Abstract:
This paper is about the virtue of honesty what it means, what makes an honest person different from a dishonest person. Lying is almost inevitable, sometimes you have to lie to avoid the conflict, sometimes to avoid the embarrassment, sometimes it is revenge or a negative emotion that compels a person to lie. Two extreme cases are discussed in this paper: one when a person lies for no clear reason only the excitement or thrill of cheating others makes a person lie again and again and the opposite extreme of this is the person who cannot lie at all. There are certain advantages attached to being honest both on individual and collective level. On the last this paper discusses how a community benefits from this virtue and what it should do to encourage it.
Introduction:
Honesty is the act of being truthful and straightforward in all your dealings and conduct, to be fair and transparent. Hiding nothing from others is good for the conscience of a person as he becomes confident and relaxed, he doesn’t have to watch for each and every word that comes out of his mouth. An honest person has many advantages to his side he gains the trust and respect from others. Honesty like other traits of personality is developed over the period of time. We unconsciously learn to be open and honest or deceitful since our childhood. As a child we observe our elders and role models and their actions become our learning. If as a child we saw that our elder sibling lied with parents and got away with it then we start practicing the same and if we found the same results, we are forced to think that by lying we got away which otherwise we would not have, and also the fear of losing other person’s liking for us develops our habit of lying. As a human being staying in the good books matters more for us than being honest and truthful we don’t realize then that we risk our integrity and much more by not being honest here. If others reject you because you are honest, then you never had their love in the first place. Sometimes the reason behind lying is the lack of knowledge; you try to cover up the fact that you do not know something. Also little exaggerations in truth count as dishonesty, people feel good when they boast about something as they probably do not have that many skills (Fowers, 2005).
Perhaps the most important kind of honesty is being honest to your own self. Some people lie so much that they actually start believing their lies, if you say something to yourself repeatedly then there will be a moment when you start believing it. At times we know something and our mind is just not able to accept the reality as it is harsh and we prefer living in our bubble. People who are less honest to themselves are more prone to deceive others. If someone is the same inside out then he/she finds it difficult to lie to others as the mind is constantly voicing the reality. Dishonesty, above anything else, stops us from being the kind of persons we can and want to be. It’s like a disease like cancer. It begins small, and if not detected and totally removed, it spreads out of control until it completely destroys us (Thompson, 2004).
William James wrote that we create our own hell in this world. He said we do it "by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way." (James, 1950, p. 127). Lewis Andrews, a contemporary psychologist, agrees with James. In his 1989 book To Thine Own Self Be True, he explains his theory that dishonest behavior is at the root of most of our psychological problems. He suggest that we take "a serious look at the relationship between one’s values and one’s health." (Andrews, 1989). Dishonesty is costly. These are some of the effects it can have on us. Scholars’ use the term of ‘cognitive dissonance’ to describe how we Homo-sapiens are able to justify our dishonesty to ourselves in some areas of life which we think are unimportant. Dan Ariely in his beautifully framed book, The truth about Dishonesty, gives us a clear advocacy of the fact that how ‘’we're able to believe we're honest even though we lie or cheat by doing so only in little ways. We're therefore able to tell ourselves we're mostly honest—that is, we're only dishonest in ways that we think don't matter’’
Relationship of Honesty to Human Good:
There are benefits of stating the truth and being honest, these benefits definitely contribute to the greater good of the humanity and self:
- Internal Satisfaction: By being honest one makes sure that he/she is free from all the burdens of guilt and remorse. When an honest person looks back in his past he does not feel any desire to relive the past and do things in an appropriate way as his/her actions at that time were already up to the mark. This internal satisfaction is shown in all his dealings, he leads a positive life.
- Character and Reputation: Honesty does pay off in establishing the credibility of a person. An honest person’s verdict is always seriously taken. This practice gives a signal to the society that good traits are highly rewarded. This immensely important and not-so-myopic advantage can deliberately be used to incentivize the masses in order to make to them practice honesty as an integral part of their personality. This can work the other way round as it givesthe crime of dishonestly a much needed attraction which is a mutual aspect of every possible ill-practice that exists within a society.
- Relationships: If one thing we can be sure of is that a truthful person fosters strong relationships because he builds them on trust which is the building block of all relationships. Healthy relationship means a happy life and constructive contribution towards shaping a better society. The myopic approach that we often look forward to is that lies and dishonesty will save us time and in most of the cases save us from painful consequences of the ill crimes we may have committed but we completely ignore the disastrous long-term harms we will have to face because these immoral practices.
- Totality: Carl Jung said that our deepest desire is for "wholeness." A human being can reach his potential when he is complete from inside and that comes from the high self-esteem, when you feel that are worthy and this feeling comes from integrity. When you’re in a business deal or a moral contract with another community member, transparency is of immense important for mutual benefit because certain actions made in absentia of purposefully hidden information can cause conversion of affability between the stakeholders into envious intentions from both sides.
- Health: dishonesty is the root to many psychological problems and thus it deteriorates the health. Honesty contributes positively in making a person healthy by improving the mental health. Is self-satisfaction everything we need? No. There are some elements that we need to justify to the rest of the community as well. Dishonest social interaction leads to a lot of other physical harms such as certain immensely fatal anxiety state(s).
Structure of Honesty
Some people lie out of habit some due to the pressure of the situation and some people lie for no clear reason they are called pathological liars. The last type lies repeatedly and excessively although there is no benefit for them or there are more harms than giveaways here but still they would lie. For example there is a person who would lie that he could not attend the meeting because he has a flight later that day but as the meeting starts he would stay in the office and later he would say that the flight got cancelled. There is one excuse after another people around them can recognize the pattern. Pathological liars might not have any benefit coming out of this practice but there surely is some excitement for them, they derive some sort of internal satisfaction from this (LaFollette, 1996). The figurative reason behind these pathological liars is simple, they are not voluntarily involved in the process of lying frequently but their brain has set some behavioral set-backs which defines their comfort zone of carrying out certain tasks in an apprehensive manner satisfying them internally for any dishonesty they practice in their mundane routine. ‘We often lie to avoid expending energy or time doing something we really don't want to do (going out with a friend we find boring, attending a party we know we won't enjoy, working on a project about which we're not really enthused) but don't feel comfortable admitting’- Dan Ariele. The extreme opposites of pathological liars are straight shooters who are incapable of lying at all. They perceive that others are as honest as those Researchers have found that brain composition of liars is slightly different from a typical brain. The Prefrontal Cortexes of frequent liars are different; they have 22 percent more white matter and 14 percent less grey matter than an average brain. The grey matter is responsible for the impulse control. People with more white matter can manipulate words and information in a way that others can’t.
Dishonesty is a vicious cycle, one act of forgery or deceit leads to another because the temptation is so great that you find it hard to resist especially if you are good at getting away with it. Once you do get away with it your brain sets a precedent that you have done it once and you can do it again getting away with it safe and clean. There are ways in which one can protect oneself from being deceived, there are some non-verbal cues. For example the face expression of the person lying can show struggle with the what he is saying, sometimes a liar fails to meet the eyes of the person to whom he is lying also there is a vibe of tension and impurity around the person lying, if we pay close attention to our speaker then we can actually identify one. A liar unconsciously increases the distance from the listener by leaning back or stepping back, there may be no coherence in his speech contents. Similarly, a liar may make a lot of unnecessary hand movements in order to justify/defend whatever he/she is saying. Nonverbal cues hold much more importance as compared to verbal communication because when you meet someone it’s the body language that gets noticed first and then conversation starts. There is a circle of control and a circle of no control, no matter how much a person is canny there is always a pragmatic and conspicuous change in behavior or body language. For example if the head of sales department is making presentation by looking in the eye of the sales force that the company recognizes the importance of the task they are doing and plans to reward them for their efforts through competitive salary and bonus package then the salesforce will automatically believe the HOD even before they are rewarded they start putting extra efforts to get the same rewards for next year as well. On the other hand if he were speaking to his salesforce while looking at the floor or changing his statement every now and then then his subordinates would have immediately sensed that something is wrong and our efforts are never going to be recognized let alone rewarded, we are just value generation machine for the company.
Honesty and Community:
It’s not only the corrupt politicians, criminals and scoundrels who are untrustworthy, from the above text we have established an understanding that how an average person can be immoral or liar. A community is composed largely of these average people who lie on regular basis. Relationship between honesty and community is a simple one. If members of the community are honest, decent and fair the whole community will benefit, trade will flourish. People will start trusting each other. When a community as a whole starts acting responsibly then it gives a positive image about itself to the world. People from different communities become interested in building relationship with this community. Some scholar relates this mechanism as the ‘law of attraction’ in most of the cases. Besides becoming economically sound people living in that community are mentally and physically sound. They know how to foster long term relationships (Blanton, 1996).
The sense of fair ‘contract’ with the achievement or the assigned task is essential in order the society wants to realize the importance of honestly in the first place. A community should encourage this practice by imposing rules and punishment for dishonest means, when one person uses unreliable ways to reach his goal then others are tempted to follow the same by justifying it with the thought that this was necessary to achieve it. For example a person waiting on the red signal sees another person breaking it will also be tempted to do the same and eventually the whole group of people standing and waiting there will follow the lead as they will think that if others can do it and save the time so should we. In such instances people not cheating and driving through the red signal will start feeling stupid as others saved their time. This collective fraud is what a community should discourage. The person who is dishonest would often find himself in a mess and in an aura of cantankerous behavior hampering his efforts for being proactive in his life and taking control over his life. People should be raised on values and principles that they have to raise their voice against cheating and fraud instead of ending up being part of it. Which brings this debate to a very important question; Are values and principles important for a healthy society? Why and what does an individual owes to fellow community members and to society as whole?
Starting this answer with an analogy, why do we pay taxes? Probably because we have a responsibility towards our govt. for catering our rights; same principle goes for why an individual needs to uphold some moral imperatives towards the society. Community is like a corporation in order to be strong it needs to be strengthened by beliefs of individuals running it. Society should also encourage this virtue by incentivizing the people who are being honest so that others feel motivated to follow their footsteps. For example a company rewarding an employee with some extra mileage for reporting the expenses of the trip exactly they are with complete honesty and not making any unnecessary luxury expenditures. The benefit ultimately go the community by fostering honesty as less vigilance will be required, corruption and crime rate will fall. The best example of a dishonest country is Italy, being famous for theft, tourists have to be very vigilant, there are artists who are con mans, they will thrust anything in your hand and then they will ask you to pay for it. Foreigners think twice before roaming at night in the alleys of Italy, too often people get mugged or pick pocketed. Sometimes such experiences turn out to be so bitter that one decides never to visit such place again this hampers the reputation of the country and affects its tourism. Had this not be the situation, tourists would be able to enjoy their stay and get completely relaxed during their tours. What needs to be done is cognitive experts need to devise solution to the problem of spatial flaws or differences between a normal brain and a lairs brain. Lairs are not volunteers of this socially unacceptable action but they are helpless in most of the cases as described above. Lastly, ‘normal’ people should focus on their understanding and impact of dishonesty upon themselves and the people around them in order to eliminate it completely.
References
Andrews, L. (1989). To thine own self be true. New York: Doubleday.
Blanton, B. (1996). Radical honesty. New York: Dell Pub.
Fowers, B. (2005). Virtue and psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
James, W. (1950). The principles of psychology. [New York]: Dover Publications.
LaFollette, H. (1996). Personal relationships. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Thompson, M. (2004). The ethic of honesty. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
