Honesty
Honesty is a difficult thing to define clearly. If you ask someone a question when you know that answer is "yes", but they tell you "no", that's clearly dishonesty. But the world is complicated. In some circumstances the lie can be simple while the truth complex, and it can also be the reverse, so they can be difficult to tell apart. We learn from our cultural upbringings that lying is often called for, for the sake of polite society. How can a person strive to be honest?
Well, like most things, I really have no idea, but that's never stopped me from writing. Here's my guess: truth is scattered. We all have a small slice of perspective on the reality we inhabit, in time and space. We don't know truth; we only know the tiny portion we experience. Everyone experiences a different slice. Everyone brings their own biases and distortions in their interpretation and understanding of their slice.
Perhaps wisdom is the ability of an individual to truly understand their tiny reality without letting their biases interfere, and to see clearly how it affects the realities of others. This is distinct from honesty. We should seek to be wise, but that really only comes with experience, and we need to be honest in the meantime.
What matters is that we use our limited and imperfect understanding of our tiny reality on which to base our sense of identity. We assimilate it to aid us in decision-making, in how we interpret and act on our emotions, and in our relationships with others.
I'm not a psychologist, and I know nothing about any of this, but I believe the surest indication of possible deception is not when a person tells a flat-out lie to get something they want, or avoid something they fear. It is when a person is inconsistent in applying their internalized sense of reality to the world around them. It is when the emotions on a person's face don't match their words. When actions don't match lip service. I would guess that these are indications of inner conflict, which might not necessarily indicate deceit.
So how to practice being honest? Know that we are all, each of us, full of crap. Know that you are full of crap, so take care not to hurt anyone. Try to become less full of crap as time goes on. Above all: strive to be consistent in how you apply your own personal crap to the world around you.
Well, like most things, I really have no idea, but that's never stopped me from writing. Here's my guess: truth is scattered. We all have a small slice of perspective on the reality we inhabit, in time and space. We don't know truth; we only know the tiny portion we experience. Everyone experiences a different slice. Everyone brings their own biases and distortions in their interpretation and understanding of their slice.
Perhaps wisdom is the ability of an individual to truly understand their tiny reality without letting their biases interfere, and to see clearly how it affects the realities of others. This is distinct from honesty. We should seek to be wise, but that really only comes with experience, and we need to be honest in the meantime.
What matters is that we use our limited and imperfect understanding of our tiny reality on which to base our sense of identity. We assimilate it to aid us in decision-making, in how we interpret and act on our emotions, and in our relationships with others.
I'm not a psychologist, and I know nothing about any of this, but I believe the surest indication of possible deception is not when a person tells a flat-out lie to get something they want, or avoid something they fear. It is when a person is inconsistent in applying their internalized sense of reality to the world around them. It is when the emotions on a person's face don't match their words. When actions don't match lip service. I would guess that these are indications of inner conflict, which might not necessarily indicate deceit.
So how to practice being honest? Know that we are all, each of us, full of crap. Know that you are full of crap, so take care not to hurt anyone. Try to become less full of crap as time goes on. Above all: strive to be consistent in how you apply your own personal crap to the world around you.