Page 98 - SurprisingTruthFinal

The Surprising Truth About Lying
My mood index is 4/10 (Neutral, elevated distress).
I harbor no actionable hostility.
It was a total, absolute reduction of a human
relationship to its raw, biological and psychological
minimums. They had eliminated all the connective
tissue, the empathy, the hope, the shared illusion, and
replaced it with a shared, clinical ledger of being.
Henry walked up to the chalkboard and used a
finger to wipe away the lowest statement, replacing it
with a challenge.
I am Henry, the architect of your revolution. I need
to know why you prefer silence to speech.
The woman looked up, her eyes wide with shock,
the first genuine expression Henry had seen in days.
The man, however, didn't move his face. He calmly
picked up the chalk and wrote a single word beneath
Henry's intrusion:
SAFETY.
Henry shook his head, frustration boiling up. "That
is not safety! That is functional death! You are trading
your entire lives for avoidance!"
The man calmly took the chalk back and wrote a
short sentence, his hand perfectly steady:
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