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Reader Sara sent me a link to this article, which, despite the title (“I Think You’re Fat”), has absolutely nothing to do with weight or health. Instead, it’s about a movement called Radical Honesty. I’ll quote the article:
The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough — a world without fibs — but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you’re having fantasies about your wife’s sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It’s the only path to authentic relationships. It’s the only way to smash through modernity’s soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.
Now, in one way, this makes a lot of sense, to me. I’ve always valued honesty above almost everything – not just honesty to others, but to oneself –, and I’ve always thought that lying was a kind of cowardice: if you’re not afraid of the truth / reality, you don’t lie. I also enjoyed that the author of the movement, himself, doesn’t turn it into a religion-like absolute “commandment”, and uses a popular example to show what he means:
“I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie.”
However, the examples used by both Blanton and the article writer are, for the most part… how shall I put it? It seems that, to them, being honest amounts to simply being a jerk, and only lying prevents them from acting like complete assholes all the time.
Tangent: this reminds me of a common claim by religious believers: that non-believers are inherently immoral because, without belief in a god, there’s no reason for one to be moral. I find this both offensive and revealing: what they mean is that they see no reason to be moral, except for the desire of heaven or fear of hell. To them, without fear of God, we’d all be lying, cheating, raping, pillaging and killing each other. Maybe that’s what they’d do. The fact that other people are not like that is unthinkable to them. (Note: I’m not claiming that all believers are like this; in fact, many of them – probably the majority — find this argument as offensive and stupid as I do).
This is similar; both the author and Blanton seem to be implying, at least from their examples, that we’re all self-centered, self-absorbed, thoroughly unpleasant jerks, and only by lying can we act “nice” from time to time.
Can I be the only one to think that, you know, maybe, somehow, we can once in a while be genuinely nice?
One example the author gives is when an older man who had just lost his wife sent him some poems and asked him for his opinion. The author found the poems boring and below average, but didn’t have the heart to tell the old man so, and lied (“they’re very good, you should think about getting them published”). Yes, that was dishonest, though understandable. But are there really no alternatives other than to tell him “your poems suck, don’t quit your day job”?
What about telling him – honestly – what was wrong (and right) with the poems? How he should try to improve his writing? Suggest some classic examples for him to read? Tell him which part you thought was more promising? You know, actually be helpful without being either rude or patronizing? Maybe I’m weird, but that’s what I’d do (unless I really didn’t care about that person, but it’s obvious that the author did).
Or maybe I’m being naïve. Maybe brutal and complete honesty would turn most people into unbearable jerks. Maybe it’s only the constant white lies that allow people to live and function in society without either isolating themselves or getting at others’ throats all the time. But I still don’t think that’s the case, at least with most people.
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Tags: Honesty
Oh Pedro, I fully agree with you, the writer is simply rude. In fact, a friend of mine posted this on a social network website and I said the same thing. see my replies below:
–start replies
I actually tend to be brutally honest with those close to me, I just try to say things in the nicest possible way. At the end of the day, I suppose they appreciate me, because they know I am trying to be fair. Then again, I am brutally honest with/ about myself as well, which not many people are willing to do.
But my bf enjoys it, in fact, quite early in the relationship he said he trusted me, cos I don’t tend to lie; I hate lying, either big lies or white lies, it takes energy which I feel is ill spent. And it takes getting used to, my bf sometimes would swallow hard and say, “right, let me just digest that” – I tend to be too blunt sometimes, I have been working on choosing my words more carefully
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but the guy in the article was a bit of a tosser. one does not have to be rude to be honest… he was behaving like a spoiled child, not like an honest person.
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I thought he came across as confrontational. He probably lies a lot cos he’s unable to face up to people, so he went about doing what he didn’t have the balls to do in his regular day-to-day life. like for eg. when his parents-in-law came for dinner and he behaved like a twat. the more i remember, the more i think of him as a twat. like when he had the meeting with the lady and bluntly told her he’d been looking down her top. bleedin’ hell, did he need to? if he’d explained he’d always found her attractive and as he was going through a period where he did not hold back the truth, he felt he ought to tell her that, would’ve been much more polite, no? perhaps awkward, yes, but not rude.
i hate rude ppl :p
– end replies
I feel that one does not need to be rude to be honest, but I do agree with the movement. If everyone were to be honest with themselves and others, we would probably be less insecure all in all, which would lead to better social skills and harmony between people. We would need to learn how to argue with people, how to accept criticism and invite change, how to be less judgmental – as in, we would learn to accept other people’s choices and not be upset by them, regardless of what they would be – and last, but not least, we would need to take a hard look at ourselves and acknowledge how we really are, rather than seeing ourselves as we’d rather be or presume to be. I think that actually, for most people, that would be the hardest thing to achieve.
So, Pedro, ignoring the writer who was a complete and utter tosser, what do you think of the movement?
Well, I see it as having two separate parts: “don’t lie, even white lies”, and “share everything that comes to your mind”.
I agree with the first part, and I think that, with a few unavoidable exceptions, I already follow it, at least more than most people around me. I don’t pretend to like what I like, or to approve an idea (even from a boss) I find dumb. I never faked non-existent feelings in order to get laid. And I always try to be honest with myself and others, even when the truth is uncomfortable.
As for the second part… there’s something to be said for it, but I think it’d work mostly when dealing with other people who were following it as well. I don’t know how much the “real world” would be able to handle it. It’s food for thought.
I think white lies are needed to keep the society from falling apart. Imagine if, when asked by your boss if you would mind doing some paperwork, you answered “yes I would”. Or, if you’re tired and a pregnant woman asks you if you would mind giving her your seat… This are probably not the best examples, but I think you can see my point.
However, sometimes, the effort to be nice to others is overdone and you get in situations where both parties are just saying “whatever you prefer” and both end up doing stuff that none would choose in the first place. That’s just plain stupid and those are, in my opinion, the situations where honesty is definitely needed.
So I think we should, most of all, try and feel at ease with people we do care about and also make them fell at ease with us, that way we can all be comfortable at being true to the ones that really do deserve our honesty, not worrying if the other will misinterpret what we said.
In reality, if everyone would tell the truth, then people would be expecting to receive a negative reply to their requests and would not be taken aback…
If that were true then no one would even bother to ask, it would be an anarchy
Not really, no, people would just have to be prepared to hear a no from others from time to time. Still just because anyone would confess to the truth, that yes they would mind, it wouldn’t mean they wouldn’t do it, they would just be able to express their opinion freely without fearing the consequence of getting sacked.
For that to be possible it would have to be generally accepted by the whole society. It’s a bit utopic, but I do agree it would be nice and freeing
Maybe I’m looking at it from a different angle, but I don’t equate saying “yes, I’d mind” to a “do you mind doing…?” question with a negative answer. If my boss asks me to do something boring but necessary, the truthful answer is “I don’t feel like doing it, but I’ll do it anyway, since it’s my job”. I don’t even see a potential for conflict here.
A different matter is when the employee doesn’t think it should be done, as it’s a bad idea, but the pointy-haired boss, in his incredibly dubious wisdom, has asked for it. I’d tell him my reservations about doing that, but if he didn’t change his mind, I’d do it anyway, again, assuming that it’s a part of my job. If it was something potentially company-destroying (you can’t imagine the things I’ve been asked to do in some of my past jobs), I’d demand his order in writing. And if it was something illegal (such as sending mass spam to non-customers), I’d simply refuse.
So, you see, I’m already honest. Not “radically” honest, though; I’ve never told a boss how incompetent he was, and some of them in the past really deserved it…