Why is it so hard to be totally honest?

Highlights from our meeting on 04/02/03

1. Someone wrote a book suggesting that if everyone were totally honest all the time, it would solve many of the world's problems.
2. The premise is that not being totally honest causes isolation and alienation in relationships.
3. Does that mean that if you think someone has big ears, you should just say so?
4. Not speaking the truth can perpetuate some problems.
5. What is the relationship between truth and honesty?
6. Isn't honesty just your particular truth as you see it in the moment?
7. If you believe what you are saying in the moment, then you are being honest, even if you later decide that you were mistaken in your belief.
8. Dishonesty then involves the intent to deceive.
9. Is it always wrong to be dishonest?
10. Can one be dishonest for compassionate reasons?
11. A doctor might lie to his patient about the seriousness of her condition out of concern that the truth might cause live-threatening depression.
12. Does honesty require courage?
13. In the story "The Emperor's New Clothes" it was a child that was able to be totally honest.
14. Was that courage or naivete on the part of the child?
15. Is the inclination or ability to not being totally honest something we learn as we grow up?
16. Does this "skill" in hiding our truth serve a useful purpose?
17. Is this ability uniquely human?
18. It has been reported that Koko, the gorilla who was taught sign language, has been caught lying on occasion.
19. Perhaps Koko learned to lie from his human teachers.
20. Is lying something that was introduced to the world with the introduction of language?
21. Why would lying become wide spread unless there were some rewards in lying?
22. What are the rewards of lying?
23. In our culture, it seems that material success is in part tied to the willingness to be dishonest, or at least, to not being totally honest.
24. It is an almost universal practice to price items as "something 99" or "something 95" to make them seems less expensive than they really are.
25. If car dealers and others would disclose their true costs and profit margins, it would be easier for customers to evaluate if they were getting a fair deal.
26. Competition may be a primary motivation for not being totally honest.
27. If I were to practice full disclosure, it would put me at a competitive disadvantage with my competitors.
28. An extreme example of this would be lying to a mortal enemy, as in the time of war.
29. This would support the notion that dishonesty creates and maintains distance and alienation in a relationship.
30. Hiding the truth, then, can be useful in maintaining distance or boundaries in cases where such separation might have survival value.
31. So it seems, honesty can promote and strengthen desired relationships and dishonesty can protect against dangerous relationships.
32. But isn't dishonesty, in part, also the cause of dangerous relationships?
33. Also, don't we sometimes use dishonesty to initiate desired relationships?
34. If we want to be "in with the in-crowd", don't we often pretend to be what we are not?
35. Isn't personality just a false front that hides our true essence?
36. In some social environments, isn't it honesty rather than dishonesty that will cause alienation?
37. Announcing to a dogmatic minister in church full of intolerant believers that you think his concept of God is a bunch of hooey, will cause you to become alienated very quickly.
38. But in this example, aren't you already feeling isolated inside from this group, whether or not you express your truth out loud?
39. Could you ever truly feel accepted in a group unless you could be openly honest about who you are, how you feel, and what you think?
40. We can't always choose our environment.
41. It would seem that in some environments, if you are the only one who is totally honest, you will be eaten alive.
42. Are some environments more conducive to total honesty than others?
43. Environments that are not judgmental seem to be more conducive to total honesty.
44. Growing up in a dysfunctional family can teach a child the value of hiding feelings and thoughts.
45. Being dependent on an environment that is judgmental puts the child in a bind.
46. If love is conditional, then the child must compromise honesty in order to not lose love.
47. Unconditional love, then, might be a prerequisite for total honesty.
48. Some individuals have a kind of mental disorder that renders them incapable of practicing honesty.
49. Are these the individuals we call "pathological liars"?
50. Perhaps there is a certain fraction of the population that has such a medical condition, for whom even the most loving environment could not have made a difference.
51. Perhaps the rest of us can find hope in learning to recognize and adopting more and more loving/healthy environments for ourselves.
52. Don't we have a bit of a "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" problem here?
53. How do these "honesty-ready" environments come into being?
54. In order to have safe, honesty-ready environments, don't some individuals have to practice bold honesty even in the face of adversity?