How Losing Can Be Good; Truth vs. Family

The "exilic-familial" approach to things is to lose, and out of losing be honest. But how can this have any survival value? Maybe it helps people when they are not in power, to keep going. If we are allowed to survive by the people around us, then we are free to lose and be honest. But how can we allow ourselves not to fight evil? When the really righteous people lose, evil wins. Presumably, we are really righteous, or at least more righteous than unrighteous.

One way in which it can lead to defeating evil is if it is a part of reconciliation. Our human enemies, believe it or not, are our siblings. We can see them through the lens of truth -- and they fall short, and dangerously so. No matter how much we fall short of the truth, they fall short so much so that the world would be better off with people like us and not with people like them. Or we can see them through the lens of family, which says "we all came from the same father, so we are all the same family -- we are family no matter what values we have, even no matter what we do".

By losing, we can (although maybe this doesn't necessarily always happen) allow ourselves to enter into a familial relationship with the people that have wrong values. Having done so, perhaps those with wrong values can listen to us and come to have right values. They are keeping themselves from believing us because we are enemies. In their minds, they are the ones with better values, whether better first-order values (when we say "work is good", they say instead "play is good") or better second-order values (when we say "work is good", they say "you can't be too moral" or "work may be good, but you can't call anyone lazy, or even imply it by bringing up how 'work is good'"). We think we know better than them about values, and they think they know better than us, and we harden ourselves through our difference and our identity as enemies, and our hostile interactions harden us even more.

If there is any truth to be seen, between us and them, it is seen either in reason or in intuition. Reason requires open-mindedness, and the transmission of intuitions (of attraction toward what attracts us, for instance) requires a relationship of trust. (Or at least, often enough, these conditions are needed). So first we must be reconciled, perform that political-familial action (political and familial because it's about persons relating to each other as persons, forming bodies of people, rather than as bearers of truth).

The lens of family is a bit deluded, but it is practical. The truth is too much to bear all at once. Can family and truth be reconciled? Family says "we accept you -- regardless of who you are", while truth says "we accept or reject you because of who you are". Family and truth can be reconciled if people are who they should be. Families can be enemies of the truth. Family could be seen as an artifact of how mammals raise their young, plus some cultural development. Are we really siblings? But God is the father of each of us, and loves each of us. So our siblinghood descends from God, who is the moral truth. In the end there can be no compromise in God -- compromise, and "grace" in that sense, are temporary things, someday to be gone forever. But for now, even in God's mind there must be a split -- love by its nature says both "we accept you -- regardless of who you are" and "we accept or reject you because of who you are". (Those who are not in tune with love cannot be accepted forever.) So God's mind is in tension. It is costly for him to accept us as much as he does. But we can reduce that tension by (in our inner intentions, preferences, and attitudes, that which is fully under our control) turning toward him and his values.