Kolya

For example, did you know worker bees ALWAYS work themselves to death? There’s no “retirement” or anything. They just keep working until they die. One of the first jobs for newly hatched bees is rolling dead bees out of the hive.

Did you know that worker bees’ stingers are a modifier part of their reproductive system? Did you know they’re attached so that when a bee stings you the barbed tip gets caught in your skin and rips out all of their internal organs? Did you know that bees are more than willing to sting you because they fight and die for their hive?

Did you know that drone bees only mate with a queen bee once, and then they immediately die? Did you know when winter comes, the worker bees push 100% of the drones out of the hive so they starve to death?

Did you know when a queen bee emerges from her lil pod, the very first thing she does is stab all the other potential queens so they don’t have a chance to usurp her? Did you know if two queens hatch at once they have to fight to the death until there is only one? Did you know if you purchase a new queen for a hive without one, she travels with a small escort of worker bees who are all promptly killed when they arrive at the new hive, even if the queen is accepted?

Did you know absolutely all of this is natural for bees, and human intervention for honey collection is actually extremely helpful because farmers offer protection from the real threats, like hive beetles, wasps, ants, and the general chaos and misery that seems to befall a lot of hives?

When we’re still in the midst of crisis, we’re often too overloaded and physically/emotionally unsafe to really feel or process anything. So for most of us, everything gets pushed down/repressed/dissociated until later, when we’re safe and supported. The threshold of safety at which processing begins to occur varies from person to person. And the mental calculations used to determine “safety” usually happen on an unconscious level. Very few of us have the conscious thought “I’m safe now, so I can process what happened to me.” Instead, the subconscious realizes some level of safety has been achieved, and so it just dumps a load of suppressed stuff. 

It’s an important Theme in Les Mis that being dishonest can often be valuable and moral (like the bishop lying to the police to save Valjean.) So if Javert’s Special Skill is being so honest that he would literally rather die than tell a lie…… then Valjean’s Special Skill is his ability to look someone dead in the eye and tell them the most BOLD and OUTRAGEOUS flat-out lies with a straight face

Like. After he’s healed from his wounds, Marius says to Valjean: “hey dad-in-law, weren’t you at the barricades too? I saw you there!” And Valjean flatly responds “I have no idea what you’re talking about”

When Thenardier kidnaps Valjean for being the rich man who “stole” Cosette from him, Thenardier demands Valjean confess that he recognizes him. Valjean does not. Thenardier goes on a long rant about who he is, and how Valjean wronged him, and his gang is clearly threatening Valjean with torture and death– and Thenardier asks Valjean again “NOW DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

Valjean’s casually responds “i only know that you’re a bandit”

Valjean spends his entire time at the barricade weirding everyone out by being unusually nonviolent and pacifistic. Then he walks up to Enjolras like “GIVE ME JAVERT BECAUSE I AM A VIOLENT MAN AND I WANT TO SHOOT HIS BRAINS OUT”

Javert goes up to Valjean in Montreuil and says “I mistook you for a convict named Jean Valjean.”

And Valjean is calmly like “‘Mistook’ is the right word, because you were absolutely mistaken. I am definitely not Jean Valjean and frankly? I’m stunned and offended you could ever mistake me for him”

Honestly, please do? This has been an aspect of Les Mis that has intrigued me for years, and that I don’t really seen talked about or addressed that much. (Like, if there’s an essay or dissertation out there already about how honesty and lying are treated in Les Mis , please link, cause I would read the heck out of that.)

I’ve never read Les Mis in the original French (My French is just not that good, I can get some joke memes on French tumblr and that’s about it), and I’ve wondered what ‘honest man’ is actually a translation of? But putting that aside and just looking at the English language versions, I remember way back when first seeing the musical when the Bishop tells Valjean “You must use this precious silver to become an honest man” when he…just lied??? Like you said, he just lied to the police, that was his act of goodness and compassion. And again, like you said, Valjean goes on to spend most of his life lying in one way or another, while still trying to do good. The only time when him lying–and really, just keeping silent–is framed as probably bad is the whole ‘someone else might be convicted in my place’ thing. So then, actual honesty suddenly becomes very important. 

And then there’s Thernardier and Javert–one who is a malicious liar and con man, and the other who Will Not Tell A Lie–but they’re both shown to be incredibly damaging to the people around them. And even little Cossette sometimes lies to try and protect herself from the Thernardiers, and that’s not framed as entirely unsympathetically either. AND THEN now that I’m thinking about it, the women who “tell the truth” about Fantine having a daughter aren’t exactly depicted in a favorable light. 

I mean, I’m sure there’s more examples, but this is already longer than I meant it to be, my point is, it really does seem like, taken all together, in the world of Les Mes that Hugo is building, honesty is not a virtue. Both lying and telling the truth appear to be morally neutral acts, and whether they are good or bad depends entirely on the circumstances involved–on the intent, and on the effect of it. If you’re lying or telling the truth in order to be kind, to be compassionate, to help, to protect, then that’s good. But if you’re lying or telling the truth in order to be spiteful, malicious, to hurt, or just in an act of indifference to another’s suffering, then that’s bad.But there is no inherent moral value to honesty depicted in the text, really. 

Which…is a pretty fucking radical take if you think about it (particularly from a traditional Christian perspective, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic)? Like, even today, if someone came out with a work of fiction that explicitly spelled out that moral stance–that sometimes lying is good and telling the truth is bad actually, and being “honest” in that sense has no intrinsic moral value–like…I feel like that would be a pretty big deal. Like, lying might be framed as a “lesser, necessary evil”, but hardly ever as an actual act of goodness and heroism. Les Mis only really doesn’t get attention for that because Hugo doesn’t really spell it out, he just shows it in the text, and so I genuinely don’t think most people even notice what a pretty radical stance on honesty and morally he’s taking. (And really, I don’t even know if Hugo was aware of what kind of picture he was painting in that regard, but I also don’t really care–that’s the text we have, so that’s what matters)

I left after a couple months, I stayed just long enough to see that they explicitly believe women are inferior to men, and of course, that homosexuality is a sin on par with murder.

The whole missionary door to door thing is NOT how Jehovah's Witnesses recruit. That is how they convince their members that the world is out to get them. One of the first things they teach is that Jesus requires you to try to convert non Christians to the faith. (They say non Christian but mean non JW.)

Then they say, "look how people treat us, just for the crime of wanting to save their soul"

They have long time church members tutor the incoming members to smooth the process over. They're trained to smooth away any doubts you may have about the church.