being honest and true to your word. Things such as:
My son, if it be the wish of a rule that you belong to him, If you are entrusted with his closely guarded seal Open his treasure house (and) enter it, For no one but you may do it. Uncounted wealth you will find inside, But do not covet any of that, Nor set your mind on a secret crim, For afterwards the matter will be investigated And the secret crime which you committed will be exposed.
It continues on like this, but the lesson is clear; do not steal, be true to your word, etc.
The part that sticks with me continues on below:
Do not speak ill, speak (only) good. Do not say evil things, speak well of people. He who speaks ill and says evil -- People will waylay him because of his debt to Shamash. Do not talk too freely, watch what you say. Do not express your innermost thoughts even when you are alone. What you say in haste you may regret later. Exert yourself to restrain your speech.
The part that sticks with me, of course, is the title of this post: Do not express your innermost thoughts even when you are alone. A lot has been said about the illiberalism of the past 10 years. Whatever your stance on the topic, I think almost everyone feels a bit silenced. At least I do. It's very chilling then, to see one of the crucial pieces of advice passed down thousands of years: Do not express your innermost thoughts even when you are alone. For how much of human history has this been good advice?
I don't know the history or context of this text. I am only speculating, but it's easy to imagine different interpretations for this phrase:
- If you express negative thoughts in private, they will fester and make you more negative in public and you will suffer the consequences.
- If you express negative thoughts in private, the gods can still hear you and take revenge.
- If you express negative thoughts, others will hear you.
- It is more important to tell people what they want to hear than to tell the truth.
- etc ...
I've always valued honesty -- near-autistic levels of honesty. As I've gotten older this sort of radical honesty has felt more and more out of my grasp. It strikes me when reading this that the writer was -- in the conceptual sense -- struggling with the same problems I've always struggled with. When I was in college, although I never would have phrased it this way, I actually tried out the author's suggestion. I was attempting some sort of radical altruism. I wanted to have kind thoughts towards everyone. To have kindness towards everyone. To have the sort of perfect altruism which registers no slights and only exudes only love. Now of course I was very immature, very naive, and also in one of the easiest environments there is: college. So my attempts were ultimately all for nothing. They barely survived some hard times at college, and certainly did not survive contact with the real world. But, at the time I tried to tackle this altruism by only thinking positive things about people; only internalizing positive ideas about people. As you might imagine this ultimately failed spectacularly, as do so many college-age ideologies. But for a time, long before I'd ever read it, I did try to follow this author's advice.
Later in life I tried other things; always telling the truth, no matter the damage it did. Of course this did not work very well either and did other kinds of damage. Lately I feel like I am receding from social connection, from public life. I no longer have the energy to balance this difficult problem. I am really incapable of telling people what they want to hear for any extended period of time. A life's worth of attempts at perfect thoughts or radical honesty have been unsuccessful.
Perhaps, I'm moving onto the final phase of my attempts here; yet another way to attempt follow the author's advice. I talk to people less and less. I express what I really think less and less. I don't lie, I just don't participate very much. Eventually maybe I'll reach perfection in this area and stop writing this (readerless) blog. Perhaps a citizen of ancient Akkad has more to fear from the gods hearing his private utterances than I speaking on the internet.
This has not been a very effective discussion on the topic; too rambly and emotional. My imaginary reader would not have the context to make much sense from what I've said. But, the phrase haunts me because the problem has always haunted me. Why can't you just be honest with people? Why do people prefer subtlety, subtext, innuendo, etc? I'm sure there are answers to this problem, but I'm just as sure I will never find them. Or I have found them, but they will forever be foreign to me. They are aspects of human nature that I can only experience as an outside observer. And as I clumsily attempt to wrestle with my nature as it conflicts with the preferences of normal people, I am slowly losing this battle of attrition. The maxim will dance around my head for the rest of my life, as I struggle to connect, to relate, to interact.