The Case for Honesty
What is there to tie to but truth? Nothing. If we do not adhere to that, we are done for—not that I don’t sympathize with those who say the truth can’t be known.
—MAXWELL PERKINS
Tolerating deception is fashionable. Advocating honesty is not. Standing foursquare for truth telling seems quaint, anachronistic, naive. Let’s do so anyway. Let’s make the case for honesty. The peculiar sound of that sentence (does honesty need to have a case made for it?) suggests the precarious state of truthfulness during our post-truth era. Odd as it may seem that honesty should have to be defended, it must be—on pragmatic as much as on ethical grounds.
The case for honesty being the best policy must hold more water than “because it’s right.” This calls for less concern about questions like What is truth? or Is lying always bad? and more about ones such as What’s the best way to ensure my credibility? How can I sustain my self-regard? and, most important, How can we all live together with some semblance of trust?
The less face-to-face involvement we have with each other, the greater is our need for honesty. As direct contact with others declines and technology serves as a go-between, society needs more emphasis on truth telling, not less. One could accept every postmodern point about the elusiveness of truth (and even add some), yet still conclude that the attempt to be truthful is not only noble but essential for human well-being. What’s the alternative? If we reach the conclusion that honesty is unnecessary because unattainable, with what do we replace it? Like Winston Churchill’s democracy, the pursuit of honesty may be quixotic, but it’s better than any alternative.
Historically Western society has shifted back and forth between tolerance and intolerance of lying. Today it has shifted too far toward the former. We need to move the needle back, at least to the center. This is not a categorical imperative so much as a matter of balance. With so many voices weighing in on behalf of deception during the post-truth era, counterweights of honesty are more necessary than ever. At the very least we need to reestablish that truth telling is our default setting, that honesty is assumed behavior, if not guaranteed. Truthfulness should always be the default, lies told with the greatest reluctance. Fib, sure, but only when unavoidable. Some won’t swallow so much as a Tylenol without first asking, Is this really necessary? Can I get along without it? The same criterion should be applied to lie telling. We need to be more picky when deciding which lies to tell. Sissela Bok thinks any lie should be given “negative weight” when deciding whether to tell it. Unlike truth telling, which almost never needs justification, lies should be told only when there’s a compelling reason to do so. “Mild as this initial stipulation sounds,” concludes Bok, “it would, if taken seriously, eliminate a great many lies told out of carelessness or habit or unexamined good intentions.”
Post-ethics honesty is analogous to trying to eat more sensibly. We may do so for the most part, but perhaps not as regularly as we might wish and with occasional lapses into banana splits and crème brûlées. These lapses may leave our silhouette less svelte than we’d like, and our eating habits less healthy, but we keep trying, and hope to succeed more often than not. The odd lie no more makes one a chronic liar than diet lapses lead to obesity. They are just that: lapses. Nutritional backsliding leaves us feeling too heavy, just as occasional lying leaves us feeling too flaccid spiritually, but we muddle through and keep trying.
Concluding that an activity is wrong doesn’t mean we won’t engage in it. We are human. There are times when we just can’t deal with the consequences of telling the truth. But does it follow that because everyone engages in an activity at times it must be okay? That conclusion opens an ethical can of worms. Should shoplifting be condoned because so many teenagers use it as a rite of passage? Should rolling through Stop signs be legalized because it’s such a common practice? Should we eliminate speed limits because they’re routinely exceeded?
Even if we accept lying as inevitable now and again, it needn’t follow that society should develop a deception-condoning moral code. Recognizing that dishonesty happens is not the same thing as deciding it’s acceptable. Concluding that lies can sometimes be hard to avoid is not synonymous with concluding that they’re routinely unavoidable. My concern is less about lying per se than about casual lying, recreational lying, self-deluded lies, and lies of convenience that are told when truth telling would work better in the long run. Recall the many studies in which subjects lied so routinely that they weren’t even conscious of doing so. Post-ethics honesty means being mindful when telling a lie, and striving to minimize those events. Once we eliminate offhand lies, unthinking
lies, lazy lies, and unnecessarily self-serving lies, the answer to the question When should one lie? becomes Not very often.
It’s hard to improve on H. L. Mencken’s credo: “I believe it is better to tell the truth than to lie.” Note that this credo does not say one should never lie; simply that it’s better to tell the truth. Isn’t that what we all do? one might ask. As we’ve seen throughout this book, not necessarily. That is why there is so much need to reaffirm our commitment to honesty. This means continually reaffirming that lying is wrong, we know it’s wrong, even though it is sometimes a lesser evil. There’s something to be said for a bit of inconsistency on this issue. By that I mean making a clear commitment to truth telling without expecting everyone always to be truthful. Establishing a moral standard does not assume that everyone will adhere to this standard in every instance, or that anyone who doesn’t should be severely punished. The essence of maturity is to accept ambiguity, including moral ambiguity. That’s not the same thing as saying that because everyone lies, lying’s okay. Rather, it is saying that the fact that we all lie doesn’t make it right. There’s a difference.
This is a judgmental position, to be sure. But perhaps we need more judgment on this issue. One reason we’ve lost our way in the ethical woods is that we’ve adopted such an accepting, nonjudgmental stance in which no one is held accountable for being dishonest, or for much of anything. Along the way we’ve become too concerned with our emotional well-being, not enough with our ethical well-being.
Some take the opposite tack. Lies are as common as the common cold, they argue, so we should simply learn to live with them as we have learned to live with rhinoviruses. According to this school of thought, anything that’s such a routine part of social discourse can hardly be called wrong. Speaking for many, philosopher
David Nyberg has suggested that honesty is “morally overrated,” and that deception is “an essential component of our ability to organize and shape the world.” Since we can never be fully honest all the time, those like Nyberg believe, it’s better to admit this, accept our tendency to deceive others, and stop being so concerned about this tendency. That way of thinking has led to the post-truth era. To many it improves on a time when lies were considered the devil’s work. Having determined that truth is hard to distinguish from untruth, and that lies can be benign, they conclude that maybe it’s not so bad to tell lies after all.
After we open the dikes of acceptable dishonesty, however, where do we close them? Once we say, “Lying’s not that big a deal. Everyone does it. Some lies are okay,” identifying criteria for acceptable lies becomes a daunting task.
Most attempts to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable lies are based on intent. From this perspective, one’s intentions when being dishonest are more important than the simple fact of having lied. Many lies are unavoidable. Others are benign. Some are even beneficial. We must make distinctions. That is the crux of this argument. It’s a hard one to contest. Of course all lies are not equal. Turning down a party invitation because you are “previously engaged” when you aren’t is an innocuous little fib. Saying “I played football in high school” when you didn’t does no harm to the lie’s recipient. But telling a sex partner “I’ve tested negative for HIV” when you’ve tested positive does lethal harm. Obviously some lies are worse than others. The problem comes when we try to pin down which is which, and how that can be determined. Honesty is easier to determine than intent. We’re far better able to ascertain when a lie has been told than why. If psychology has taught us
nothing else, it’s how mixed motives can be. Few can be cleaved cleanly into categories such as “benevolent” and “malevolent.”
One practical problem with those who advocate ethics based on intent, or situational factors, is that many such factors are at cross-purposes and, in any event, too complex for average minds (or even above average minds) to keep straight. A National Public Radio interviewer who listened to an “ethicist” ruminate for several minutes on the nuances of a moral dilemma finally asked for guidance that was “more intuitive.” That’s the virtue of Honesty is the best policy. This policy is easy to keep straight, even if it’s not always easy to honor. Saying “One shouldn’t lie” has greater clarity, utility, and moral force than saying “One shouldn’t lie except when _____.” The “except when” approach begs two important questions: (1) What are the whens? and (2) Who identifies them? The most important question in any attempt to judge lies by intentions is: Who decides? Who determines which lies are benign and which malignant? Gray areas abound. Consensus is nonexistent. (Recall the wide range of exemptions different religions have for lies told by the faithful.) There is no Truth Tribunal to whom one can appeal. Invariably it is the person doing the condoning who determines which lies pass muster, especially his or her own. Obviously, the simpler “don’t lie” approach leaves one susceptible to being simplistic. But a bit of oversimplification is preferable to a slippery quest for acceptable lying guidelines which leave too many doors open for casual dishonesty under the heading of Good Intentions.
How do we assess intent? Know it even? And even when we can, how do we achieve consensus on which intentions are good, which not so good? Those who endorse greater tolerance of dishonesty often point out how many lies are told for the sake of the lied-to. “An embroidering of the truth … ,” suggests private eye
Precious Ramotswe in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, “sometimes gingered people up a bit, and it was often for their own good.” Undoubtedly there are times when that’s true. It can also be a rationalization. When someone says of any act “This is for your own good,” it’s usually for his.
As Sissela Bok emphasizes in Lying, those who rationalize dishonesty usually do so from the perspective of the liar, not the lie’s target. The case for lying is more often made by those who dispense lies than by those who consume them. A candid assessment would show how many lies ostensibly told for the sake of the lied-to are actually told for the sake of the liar. Public servants who claim they’ve dissembled in the national interest invariably turn out to have dissembled in their own interest.
As a check on the serene belief in the purity of one’s motives when lying, Bok suggests putting those motives on the table for public scrutiny. Few of our reasons for being deceitful are as clear to others as they are to us. We rarely feel well served by being hoodwinked, no matter how well intended the hoodwinker may be. When wondering if a lie is justified, imagine that someone whom you’re about to deceive will discover this fact. Will she take it as evidence of your concern for her? There are far fewer such occasions than one might imagine.
Few this side of Immanuel Kant would argue that pure honesty is either possible or desirable. (I doubt that Kant himself really believed this.) A life without deception of any kind is inconceivable, the stuff of a Jim Carrey comedy. Unfettered truthfulness—what psychiatrist Willard Gaylin calls “truth dumping”—can be every bit as cruel as habitual lying. “That’s a hideous dress you’re wearing” is a completely unnecessary comment. So is “I find you far too boring a person to want to join you for dinner” or “Have you ever thought about getting rid of that ridiculous hairpiece?”
Like most, when asked “How are you?” I reflexively answer “Fine.” This is false at least as often as it’s true, but in general is easier to say and more considerate of the person who asks. At times, however, “Fine” is so blatant a lie that I can’t get this word out of my mouth. In such cases I say “So-so” or “Not so hot.” By the stricken look on my questioner’s face I can tell in an instant that this was the wrong answer. It’s also a rather thoughtless response on my part, a serious breach of social protocol.
Few want complete honesty from others without exception. Truth is a two-party proposition: one to tell, one to hear. It’s an article of faith among marriage counselors that those who suspect their spouse of being unfaithful don’t necessarily want to have this hunch confirmed. On a smaller scale, I’m grateful when someone who doesn’t like a meal I cooked chooses not to share that information with me. And—like those who ask me—when I ask others how they’re doing, most of the time I’d rather just be told “Fine,” even when that isn’t true. Such white lies serve the purposes of producer and consumer alike. But the color coding of lies isn’t always as clear to the receiver as it is to the deceiver. Your white lie may look beige to me, or even brown.
Lies are shortcuts. They simplify complex situations. When our kids ask us “Did you ever smoke marijuana?” it’s far easier to respond “No” than “Yes, but …” At the very least we may feel we simply don’t have time to tell the truth and deal with the consequences. Because clerks at megastores who give me too much change get befuddled (to say nothing of annoyed) when I try to give it back, I seldom do anymore. Even then I’m not sure that this bit of trivial dishonesty isn’t for my own convenience. The money involved matters less than the time and effort it would take to be scrupulously honest. So chalk up time pressure as one more source
of post-truthfulness, albeit one that’s probably a rationalization as often as it is a rationale.
This isn’t to say that little lies of convenience should never be told. But when telling them we should be clear about what we’re up to, and who benefits: us, usually. Saying they’re for someone else’s sake too often compounds dishonesty with self-deception. Seemingly compassionate white lies are generally told out of an excess of niceness, to save time, or because of an unwillingness to deal with the consequences of honesty. Laziness is one motivation for being dishonest, including emotional laziness. “For peace of mind,” says a character in Amy Hempel’s novella Tumble Home, “I will lie about any thing at any time.”
False distinctions abound in this area. One’s choice is not necessarily between compassionate lies and cruel truths but between thoughtless lies and thoughtfully presented truths. This bears on the healing arts. Dissembling was once considered part and parcel of those arts. Unwarranted reassurance of patients even had a label among physicians: “benevolent deception.” They believed that we heal better if protected from the truth. Some still believe that. This bit of folk wisdom may be nothing more, however. One physician suggested that deceptive doctors make poor diagnosticians because they’re more focused on reassuring patients than on determing what’s wrong with them. Recent studies have shown that patients who are suffering from serious illnesses do best when told the truth about their condition, even if they are in the late stages of a terminal illness. Anyone who has sat by the bed of a loved one who is dying and colluded in the deception that this person is getting better knows how devastating that experience can be. Facing this truth is far more demanding, and infinitely more compassionate.
Truth telling is high-maintenance. Becoming a consistent truth teller takes courage, determination, and will. That is what honesty is all about. It’s also about compassion. Even the petty fibs of everyday discourse are not always as harmless as we like to imagine. Lies told to “protect somebody else’s feelings” can be manipulative, even hostile. At the very least any lie—no matter how small—is a vote of no confidence in the person to whom it’s told. Regardless of the intent with which they’re told, all lies announce boldly—as Jack Nicholson’s character does in A Few Good Men—“You can’t handle the truth!” When we do tell someone the truth, we’re suggesting that we think he or she can handle it. This includes our children.
Ambivalence about honesty is on vivid display when it comes to parenting. On the one hand, children are admonished never to tell lies. On the other hand, they’re told to tell their aunt Helen how much they like the mittens she knit for them. Among the two thousand Americans surveyed for The Day America Told the Truth, 59 percent of those who had children said they lied to their kids on a regular basis. They do this primarily to protect the feelings of others (“Don’t forget to tell Aunt Helen that you love the mittens”), ease fears (“A hurricane should be fun!”), protect their relationship with a spouse (“Daddy and I weren’t arguing; we were just rehearsing a scene for my play”), and make life easier for themselves (“Our cable company doesn’t carry South Park”).
While condoning the occasional fib, child psychologist Michael Lewis warns that routine parental lying has more to do with parents’ needs than their children’s, and can corrode this relationship. One way parents establish who’s got the power in that relationship
is by telling their children casual, convenient, and self-serving lies while demanding scrupulous honesty in return.
Most parents warn their kids not to lie, especially to them. At the same time many give them a dishonest model to emulate: their own. If ever teaching is done by modeling it is here. A child who hears a healthy parent turn down an unwelcome social invitation because “I’m not feeling well” learns an important, unfortunate lesson.
The best way to raise a liar is to deceive others regularly in the presence of one’s children. Better yet, lie to them. Parents usually rationalize lies they tell their kids by saying they’re insignificant, and for the children’s own good. More often, however, they’re for the convenience of the parent. Lying also helps preserve the illusion of parental omnipotence. The danger is that deceiving our children can become a reflex, something we do without even thinking about it. Routine deception of one’s kids is a risky business, even when the lies told are small and benign. Telling them the truth, no matter how demanding that can be, is a form of respect. In the short run it creates problems; in the long run it builds a strong foundation for a solid relationship.
Lies that are told routinely as a child-rearing tool plant bombs that may take years to explode. A middle-aged woman I know has an edgy relationship with a mother who deceived her continually as a child. She still remembers the time her mother took her to the hairdresser just to “get the ends trimmed” from her long hair, then had the hairdresser cut it short. When trying to get her daughter to try a new food, this woman’s mother would remind her that she hadn’t liked ice cream until she’d made her try it (an untrue story). These lies may have been petty, white, and well intentioned. But when the daughter grew up and realized how routinely her mother
had deceived her as a child, she never knew what statements of her mother’s to believe.
For individuals and groups alike, honesty is a perpetual feedback loop. Truth tellers build societies whose members have confidence in each other’s credibility. In his book Trust, Francis Fukuyama argues that only societies whose members enjoy a high level of this kind of confidence can reap the benefits of political stability and a robust economy. Economic prosperity is built on a foundation of trust. Where suspicion reigns, the cost of doing business goes up (because of extended negotiations, lengthy contracts, litigation, and lawyers’ fees). Stock markets teeter-totter on a fulcrum of confidence. Investors and businesspeople alike take more necessary risks when their trust level is high than when it’s low. Stockbrokers see the impact of corporate scandals in the wariness of investors. Renegades in their own profession have contributed to a riskaverse investment atmosphere. If the honesty of a broker’s recommendation or a company’s financial statements can’t be trusted, why buy stocks? Investor wariness in turn contributes to economic sluggishness. The suspicious society imposes a tax not just on our spiritual and social well-being but on our economic prosperity as well.
One reason there is so much emphasis on transparency in contemporary life is because complex economies function so much better when participants are candid. This is especially true when things aren’t going well. Deceitful behavior only postpones days of reckoning, and in the process distorts the economy as a whole. Everyone paid a price for the alt.ethics that subsidized fantasy profits reported during the New Economy bubble. Failure is a form of feedback, after all. When their failures are covered up and made
to look like successes, organizations are deprived of feedback necessary to make corrections. Problems cannot be lied away forever. Once the reality organizational lies are hiding becomes apparent, corrections take that much longer to make. According to Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, the many CEOs who told their accountants not to improve financial statements, because they needed to know where problems lay, did better in the long run than those who manipulated their accounts. The dishonest recommendations some brokers made to clients (advising them to buy stocks they privately called “dogs”) cost their brokerages huge fines and untold amounts of lost credibility. In the case of Arthur Andersen, helping Enron cook its books cost this accounting firm its very existence.
The more suspicious society grows, the more valuable honesty will become. Employees who work for organizations they perceive as being truthful enjoy higher morale than those who suspect their employer is deceiving them. Organizations perceived to be dishonest also have a higher turnover rate. Companies that are seen as honest are more likely to retain employees. Integrity has market value.
All is not gloom and doom on the honesty front. There is enough lingering outrage about deception by public figures to suggest how many of us remain concerned about this issue. Our intense interest in the subject of lying overall indicates that honesty still matters to us. Journalists continue to do their bit to expose lies and keep this issue on the national agenda. Despite their own transgressions, if there is any hero in the struggle against dishonesty, it is the print media. Even as higher educators dither about their commitment to truth telling and religious leaders hide bad
behavior by members of the clergy, newspapers continue to honor the principle of truth seeking and truth telling. It may take time, but the press does investigate and publicize ethical lapses by its reporters, then fires those found guilty. Newsrooms are one setting in which dissembling remains a dismissable offense.
Just as some aspects of contemporary life encourage deception, others promote honesty. They include the modern concepts of “full disclosure” in commercial transactions, “informed consent” among medical patients, and “discovery” in legal proceedings (whereby contending parties must share crucial evidence with each other). Watchdog Web sites such as
FactCheck.org, organizations like the Center for Public Integrity, and sundry freelance investigators using potent investigation tools like the Freedom of Information Act ensure that deception will continue to be a risky activity.
In some ways dishonesty has become riskier than ever. Many enablers of post-truthfulness also contribute to its demise. This is especially true in cyberspace, where the same technology both corrodes and promotes honesty. Those who use cybertools to deceive others are always at risk of being exposed by others using the very same tools. Plagiarizers have easy pickings on the Internet, but plagiarist-catching software can quickly identify purloined material. Limbs grafted onto family trees are collapsing under the weight of genealogical documents posted on the Internet. Resumes are easier to embroider in the information age, but such embroideries are easier to discredit. The epidemic of resume fabricators, phony veterans, and sundry imposeurs is actually an epidemic of investigation by those who mine the Internet for evidence with which to expose lies put in play long ago. Google could be the best friend truth discovery has ever had. There are others. DNA testing, for example, which is such a powerful source of irrefutable evidence
in cases of crime and paternity, has become an important modern incentive to be truthful. Undoubtedly there are many more to come.
Lying has existed in every society for all of time and undoubtedly always will. The question then becomes whether a given society facilitates or discourages dishonesty. Certainly we need more truth telling throughout our own society. But even more than this we need a context that rewards honesty and penalizes dishonesty.
In any given group of people, probably 10 percent are ethical by nature (because they are empathetic, altruistic, and self-assured), and 10 percent have no ethical inclination at all (because they are narcissistic, pathological, or just plain lazy). The other 80 percent are swing voters who move back and forth, depending on circumstances. Encouraging more honesty in that group requires a context very different from the current one, one with more incentives to tell the truth and stiffer sanctions against deception. Too many elements of contemporary society unwittingly do just the opposite: they reward deception and penalize candor. Altering those elements will do more than any religious revival to restore integrity.
In terms of encouraging honesty we are probably doing better on the policy front than on the personal one. We all might work not only on being more honest but on encouraging others to tell us the truth by letting them know that this is what we want and that we are up to the task. A capacity to hear the truth is at least as demanding as a capacity to tell the truth. Both are acquired skills. That’s the case wherever people gather. According to management sage Warren Bennis, creating and maintaining a culture of honesty in any organization “requires sustained attention and constant vigilance.” The payoff comes in the form of human groups whose
members trust each other. Their truthfulness in turn reinforces the bonds of those groups.
Every bit as important as raising ethical standards is making human links strong enough that those who enjoy them think twice before telling each other a lie. Nothing encourages truth telling more than feeling connected to others whom we saw yesterday and may see tomorrow. Because honesty is so important among those who interact on a regular basis, telling the truth is a way of affirming human ties. The more tied we feel to others, the less likely we are to deceive them. Just as lying degrades human connections, truthfulness invigorates them. In this sense honesty is a sign of aspiration, of hope, of faith in the prospect of human community.