What honesty and being honest entails

In this article, I intend to argue that being honest and dishonest constitutes an enduring dilemma, which continues to challenge the human spirit, and always has. It is my postulate that honesty and dishonesty are equally appealing to the human mind. The uncultivated, undisciplined mind. Everyone can learn to become disciplined about honesty, in which event being dishonest may be associated with discomfort or even anger. However, the child, the adolescent, and even the adult – if left unchecked – may as easily choose honesty as dishonesty.

Why honesty appeals to us

Honesty is a basic attribute, which makes human relationship smooth and meaningful. If I ask someone a question, I count on her to give me an honest answer; therefore I can immediately focus my attention on the merits of what she has said, without needing to be concerned whether or not she is telling the truth. This applies not only in close relationships, but to some degree amongst strangers as well. If I ask someone, “What time is it?” or “Where is the nearest taxi stop?” I depend on them to tell me the truth. Barring any unusual warning signs, I will uncritically take their reply at face value. Without such basic trust, society would be dysfunctional.

Aside from its obvious practical importance, honesty is also associated with pride and certain romantic notions of grandness. From early on, as expressed forcefully in Plato’s masterpiece The Apology, men of moral character have been expected to tell the truth even if it comes at a cost. In Socrates’ case, he eloquently delivered the plain truth well knowing that it would not be conducive to having the establishment spare his life.

We may not always be aware of the immense importance honesty plays for the workings of society, family, and other inter-human relationships. The grander the task, the more essential honesty becomes. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” is the oath administered in courtrooms around the world. Some people can and do lie on the witness stand, but they do so under the threat of committing perjury – alas, they have been duly warned that society considers truthfulness inside the courtroom to be a citizen’s duty.

Families, business relationships, and various joint ventures cannot function well without honesty at all levels. A family plagued by dishonesty or deception is likely to malfunction and may ultimately break up. A business organization plagued by corruption, lack of transparency, or nepotism will never be able to reach its full potential, since problems are hidden rather than being solved, whereas the workers must operate in a demoralizing atmosphere of mistrust. A complex mission, like an expedition to climb the Himalayas, is more likely to fail if the contractors are corrupt and dishonest – “Go ahead, folks, you can make it, the weather up there isn’t nearly as bad as it looks!”

Why dishonesty appeals to us

Convenience is the main reason that being dishonest tends to appeal to people in rather many situations. The term “white lies” and the widespread popularity of this practice is only the tip of the iceberg as far as human dishonesty is concerned. If A asks, “Do you like my new sweater?” and B doesn’t actually like it but does not want to disappoint A, then B may reasonably say: “It is very nice!” Such white lies are an integral part of daily interaction between people, and it would seem that they are tolerated to the extent that using them is not considered a threat against fundamental trust between people.

Honesty is not an all-or-nothing proposition, rather it is scalable. By telling only part of the truth, or by cleverly bending one’s statement so as to be technically truthful but essentially deceptive, a person can protect their self-interests and be “honest” at the same time. Such strategic games are a much more prevalent part of human interactions than we may realize. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we tend to not just burst out “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Rather, we tend to strategically and in a self-serving fashion decide exactly how much we want to reveal, when we want to reveal or withhold something, and how to mint our words so as to put ourselves in the most favorable light or to give us the strategic advantages that we desire.

Even people who are habitually honest may lie occasionally to protect vested interests. We cannot ignore the fact that being truthful may come at a steep price in some situations. A man who confesses to a serious crime most likely will go to prison. A woman who admits to having had a secret love affair may well lose her husband; these things do happen. If the man does not confess, he may go free if no other overwhelming incriminating evidence exists. If the woman lies about why she didn’t come home on time, her husband may decide to believe her and still be around for them to grow old together.

Honest or dishonest – an intriguing dilemma

So what is best: Honesty or dishonesty? Should one walk the path of Socrates and tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” even if it means humiliating defeat, getting fired, losing a spouse, going to prison, or maybe even death? Should one seek to be honest about 90 percent of the time? Or should one navigate the waters of human culture like a shrewd shark, taking whatever position is most advantageous under the circumstances?

Most folks consider themselves honest people who have been so unfortunate to meet a good deal of dishonesty and dishonest people. Do you see the problem with that? If most people were honest almost all of the time, as they indeed believe to be the case, then most people would have encountered dishonesty only sporadically. In fact, most people encounter dishonesty regularly. Therefore, it must be logically true that we tend to rate ourselves as being more honest than other people tend to think that we are. Put differently, we may be blind to our own dishonesty, or we may tend to sugarcoat it and minimize its significance.

In addition to the black-and-white issues of honesty and dishonesty, there is a whole buffet of behaviors that border on untruthfulness.

It is possible to be untruthful without being dishonest. We all must answer as best we are capable, and sometimes we end up telling untruths without realizing it, simply because we did not get our facts straight or hadn’t quite understood the complexity of a situation. That isn’t lying. Deliberately telling the untruth, or purporting to know the truth when in fact one does not know it, is what constitutes dishonesty.

A person who repeatedly makes unrealistic promises may reasonably be called a liar, at least if the matter has previously been brought to his attention.

Lying, deception, and untruthfulness isn’t always associated with something even remotely negative; there are times when we endorse, indeed expect it. Fiction is like that, we literally pay good money to get lied to, led astray, deceived by a clever author who has the ability to outwit us time and time again. Some people will happily give their credit card details to a psychic reader well knowing that there is only a 50-50 chance of it yielding anything useful. We half expect politicians to lie to us in their acceptance speeches, when they talk about bipartisanship.

In conclusion, I think it fair to say that we humans may not always be so truthful and truth-loving as we would like to believe. Honesty has its allure, as does dishonesty, as they appeal to different faculties. Thus, being truthful or not represents an enduring dilemma and a real challenge for the human character and our raw intellect.