Rules and telling lies

On a nature show I saw about penguins the males were building rock nests.

They would go about to find good rocks and trudge them back to their nesting piles.

Sometimes, though, a male will, instead, just wait for another male to bring a

rock to their pile and just steal that rock and take to their own nearby, saving them the trip and trudge back.

If you saw this nature show would you feel the same anger?

Or how would you feel, if not?

Would the same rules apply?

Knowing that you can observe your own emotional and judgmental

processes and your expectation of others.

If you, like me, don't feel good when lying or breaking rules or not knowing what the rules are,  you can observe

reality to see what those rules are and follow them. One rule of reality I've found is that

we don't have control of other people and what they do. We can make up rules to say what is right and wrong

but that just makes people want to lie and cheat when they don't want to following them.

Having rules at all creates cheaters and lairs to break them.

I learned s great deal about this from reading the "Tao Te Ching" (Thomas Cleary translation).

As for the person you know:

Did that person get something you wanted or were entitled to?

Are there anymore of that something readily available?

Dream said:

I know someone who lies to get what they want and it really makes me angry. It's not fair, not right and shouldn't happen. It's all I can think about.

Looki at this from a society point of view - where is the book of rules that say people cannot lie? Is there a law, a society book of appropriate conduct or is this just something you have come to accept is a "thing".

Politicians of all parties lie through their teeth all the time, advertising lies constantly about the effect of their products, people you meet socially are likely to lie and say things like "you look great" when you look like rubbish, a boy may tell a girl he loves her when he is just not that into her but it makes her feel better, parents may tell a terminally ill child "it will be ok" etc etc.

The point is lies are a constant part of our society so stop caring so much about them. We are not the arbiters of justice in society so don't take on the stress and anger over it.

When people lie it tends to end up being found and it is down to the injured party to decide what to do about it.

If there is a defined rule broken (eg lying at work to get someone else blamed for a mistake) then you have a path to raise that with the authorities, but be aware that it will probably reflect badly on you as a "snitch". It will depend on the severity of the issue but for non serious stuff it is normally best to pretend you didn't even see it in my experience.

The whole issue about being angry because the rules are not being followed is a common autistic viewpoint so my approach is to realise that the rule book does not exist for the vast majority of these, so there cannot be rules to be broken if they don't exist in the first place.

Hi, actually it might not be the best idea to try and stop those feelings. I bottled up feelings for years and anger is still something I barely ever feel- which is not good. I end up blaming myself for everything. It's more than appropriate to be angry about people that behave in the way you describe. As long as you are not consumed by anger, I think it's healthy to feel the way you do. Shutting out those feelings is really just a temporary fix which will lead to more issues. This is just my take on it- I wish I could be more angry at people that deserve it.

it will keep going round in your head. the trick is to forget about it and not ruminate on it, get it our of your head cycle...

its no use me saying this because likely you cant do that. i dunno could try removing yourself from the place were you feel that and distract yourself with something else. change your head mood and then make it feel insignificant and buried.