the social contract

Recently I watched an episode of House called “The Social Contract” in which a man has frontal lobe disinhibition. He is forced to say whatever is on his mind whenever he opens his mouth to speak. This means any negative or embarrassing thought he has about anyone with whom he is talking, he says this aloud, with no control or ability to refrain from speaking the thought. It was like a truth serum: he was forced to answer any question posed to him with the first thing that popped into his mind, no matter how hurtful or snarky. It would seem, then, with this condition, the only way to control what you say would be to learn to control what you think. In other words, what an amazing incentive to learn to control one’s mind.

Not that I want to need such motivation. Relationships would be destroyed; tact non-existent; the ability to perform basic pleasantries in one’s job impossible. It would be impossible to provide friendly service as a server if I had to say whatever was on my mind to a table’s often ridiculous demands or criticisms. I’d be fired in a heartbeat. I can’t think of a job that would allow such a disability to control one’s speech.

Clearly, being forced to speak whatever might be on your mind would drive most of us insane. We’d be ostracized and shunned from everyone we know and love. Despite the fact that they have the same thoughts, they have the wherewithall to keep them to themselves to avoid unnecessarily hurting others. Without this ability, this ability to censor our own speech, we’d be saying hurtful things all the time, especially since most of us lack much control over our own mind and thoughts.

It’s sad really, how much censorship we have to do between our thoughts and our speech.

How much energy would we save if that weren’t necessary, if we could actually have not only right speech, but right mind?

~ by bluedakini on 26 March 2009.