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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