Professional Ethics Vs Personal Beliefs: Waking Up To The Truth
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Most people don’t really want the truth. They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth. With what we see happening in our society right now, people don’t seem to care so much about the truth as much as they care about believing that they are right. Join Bill Stierle and Tom on today’s podcast as they tackle professional ethics versus personal beliefs, digging into the difference between what is legally true and what is a personal belief. Have you ever had a belief that you discovered was not true? Find out how you can deal with that situation by tuning in to this episode.
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Bill, I want to paint a picture for our audience. It is of a seemingly elderly man sitting in a chair in a big room looks cold. He’s holding his hands out to warm his hands in front of a warm fire like your classic view of a fireplace. You can back in this picture a little bit and you see that he’s not warming his hands in front of a fireplace, he is sitting in front of an oil and canvas type of painting of a warm fireplace, which is flat, there’s no depth to it, no fire, and no heat. There’s a caption under it that says, “Most people don’t want the truth, they want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth.” Is that illuminating the pun fireplace? It’s illuminating and with a lot of things that we see happening in our country that people don’t seem to care so much about the truth as much as they care about believing that they are right.
This picture of the guy sitting on the chair getting warmed by a picture of a fireplace is unsettling because it is a great representation of what our brain does when it’s already made a decision. It needs reassurance about the decision. Donald Trump is going to be the person that only he can get things done and make the changes that are needed. It’s unsettling because as the person sitting there believing the illusion time is ticking and they’re validating their identity. They’re saying to themselves, “This will keep me warm.” The brain does make it real, even though it’s not. It can hold out hope that it’s real and the body warms itself.
It can do some physiological changes. If I promise you to ice cream, Tom, your brain will be thinking about ice cream. If I promise you your favorite ice cream, it will follow that belief that you’re going to get some. It’s the same thing for what’s been happening with messaging, and it is severely affected by the difference between what is legally true and what is a personal belief. Is it professionally ethical for somebody to blatantly go, “We know that this thing is true, we’ve got to keep digging until we know it’s true?”
It’s the same thing with many things that have been done in the past that have been long and all it is that I’m having flashbacks to the Benghazi experience of how they kept trying to turn over rocks, and all that it took was for Hillary Clinton to say one sentence that was out of alignment. That becomes the broadcast piece that they need to say, “We got you,” but there were eleven hours of none of that. That’s one of the challenges that’s happening in our environment of propaganda and the reinforcing of beliefs, biases, and fallacies for one side to create the illusion for the other side to believe is true. It’s unsettling and disturbing. You and I even carry different beliefs that aren’t true, but we were taught it and it’s still unsettling.
That’s a good point you made because we all do carry some beliefs that are not true. Maybe that’s a good place to start rather than get into what can be seen as either partisan or ideologically opposite. Rather than going into some of what of the obvious things which we do need to discuss, have you ever had a belief, Bill, that you came to discover was not true?
The main one that has disturbed the crap out of me, especially over the holidays was the one about the carrots and eyesight.
What do you mean? I remember being told as a kid that if I ate a lot of carrots, it would help my eyesight.
It was my eighteen-year-old son that called me on it. I’m like, “Carrots are healthy for you. It’s good for your eyesight.” He goes, “That’s not true.” I go, “What do you mean it’s not true?”
We went on to go Google and it says that the English propagated that story as a cover. The English pilots can see at night because they eat carrots just to cover the fact that they had radar and they could fly at night where you can’t fly. The other pilots didn’t have the technology to fly at night because they didn’t have radar to find things.
You’re telling me that the notion that carrots improve your eyesight and what we were all told as kids, “Eat your carrots because it’s good for your eyes,” was a bunch of garbage and it was propaganda the English and World War II came up with?
That’s right.
It was a smokescreen for the technology of radar. That is amazing. I’ve always known from history that radar was a new technology that emerged in World War II and that they were fine-tuning. If you’ve ever seen or read any of the stories of the attack on Pearl Harbor, they had a radar installation in Hawaii. There was this massive reading on the radar and they’re all like, “No, it’s a flock of birds.” They thought it was something else but they didn’t realize it was this amazing invasion wave of Japanese planes coming to attack us. Its infancy at the beginning of World War I
I.
It was a ruse to keep German pilots confused. It was a propaganda campaign. I even put in our chart a picture of two little kids standing in front of a sign that has a picture of carrots on a stick instead of ice cream. Another part of it is that they were rationing sugar and they didn’t want the population to eat as much sugar. They got rid of the ices and they put carrots on a stick and said, “Kids, eat carrots on a stick because it’s good for your eyesight.”
I don’t know how many kids would be too excited about eating carrots on a stick.
I don’t know about excited about it, but it’s the only thing they got. In other words, it’s being sold to them as. If you do eat one carrot, it has a taste to it. Vitamin A does help with eyesight deficiency, but that’s taking one little piece of science and exploding it and going like carrots all of a sudden, “Whew,” like this whole thing. As I’m sitting around the Thanksgiving table and I’m hearing this thing about carrots, I started getting mad. What I was most mad about is that belief, bias occupied so much time and space in my brain. It was like, “What else is in there that I can discard? What else do I need to rewrite?” The brain craves certainty. It wants to trust things.
We have an inherent trust in another person. When somebody gets on the news media, we think somebody is vetting this person. Nobody’s vetting this person. The person is on there and they’re saying things that might not be true and also might be dangerous. If there was a consequence for somebody coming on TV and blatantly lying, there was a consequence to the network. You will be fined $100,000. You will get tangled up in court. If you put this person on, that mentions a conspiracy. You will be fine for that because of the public damage that that will do. The problem is that politicians stretch the truth too. If we find the regular person that comes on, or if we find the media person, how are we going to cover these characters that need to negotiate, make a deal, and walk things back? A lot of stupid, dangerous, and bad things have come out of this.
I can sense the exasperations in your voice over the whole carrot revelation. It’s very interesting to me because I can completely see how that happened. It was a good idea to not reveal to the Germans the English over there in Europe, “We’ve got this new technology and we’re going to be able to bomb all your cities at night and we’re going to win the war.” That’s not something that you do. You instead try to hide the technology. You propagate the lie because it had a strategic purpose in overall warfare. I’m sure nobody in England who knew this had any problem whatsoever with propagating that lie. A lot of us even looking back in the rearview mirror of history, wouldn’t have a big problem with that lie. Bill, you sounded to me when you talked about that, like the kind that’s learned that the tooth fairy is not real or that Santa Claus doesn’t come down the chimney and deliver presents and put them nice and neatly under your tree.
It’s the same thing. People don’t like the truth when you’re comfortable with a belief that is good for you and makes some sense that you can buy into. Our brain doesn’t like that too much, especially now with the over-saturation of information. People are clinging to old things and going, “I don’t want to rethink that.” I’m looking at the person, “You’re a 50-year-old person, you need to rethink this.” If you were 90, don’t rethink it. You might get some, “No. My parents were always Democrats.” “They’re always Republicans and they’re always going to be Republicans. I’m not rethinking this.” Those other people are socialist, “What? Socialists? Do you want to know what operationally socialism is? It’s like not this.” These two systems capitalism and socialism working together is the combination of what we’re experiencing. That’s where the truth is.
As a culture, all of us who are parents easily lie to our children and propagate the myth of the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. I’m not making a religious statement here. Let’s be clear. I’m talking about Santa Claus going to travel around the world at night, delivering presents to all the children, this whole thing. We easily cling to this and we subscribe to these propagating of lies. No wonder it’s easy for us as human beings or some of us to do this, whether it’s on television or on social media. I’m going to come back to the image of the painting. It’s worth going to see as well as the image, Bill, that you’ve contributed regarding the kids flicking at a sign, an advertisement for carrots on a stick.
People don’t necessarily want to have their beliefs challenged. That’s what we’re talking about here. It gets the point of being dangerous. Let’s bring this into the context of the present. Most people reading this have probably heard the name, Christopher Krebs. He was a part of the Donald Trump administration. He was the former cybersecurity official for the Department of Homeland Security that was in charge of making sure that our elections are safe. He’s appointed by Donald Trump. He’s a lifelong Republican. He’s around 42 years old. This guy is sharp and he knows his stuff.
He, along with a team of people have worked for three and a half years before this election in 2020 to make sure that our elections are safe and people can express their vote. He’s the one that came out after the election and said, “This election was the most secure in the history of our country.” I don’t have the evidence but I’m going to say he was coming out and making a fact-based truthful statement. He’s the guy that would know because his department was in charge of that. He also came out and was interviewed on 60 Minutes because after he made the statement, he was fired by Donald Trump by tweet, which is the modern thing, firing by tweet.
Donald Trump cast out in what Christopher Krebs was saying. Donald Trump was saying much of what he said is inaccurate and all this stuff. There was massive fraud. Of course, Donald Trump continuing to propagate what he wants people to believe. Christopher Krebs is on 60 Minutes and laid it out. That took some bravery to go on the 60 Minutes national program and talk about how unsettling it was to have the president fire you that way and not be able to say thank you to your team and say goodbye to them or whatever. “You’re out because I don’t like what you said.”
I highly recommend people watch that 60 Minutes interview because one of the things that it did well is, it will reassure most who watch it that your vote was properly counted. Whoever you voted for that process works that in America voting, which is one of our most cherished values or actions as citizens are secure and it works. Christopher Krebs went on and explained and shared why he’s certain and what we’ve seen in a bunch of the recounts have not resulted in a major swing of votes one way or the other because the process is sound.
The big problem is that as soon as a propagandist or somebody says something that doesn’t meet the need for truth, there needs to be ten times the counterweight to that sentence for the brain to pick up the piece of information that the thing that they been shown is not true. Otherwise, their brain will get hijacked because their identity is with the person that’s not telling the truth. This is where media is being too reactive instead of proactive. We knew Donald Trump was protesting the voter count of Hillary Clinton’s three million more votes and said that it was a fraud.
He planted the seeds and he’s been watering it for many years. The thing is turned into this entire weed thicket already, or a tree stands so that he can water it more towards the end of the presidency, and then stir up this, not only a wedge for his base but also for the nation to get people to side with him and believe that it was false. There’s got to be some false, otherwise, he wouldn’t have said it. He is using it as a fundraising campaign to helps raise money for these legal charges. He’s getting money out of people.
Some people are asking for their money back. The one guy that donated $2.5 million is going like, “You guys took my money, didn’t you? You’re going to drop the cases and keep my money. I want my money back.” The reason why the media is not doing a great job here is that when they see the truth, they’re expecting people to believe them. Instead of realizing they’re in the propaganda business too, they have to get the significant picture, insight belief, and the sentence that buries the message, the negative or the propaganda message.
They’ve got to get that in front of people or it becomes a zombie thought. It’s a thought that’s in your head like zombies eat brains, the thought eats your brain because you occupied all this time thinking about a thought that is not valid and that is no help. All of us have these zombie thoughts. Eating carrots will improve your eyesight is an example of a zombie thought. Every time I was in the grocery store, I was buying carrots, and I didn’t know that my zombie thought was causing me to impulse to buy the carrot. I buy the carrot because I like carrots. It’s not been sold that way. It’s been sold as an eyesight piece that there’s some vitamin A in there and that is going to have some significance.
What’s concerning about what’s happening in our 24-hour news media is that one of Donald Trump’s attorneys, Joe diGenova said on a television show, “Anybody who thinks the election went well like that idiot Christopher Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot.” I read that and I’m like, “What?” That is unsettling and shocking. An attorney is calling for violence against this civil servant who did his job because you don’t like what he said that what he is letting everyone know about the reality of the election is not in alignment with how you want the story to end. This is getting to another level.
He is getting the press that he wants. This attorney is saying the sentence that will become viral, get traction, and energy. Here’s an attorney saying, “Anybody with my identity or my belief needs to take the law into their own hands.” The poor seventeen-year-old that went with the rifle and shot the people during the protest was the same kid. He was the one that believed that the police needed help and the violence was going to take place, and he needed to do something. He needs to shoot that gun. He’s part of the solution and not the problem. He doesn’t know that his young brain got hijacked by an older person’s brain that wanted to stir the pot to get people riled up. It’s the adult brain versus the kid brain.
What does that mean? The kid brain gets the believer in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the adult brain go, “The tooth fairy is a character that is going to give money for a tooth so that you can see that even with pain, there’s some pleasure that’s going to come somewhere.” It happens to come in the form of cash by somebody that’s dressed up the way they are and the tooth fairy puts a $0.25, $1, $5, or $0.01 underneath the pillow. There’s an entire book written and the name of the book is called When Santa was a Shaman. Santa Claus is an image that is 10,000 years old. The image that we see was created by Coca-Cola in 1932. As a part of Macy’s Day Parade, they put a beard, got him out of the scruffy shaman clothes, and put him in a red suit so it matches the Coca-Cola color, red and white.
Marketing is showing its power.
It’s not a bad thing because it creates some joy, stability, mystery, curiosity, and magic. For human beings, it’s good to have magic, but it’s when that type of propaganda is placed on something that costs lives or to get the negative message heard or the message against your supposed enemy, and you take a SWAT of truth because of it. What is being done in the language is that violence and entertainment are okay, but is violence in politics okay? It’s not okay.
Where’s the ethical line? This lawyer, one who’s made this statement on television about Christopher Krebs, as well as Rudy Giuliani, who makes all kinds of outlandish statements on television and at press conferences all the time, making all these accusations of fraud. Every time Rudy Giuliani has gotten in front of a judge and he’s asked about fraud is like, “We’re not alleging fraud.” There’s a consequence for a lawyer lying to a judge or in court. That same consequence doesn’t exist when you’re on a podium in front of a microphone on television.
The power of being on television has been a badge of authority, respect, knowledge, or information. You can even write a book that’s not good. Because you’ve written a book, people go, “You wrote a book. You must know something because you put one word next to each other. It doesn’t say much but it is a book.” If you’re promoting that book and that book gets traction because the title is interesting, then all of a sudden, people will read it. What’s most important is that you wrote a book. Most people don’t write a book because you have to put one sentence after the next and then that creates a thing called a paragraph.
That’s supposed to mean something that leads into the next paragraph. It’s supposed to lead into the next chapter that then bounces you the reader into the next chapter. I’m being funny about it, but it’s also disturbing that we assign or handover credibility in certain kinds of ways that have a tragedy to it but it also takes away from the gravity of being on TV and the ethics or the responsibility that it takes to be on there. If you’re being lifted and promoted in that way, then you may want to go after truth a little bit. Let the truth be on your side and not go, “That’s this thing. I’m going to say this thing so I can get the ratings because I was told to do that.” There’s no accountability in that space. That’s the thing you’re pointing out is the accountability is not setting in that.
Freedom of speech is this value we cherish as Americans and I cherish it. I am happy to be an American citizen, live in this country, and have the freedoms we have. You’ve got to live by them. When you like them, when they’re in alignment with you, you’ve got to live with them when they’re not in alignment with you. That can be challenging at times.
Even on our show, as we’re exercising the ability to speak up, and talk about truth away we’re trying to talk about truth. There are other people saying, “I believe the truth is this because I have this degree in psychology, I have this information over here. I got this job and I worked for this company.” How long did you work for them? Three months. What’d you accomplish while you were there? There’s got to be some doing some gravity to do that. You and I have talked about this in the past where Hillary Clinton with an entire resume being a Senator and working in the state department, it’s like, “All the different jobs and all the different people she needed to integrate with and needed to practice her leadership skills.” The TV host takes her out because he’s better at propaganda than she is. All he had to do was call her a crooked for a year and a half, and then create some doubt about her crookedness.
It’s scary stuff.
Our nation does have a reckoning about the balance of freedom of speech and the embracing of truth. We have to heal that part of ourselves. We’ve got to know like, “If we want to talk about Santa Claus, something that’s not going to lose anybody’s life over it, we need to embrace that as here are some things we know the good reason why we are talking this way about this particular subject because it helps keep the mystery of life for children. It helps get them to anticipate the holiday season and participate in family, connection, community, and putting a tree up.”
The Christmas tree is a pagan ritual. It’s not for Christmas, but it’s at Christmas time. It’s at the time that was designated for Christmas. We’ve got all these kinds of things. It’s like a head-scratcher. It’s like, “What are we doing for truth? What are we going to decide on what we’re going to tackle as truth? The adult person can handle that this event was put next to this event and the truth of that,” instead of going like, “Is anybody going to die over that?” No one’s going to die over it, but we’ve also got to do a better job of the adult mind going like, “That’s not true, but I’m not fixing that one. I’m not going to rail against that one.”
There are lots of things for us to talk about here in regards to truth, how violence, the entertainment, the professional ethics of attorneys and doctors, how we assign a weight to authorities, and being able to roll up our sleeves around. We do need to return to a culture that has dignity, honor, and respect for the truth, and people that are not doing the truth. Even if it’s to get their own name out there, we’ve got to be a lot more proactive about dealing with propaganda messages. That’s where the new media has to go quickly. It’s got to get in front of pieces of propaganda and go like, “That’s not true. I’m not promoting that even if it costs me clicks.”
It would be nice for it to be more clear. What you’re consuming is more truth and fact or entertainment, and for people to realize when they’re comfortable with something they’re consuming because it’s in alignment with their beliefs rather than being objectively true. That’s where it can get dangerous. My concern is that somebody is going to harm Christopher Krebs because a prominent attorney on television went out and said, “He should be taken out at dawn and shot.” That crossed the line.
It’s how far down the chain does the Secret Service need to go to protect people to do right? We’re protecting the president. We protect the vice-president.
We protect cabinet members.
We protect a bunch of people, but all of a sudden, if you’ve got people shooting accusations about doing violence against others then where’s the accountability? That’s a little scary because we won’t be able to say what we need to say, but if you’re talking violence against somebody, that’s one thing. If it’s not done in an “entertainment context,” and it’s done in a real context, like in regards to a public servant, that’s not good at all for a civil society. It will be interesting how we’re going to restore our integrity and look at bringing honor back to things. When the media gets better at facing some of these issues, it will be more proactive about things that are not true in a very sustained way. I hope that there’s some space on that so that’ll help us gain the truth.
Bill, thank you. I appreciate this discussion.
It is much needed. Thanks, Tom.
Important Links:
- https://YouTu.be/YzBJJ1sxtEA
- When Santa was a Shaman
- https://www.CNN.com/2020/11/30/politics/joe-digenova-attorney-trump-campaign-chris-krebs-violence/index.html
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