IT IS TYPICAL to have multiple reasons for choosing one thing over another. When asked, “why did you do this?”, one can honestly answer with any of the many reasons, without mentioning each one; finding the one reason that suits one’s particular audience. To do so is not to tell a lie, but only to condense a response into the one most suitable, leaving unmentioned other things.
When one speaks, listeners know that whatever they hear, it is less than comprehensive. Things are left out, such as the REAL reason. So listeners can imagine their own array of reasons, and assign to the speaker whichever one they imagine fits best, as the real reason a person did something.
When imagined reasons dominate one’s thinking, reasons which were not expressed by anyone but arose in the mind of the listener and assigned to the speaker as his REAL motivation, because he was, for apparently good reason, trying not to reveal it, and instead chose to say something else; at this point, there has occurred a breach of trust which will widen over time.
By nature, what we hear ranks second to our own analysis based on personal experience, in shaping our view of the outside world. We do not automatically re-think to accommodate a correct argument, if we are comfortable with an incorrect one that has met our needs in the past.
This stubbornness has a tendency to persist beyond where the truth has been fully exposed. It persists by way of the listener assigning false motives to the truth teller, to discredit him and his message.
To those harboring such stubbornness, truth is a threat and truth tellers become mean spirited devils spouting lies.
There is a cliche: Each of us is unique.
I grant that we are, each, uniquely limited in our perceptions, and uniquely skilled in projecting motivations onto others, while claiming that others may not see their REAL motivations, because of internal suppression of conscious thought.
Thwarticus 