TL;DR: Western culture has simultaneously devalued living a life of integrity and elevated building and maintaining a persona. The resulting fraud can't help but lead to stress, anxiety, self-consciousness, and the ugliest of human actions that these feelings lead to.
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As children, many of us were exposed to fables, which are short, palatable stories intended to shape our morality. One class of these stories, intended to inspire truthfulness, starts with the main character telling a little white lie. This inevitably leads to disproportional havoc caused by the web of deceit that follows. When the protagonist's emotions are described, words like "guilt" and "regret" are obviously used, but they might also be characterized as "afraid" or "nervous". If these stories were written for adults, words like "stressed", "anxious", or "self-conscious" might be used. Western culture has simultaneously devalued living a life of integrity and elevated building and maintaining a persona. The resulting fraud can't help but lead to stress, anxiety, self-consciousness, and the ugliest of human actions that these feelings lead to.
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Devaluing of integrity
- Thoguht of this idea a year ago, couldn't think of the word recently, tried desperately to find it, searched traits of gentlemen, knew the word was like
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Building and maintaining a persona
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The damage
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Conclusion
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