20 Dishonest Thinking

Dishonesty in thinking results from the demands of desire to satisfy feeling.

  • Desire is neither honest nor dishonest. It wants what it wants.
  • If it does not want expressly honest thinking, the thinking will be dishonest.
  • If it does not want to be controlled by rightness, it will be controlled by nature and will override rightness and make thinking serve feeling.

Desire may be for dishonesty in thinking, but this is an unnatural thing.

  • It then pits itself against all humanity to satisfy itself, not feeling, and leads to extreme wickedness.
  • It sacrifices feeling and tries to kill it in order to be increased as desire and power.
  • Such cases are sometimes found in the intense selfishness and corruption of the leaders of business, of party politics, of labor unions and of religious institutions.
  • Such corruption is shown by the hard-hearted, from food engrossers down to little extortionists and blackmailers.
  • In them desire tries to blot out rightness and substitute its own wants, so that it may not be interfered with.

By thinking, in the accomplishment of its object, it realizes itself as a power.

  • Many human beings working to this end are attracted to each other and combine in their efforts.
  • Dishonest thinking is at home in a dishonest atmosphere.
  • By this kind of thinking the atmosphere is further prepared for the entertainment or conception of thoughts which are later exteriorized as lies, fraud, corruption and treachery, and their retribution.

A certain kind of dishonest thinking finds expression as lying.

  • It is the kind of thinking that is directly intended to deceive either oneself or another.
  • In order to deceive another successfully, the liar must in a measure deceive himself into seeing the falsehood he tells as true.
  • Lying is a special kind of dishonest thinking.
  • Generally dishonest thinking is thinking about things as they are not and dealing mentally with them in the way in which rightness says they should not be dealt with.

Thinking a lie is the special dishonest thinking that is carried on deliberately to blot out, cover with a mask or lead away from what one knows to be true.

Thinking a lie is a result and a climax of general dishonesty in thinking.

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