On Feb 1, 2009, at 3:31 PM, Sal Sunshine wrote:
On Feb 1, 2009, at 2:16 PM, Vaj wrote:
However, wouldn't it be fair to to say, after a certain point, if
someone's statements and promises consistently turn out to be false
(esp. in their favor), that they are lying. Up to a certain point,
one could argue about circumstances and it might be a 'glass half
full or glass half empty' situation. Those who found him credible
would believe he'd just changed his mind, those to whom he, through
experience and example after example, had lost most or all
credibility, would see the glass as 'half empty' and guess from
that experience that he was in fact a consistent liar.
Of course knowingly breaking promises is lying...
any other kind of rationalization is a load of
crap. And the ATR scams were just the worst
kind of deceit.
In that regard, unless there is some sort of overheard conversation
between insiders showing a deliberate primary intention to deceive, it
is possible that M. did want to provide that option, but when things
got financially tight, we pulled out of that option. In such a case we
wouldn't really be lying if that was not his original intent, it would
just show that he could be ruthless rather than fair. I suspect at a
certain point he just had to be more ruthless to have his org survive
overall, but I'd defer to those who were there and could be objective.
Furthermore, the common claim by initiators that he told people to
lie, or taught them how to do so would also make it easy to
understand that he was not only someone who did lie, but he was
comfortable enough with it as to tell others to do so! That would
be the clincher for me: if someone was enabling others to lie,
they'd lose credibility to the point where you'd assume they
themselves were liars in a rather comfortable sort of way. Having
talked at length to old secretaries of M., this seems to be the
pervasive style of behavior that really creeped them out.
How did they handle it? Did any ever attempt
to call him on it?
They just got sick of it and left. As far as I know, none confronted
him at all.