"We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying." 

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (paraphrased)

The Assassin's Logic: How We Kill People by Killing Conversations

We need to talk about a murder. I'm not going to talk about the man. I won't talk directly about the killer. I'm going to focus on the cause.

It was not a clean, televised version of a murder. It was the ugly, horrificly real thing. The repugnant final result of a poison that starts in our mouths and ends in a grave. We watch the news and we pretend to be shocked when raw hatred spills into violence. We act as if the assassin's bullet is a bolt from the blue, and nothing more than a random act of madness.

It's a lie. It's the last, most convenient lie in a long chain of them.

I’m Stuart from Naiture Within, and we’re done with the lies. The violence you see on your screen is nothing more than the logical endpoint of the way we speak to each other every single day. The refusal to engage in good faith, the deliberate twisting of words, the cowardly act of answering a question that was never asked: this is not poor communication. This is the grammar of dehumanisation. This is the assassin’s logic. And you might just be a part of it.

The First Act of Violence: Killing the Question

Before a finger pulls a trigger, a mind has already pulled a thousand of them. The very first trigger is pulled when you decide the person you’re talking to is not a human being to be understood, but an obstacle to be defeated.

This is what you do when you refuse to answer a direct question.

Someone asks you something that challenges your worldview. Instead of meeting the question with integrity, you treat it as an attack. You perform the coward’s pirouette. You change the subject. You attack their motives. You answer the question you wish they had asked, the one that allows you to recite your pre-rehearsed, self-justifying script.

Do you understand what you are doing in that moment? You are not having a conversation. You are committing the first act of violence by murdering the possibility of connection. You are communicating, in the clearest possible terms, that their perspective, their curiosity, their very humanity is worthless to you. You have replaced the person with a target. And while you may only be firing blanks, you are normalising and practicing the exact mental process required to one day use live ammunition.

Speaking to the Demon, Not the Person

You cannot murder a human being. It’s psychologically almost impossible for a sane person to look a fellow human in the eye, acknowledge their shared humanity, and then extinguish their life. To get to that point, you must first transform them into something else. You must turn them into a monster. A demon. An "it."

This is the work you do when you answer the caricature in your head instead of the person in front of you.

When someone you disagree with asks, "Can you explain your position?" you don't hear the words. You hear the snarling of the demon you've built in your imagination. You hear the "fascist," the "communist," the "bigot," the "traitor." You've spent so long marinating in your own tribe's propaganda that you've lost the ability to see a person. All you can see is a label, a threat.

So you don't respond to their question. You respond to the demon. You spew venom at a phantom. You are not trying to understand. You are performing an exorcism. By refusing to grant them the basic grace of being heard, you solidify their status as a non-person in your mind. You are honing the blade of your own hatred. You are doing the assassin's psychological homework for him. You are making murder seem reasonable.

The Antidote: The Terrible Risk of Honesty

If the poison is dehumanisation, the only antidote is a radical, dangerous, and painful dose of honesty. I'm not talking about the cheap "brutal honesty" that's just an excuse for cruelty. I'm talking about the terrifying act of standing in front of another person, especially one you despise, and honoring their question with a true answer.

This is the hardest work a human can do. It requires you to risk everything: your ego, your certainty, your comfortable place within your tribe. Answering a question honestly means admitting you might be wrong. It means acknowledging a sliver of validity in a worldview you find repugnant. It means choosing the crushing weight of reality over the comforting lightness of your own lies.

This is not about being nice. This is about being brave. It is the choice to see the person behind the ideology. It is the defiant, rebellious act of granting your "enemy" the very thing you need most: a moment of genuine human recognition. This is the only thing that breaks the cycle. It is the only thing that pulls us back from the brink.

The Work Before You

This is not a theoretical exercise. This is an immediate, urgent call to action. You either stop contributing to the poison, or you are complicit in the consequences. Here is your work.

1. Reclaim the Silence. The next time you are in a difficult conversation and feel the toxic reflex to deflect, shut your mouth. Go silent for five full seconds. This is not a pause. This is an act of rebellion. In that silence, you are refusing to be a puppet for your own outrage. You are consciously choosing to sever the wire between stimulus and knee-jerk response.

2. Slay the Caricature. Answer the literal words that were spoken. Not your interpretation of them. Not the "real" question you think they're asking. Kill the demon in your head by forcing yourself to respond to the person in the room. This is an act of re-humanization. It is exhausting, and it is the most important work you will ever do.

3. Weaponise "I Don't Know." The zealot, the ideologue, the potential killer, cannot stand uncertainty. Their entire worldview is built on the crumbling foundation of absolute certainty. Your most powerful weapon against this is the simple, honest phrase: "I don't know." Admitting ignorance isn't weakness. It's a declaration of war against the deadly arrogance of fanaticism.

Conclusion

The distance between a dishonest conversation and a dead body is shorter than you think. Every dodged question, every bad-faith argument, every willful misinterpretation is a stepping stone that leads directly to the violence that horrifies you. It is the same path, the same logic.

You have a choice. It's a choice you make a dozen times a day. You can continue to dehumanize others with clever evasions and intellectual dishonesty, greasing the wheels for the next tragedy. Or you can take up the terrible, necessary burden of good faith. You can decide that truth is more important than victory.

We can't just blame the assassin. He did not act alone. He is merely the conclusion of a sentence that others helped write. You can be a vector for the poison, or you can be the cure. There is no third option.