Truth vs Duty

[Natasha Tori Maru]

2 minutes ago, Willy Phallicus said:

Looks like that room might come in handy after all.

Im happy to have played a hand in it.

Oh! @Salvijus and I go way back... You had no hand in that one! Astral brain rubbing requires no corporeal room (⁠◠⁠‿⁠・⁠)⁠—⁠☆

I'll be sure to give you credit where credit is due 

[Willy Phallicus]

23 minutes ago, Jirh said:

That's an example of survival vs. duty.

I guess thats fair.  I see it as circumstances that arose that made the two indistinguishable from one another but not a big deal.

23 minutes ago, Jirh said:

Interesting, but not exactly on topic.

Yes, to make myself clear the OP basically asked is my personal development more important than the needs of the people around me and the answer is yes.  You help them more by being the best version of yourself that you can be rather than by playing the exact role everybody expects you to play.  Growth comes from taking risks, not by playing small or playing safe.  True story.

Edited Saturday at 06:42 AM by Willy Phallicus

[Salvijus]

13 minutes ago, Willy Phallicus said:

Looks like that room might come in handy after all.

Im happy to have played a hand in it.

 

[Jirh]

8 minutes ago, Willy Phallicus said:

You help them more by being the best version of yourself that you can be rather than by playing the exact role everybody expects you to play.  Growth comes from taking risks, not by playing small or playing safe.  True story.

For me it's more of a balance and a tension. And the answer is not so easily reduced to a simple singularity. There are real trade-offs to each side. But truth is my top value, so I always honor it no matter what.

[oOo]

What is duty?
I welcome challenges, critiques, alternate perspectives, ideas

I am going to help the process of thinking about these subjects on a slightly deeper, yet extremely practical level. I have chosen to briefly spend some time explaining the following as I think a lot of people would benefit from this introspection, and hopefully, what I've revealed below. 

There is a misconception that emotions are just singular entities. 

However there are many emotions that require other emotions at the very least as supporting roles for the stabilisation of other emotions.

One example is our emotion of duty we're examining here. 

For our demonstrative purpose, our use of the term emotion here, has both a cognitive and felt aspect; and we won't muddy the waters with terms like values, beliefs, virtues, etc concerning, at least not for now. 

Duty generally carries with it several other emotions and each of those emotions have their own intrapersonal and interpersonal position.

I have hypothesised the following. 

A certain level of the following emotions at some degree of simultaneity are needed for duty to even exist:
- love
- acceptance
- responsibility
- honour

How can you feel a sense of duty if you don't have a sense of love towards that object (even if its oneself)? 
> Love acts as the inspiration. 

How can you feel a sense of duty when you don't accept the conditions or the object that correspond to either the sense of duty towards the object or the actions that result from that sense?
> Acceptance acts on non-resistance.

How can you feel a sense of duty when you don't feel a sense of responsibility towards the object or the conditions corresponding?
> Responsibility acts as conscience. 

How can you feel a sense of duty when you don't feel honoured "to be doing" or "to be doing it for" the object, its or any conditions? 
> Honour acts as admiration.

• And what about sub-emotions or the absence of negational one's like fear, where might they position relatively speaking?
• What other emotions may I have missed, or relate to say more unique contexts?
• How do you think the sense of duty plays out in the context of these foundational emotions with oneself (intrapersonal) versus others (interpersonal)?
• Can someone have a sense of duty towards others and not themselves, or themselves but not others? 
• What inner conflicts can you imagine someone may have with a sense of duty relative to changing outer and inner circumstances?
• If one can ascertain the above, how might someone be able to leverage this knowledge for their own personal growth?

By no means are my answers final, they are jumping boards. I make a claim, you think if it matches your own deeper connections and contemplate how you can map it further; while feeling free to challenge or extend. 

Rock out @Nercohype. Hope this is useful and not too much of a derail sir, if I wasn't direct enough earlier, to briefly add, when it comes to truth and awareness, our minds are juggling multiple priorities relative to the examples you brought up. We already worked out that the most aware decision we can make at any given time, depends on our awareness. Second, that there is no distinction between empathy and truth, that it is merely a social form of awareness, and in doing so, a social form of truth. Thus, the most aware decision is not in deciding between truth and other people, but rather, managing the truth of the awareness we have of others and ourselves versus the truth of other things like our direct experiences contemplations, etc.

I hope that's more clearer now. There is no distinction between awareness and truth, and therefore no distinction between anything you can possibly be aware of, and the truth, inclusive of social. So your only duty relative to how you have characterised it, is in simply managing what the most self-aware decision is based on those priorities. For social, you can have all the sense of duty you want, but at the end of the day you also need strong boundaries. I sense this last point is important in your case.

Feel free to elaborate or not as you wish.

Edited Saturday at 09:54 AM by oOo

[Willy Phallicus]

5 hours ago, Jirh said:

For me it's more of a balance and a tension.

Is it you making the choice because you know that's how you will evolve? Well then cool, you agree with everything I am saying.

Duty comes with the direct implication that you don't have a choice or not nearly as much of one.  A duty is an obligation.  There are taxes called duties.  I would go as far as saying a duty is a tax on truth or a tax on your ability to find it.

I guess one could posit that everyone has a duty or obligation to themselves but that doesn't mean towards truth - it could just mean survival - and not what the OP was referring too when talking about duty.

[oOo]

@Willy Phallicus You need to think more critically. 

Quote

Duty comes with the direct implication that you don't have a choice or not nearly as much of one. 

Assumption: Duty must compromise free will. 

Quote

A duty is an obligation.  There are taxes called duties.  I would go as far as saying a duty is a tax on truth or a tax on your ability to find it.

Assumption: Duty must compromise consent. 

Quote

I guess one could posit that everyone has a duty or obligation to themselves but that doesn't mean towards truth

Assumption: What other people believe is what I should believe.

Assumption: Truth inherently contradicts in part or in whole what is a duty to oneself.

Quote

- it could just mean survival - and not what the OP was referring too when talking about duty.

Assumption: Truth contradicts survival in part or in whole. 
Assumption: The OP is already resolved unto themselves regarding their understanding of duty. 

Honestly @Willy Phallicus, do you have a duty towards taking your thinking to a new level, or just blabbering continually whatever is coming into your head in the moment? You're just continually talking over people with puffs of nitrogen gas.

 

Edited Saturday at 08:22 PM by oOo

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@oOo

Quote

What is duty?
I welcome challenges, critiques, alternate perspectives, ideas

Enjoyed this breakdown - taking the lid off it all and inspecting the guts (didn't want to quote the whole thing as it would make this post huge!)

Tackling presuppositions as above is an effective dismantle.

[Ziran]

On 10/22/2026 at 1:08 AM, Nercohype said:

I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts on this. Where do you draw the line between the truth you seek and the duties you have? 🤔

Rule #1:  Do no harm

On 10/22/2026 at 1:08 AM, Nercohype said:

What if uncovering the truth means hurting someone, breaking a promise, or failing those who depend on us?

See above

On 10/22/2026 at 1:08 AM, Nercohype said:

Is the pursuit of truth still the right thing to do, or can our responsibilities sometimes outweigh our need to know?

You, your self, your soul, is included in rule #1.

[Ziran]

On 10/22/2026 at 1:05 PM, AtmanIsBrahman said:

Duty is just what other people tell you to do

no

19 hours ago, oOo said:

What is duty?

Most succinctly:  duty is a call to service within a dependency chain where one is depending on others and those others are depending on them.

Independence is a relatively modern concept.  Prior to the American industrial revolution, being included was the highest ideal.  Ex-communication and/or exile was a fate worse than death.  Most people like being needed.  Most people like  being able to depend on others.  The happiest individuals, by large margins, are those who commit their lives to serving others.

See here:  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3766013/

Edited yesterday at 05:09 AM by Ziran

[Ziran]

19 hours ago, oOo said:

How can you feel a sense of duty when you don't feel honoured "to be doing" or "to be doing it for" the object, its or any conditions? 

Duty is like a crown.  It's binary.  On or Off.  It has nothing to do with being honored.   It's an outer manifestation of Will, capital W. 

The feeling of being honored is an inner manifestation of Will called "Pleasure".

Edited yesterday at 05:14 AM by Ziran

[oOo]

49 minutes ago, Ziran said:

Independence is a relatively modern concept.  Prior to the American industrial revolution, being included was the highest ideal.  Ex-communication and/or exile was a fate worse than death.  Most people like being needed.  Most people like  being able to depend on others.  The happiest individuals, by large margins, are those who commit their lives to serving others.

See here:  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3766013/

Interesting, your position remains unclear for now however.

In the first sense, you have described the interpersonal clause usually associated with peoples regular characterisation.

I noted this branch in the original brief prototype above. You may not have caught it. 

21 minutes ago, Ziran said:

Independence is a relatively modern concept.  Prior to the American industrial revolution, being included was the highest ideal. 

You've accurately characterised a certain aspects of the historical arc that independence has had on our values.

You spoke of a crown so I'll use that analogy here, would you ascribe this as well to a king or queen? Is it truly service to their people, despite classism being much stronger in earlier parts of history? And is it a relatively new concept to those corresponding 'elites' or merely something "thrown by their hand to the masses"?

21 minutes ago, Ziran said:

Ex-communication and/or exile was a fate worse than death.  Most people like being needed.  Most people like  being able to depend on others. 

Oxytocin choicelessness based happiness. 

That sounds like Stockholm syndrome, and for many people analogously that's precisely how it was, and still is. 

Devil's advocate there, but the point remains.  
 

21 minutes ago, Ziran said:

The happiest individuals, by large margins, are those who commit their lives to serving others.

See here:  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3766013/

That's an interesting connection to examine between duty and happiness, in the social sense. 

26 minutes ago, Ziran said:

Duty is like a crown.  It's binary.  On or Off.  It has nothing to do with being honored.   It's an outer manifestation of Will, capital W. 

The feeling of being honored is an inner manifestation of Will called "Pleasure".

So there's a direct misinterpretation here.

"Honour" here is to characterise the precursor for partly driving a sense of duty towards the "object" or its correspondence; does that make sense?

Object: Social or not. 
Correspondence: Social or not. 

The prototype mainly explored the phenomenological emotional profile of "duty", in its most emotionally healthy sense. 

Basically all emotions exist in non-binary ways, and usually hierarchically; the goal was to sketch what that hierarchy is for "duty". As stated, emotion here is feeling + cognitive modelling an individual does to experience the cluster of emotions that corresponds to the experience of feeling a sense of duty; this does not have to be social. The point isn't to divide "duty" from social, its to understand it independently to the "object" and its "correspondence" so that it can be modelled "in light of". That allows one to pair the accurate existence of however duty is manifesting, with whatever it is manifesting with, as opposed to just making assumptions on what it should be paired with or is paired with simply because they happen to look connected together. As a very brief example, a soldier may look like they're carrying out a sense of duty, but in reality they may be miserable inside and that duty as a result, is only experience intermittently where the rest of it exists purely as social pressure. Not the love. Not the honour of serving, Not the respect one has for the cause. Not the acceptance one has for the mission. Not the sense of responsibility and its conscience even. 

By the way, I mentioned "respect" for the first time just now, which I'd add to the prototype:

How can you feel a sense of duty when someone can't feel a sense of respect towards the object or the conditions corresponding?
> Respect acts as stabalisation. 


Thank you @Natasha Tori Maru, anyone feel free to question/add further. 

[Ziran]

7 hours ago, oOo said:

your position remains unclear for now however.

My position is:  Duty is independent of love, honor, and all the other facets of human emotive faculty.  I'll elaborate further below.

8 hours ago, oOo said:

You spoke of a crown so I'll use that analogy here, would you ascribe this as well to a king or queen?

The analogy fits for any monarch.  It doesn't need to be a crown.  It could be a uniform, a badge.  The crown is ideal, though, because, like a light switch, it's either on or off.  There is no "partially duty bound".

8 hours ago, oOo said:

Is it truly service to their people, despite classism being much stronger in earlier parts of history?

It could be.  It depends on the scope of inter-dependence.  In the case of classism, the monarch's motives and actions might be for the sake of a small subset of the population, the so-called elite or their bloodline, while neglecting the others.  If so, then the monarch's duty is harmful to those beyond their web of inter-dependent associates.

8 hours ago, oOo said:

Oxytocin choicelessness based happiness. 

That sounds like Stockholm syndrome, and for many people analogously that's precisely how it was, and still is. 

Devil's advocate there, but the point remains. 

1)  It could be superficial happiness, or it could substantive.
2)  Stockholm syndrome, please correct me if I'm wrong, is when a captive falls in love with their captors?  Then they do things that are out of context and unnatural for them which they would not do if they were free?
3)  Your devils are always welcome in my home.  "A friend of the devil is a friend of mine."  

8 hours ago, oOo said:

That's an interesting connection to examine between duty and happiness, in the social sense. 

? Do we agree that duty is bound up in actions ?
... IOW ...
?  Can their be duty without any actions ?

8 hours ago, oOo said:

So there's a direct misinterpretation here.

"Honour" here is to characterise the precursor for partly driving a sense of duty towards the "object" or its correspondence; does that make sense?

Makes sense; but, my assertion is:  "One can begrudgingly do one's duty, even if they hate it."

You are more than welcome to disagree, and/or correct me.

On 10/24/2026 at 2:53 AM, oOo said:

There is a misconception that emotions are just singular entities. 

However there are many emotions that require other emotions at the very least as supporting roles for the stabilisation of other emotions.

One example is our emotion of duty we're examining here

Agreed, but there are exceptions to that rule.  Hopefully we can agree that there are several vectors of pure motives which produce a sort of zealotry where no other motive can be brought forward within the psyche.  Examples:

• Pure love lacking any others becomes obsession
• Pure terror lacking any others becomes panic
• Pure desire lacking any others becomes hoarding

However, in regard to Will, it is unique among the other emotions because, Will possesses all the other corresponding emotions within it and yet remains distance and aloof, for lack of better words.  And.  If so then, IF "duty" is an outer manifestation of Will, it too possesses all the other outer manifestations of the emotions. 

Maybe that's what you're observing?  Or, maybe not?

Or, perhaps, are you positioning "Love" as the highest order principle?  Which would be in sharp contrast to my point of view which positions "Will" as the highest order principle?

8 hours ago, oOo said:

emotion here is feeling + cognitive modelling an individual does to experience the cluster of emotions that corresponds to the experience of feeling a sense of duty; this does not have to be social. The point isn't to divide "duty" from social, its to understand it independently to the "object" and its "correspondence"

Lacking action, ( including a lack of restraint ) can there be duty?  I vote no.  There must be something happening in order for there to be duty.  

8 hours ago, oOo said:

a soldier may look like they're carrying out a sense of duty, but in reality they may be miserable inside

It doesn't need to be from a sense of duty, but it could be.  They're miserable, and doing it anyway.

Or, perhaps from contra-position?  Ask yourself?  "If the soldier loves their job, is it possible to inform their choices via a sense of duty?  Doesn't the soldier's pleasure over-rule any sense of duty?"

8 hours ago, oOo said:

How can you feel a sense of duty when someone can't feel a sense of respect towards the object or the conditions corresponding?
> Respect acts as stabalisation. 

Answer:  In general and in particular "Manifest Destiny"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

[oOo]

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

My position is:  Duty is independent of love, honor, and all the other facets of human emotive faculty.  I'll elaborate further below.

Action may be emotionless; I think experienced duty needs emotion, but could judgment alone supply a sense of being bound?

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

There is no "partially duty bound".

The role may be binary while felt commitment varies; where do duties we create for ourselves fit?

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

If so, then the monarch's duty is harmful to those beyond their web of inter-dependent associates.

Agreed. A sincerely felt duty can still serve harm, so emotional conviction and moral justification remain separate.
 

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

1) It could be superficial happiness, or it could be substantive.
2)  Stockholm syndrome, please correct me if I'm wrong, is when a captive falls in love with their captors? 

My analogy concerned attachment under constraint, not necessarily romantic love; what would reveal whether the service is also freely chosen?

 

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

?  Can their be duty without any actions ?

Must duty already be performed to exist, or can it direct future action, like a promise I feel bound by before fulfilling it?

 

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

Makes sense; but, my assertion is:  "One can begrudgingly do one's duty, even if they hate it."

Agreed. Hatred can coexist with honour towards what duty serves, so doing it begrudgingly doesn’t establish independence from emotional support. Distinctions. 
 

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

You are more than welcome to disagree, and/or correct me.

Agreed, but there are exceptions to that rule.  Hopefully we can agree that there are several vectors of pure motives which produce a sort of zealotry where no other motive can be brought forward within the psyche. 

Does “pure” mean emotionally unmixed, or one motive becoming dominant enough that other motives no longer guide the choice?

 

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

in regard to Will, it is unique among the other emotions because, Will possesses all the other corresponding emotions within it and yet remains distance and aloof, for lack of better words. 

I see higher states as syntheses of earlier feeling and thought; if duty expresses an emotional Will, what kind of independence are you proposing?

 

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

And.  If so then, IF "duty" is an outer manifestation of Will, it too possesses all the other outer manifestations of the emotions. 

If duty expresses Will, what makes it inherit the outward expressions of every emotion Will contains?

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

Maybe that's what you're observing?  Or, maybe not?

Or, perhaps, are you positioning "Love" as the highest order principle? 

Love’s place in duty’s emotional recipe doesn’t settle its ultimate rank, nor the percentage (aka "begrudgingly") by which love is there compared to the other "emotional traits" I mentioned; I’m keeping that question open.

ll

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

There must be something happening in order for there to be duty.  

Could the “something happening” be inner recognition or conflict, with duty experienced before any outward fulfilment?
 

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

It doesn't need to be from a sense of duty, but it could be. 

Agreed. The same act can fulfil duty and earn approval without revealing what the soldier experienced or why they did it. In the same way children are programmed to view police officers are all good, when we see someone performing a positive social role we automatically project they're acting out of a sense of duty, not just performing a socially assigned duty. 

ll

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

Doesn't the soldier's pleasure over-rule any sense of duty?"

Pleasure can accompany duty without overruling it; when they pull apart, what helps you understand your own motives?
 

9 hours ago, Ziran said:

Answer:  In general and in particular "Manifest Destiny"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

Which case tests respect’s necessity for experienced duty - contempt for those harmed or service despite rejecting the mission itself?

[kavaris]

Because ive since become a devout muslim, known as the nickname Muslim meuslem shady in the churches, my only devoted concern is my duty to shahada and said t'wa- or the God word i dont know, As i do not need words towards absolute faith/worship Alla din

P.s. Im not really lying. perhaps only bout the muslim part, as there is a ritual/devotional sense of something in my life, its just so deeply uncharacter / un recognizable as the names and words we're use to seeing / hearing.

 

Edited 6 hours ago by kavaris