Question: How would the world look like if people would only tell their true thoughts to one another?
Answer: The world would fall apart.
Our world is not designed to function with radical honesty. Lies are essential to keep the world from falling apart.
That doesn't mean I favor dishonest people, or don't consider honesty a virtue. But the fact is that humans do operate with double-standards; and that's the way is it should be left to operate. The reason for this is that humans have two conflicting forces driving them: 1) Reason/intellect, and 2) emotions/impulses. Radical honesty means acting totally out of the first; which is only possible in theory.
If your girlfriend asks you whether you find her friend sexy, or whether you ever fantasize about someone else, and you don't lie if you really do and expect your girlfriend to be "rational" enough to accept this, you are being naïve. Your girlfriend will rather choose a liar. Because humans are not mature enough to deal with certain emotional pangs; and there's evolutionary reasons why irrationality is so powerful within us. Romantic love, for example, is totally irrational from human perspective, but it's so powerful, because it's a mating drive, which has evolutionary significance.
Dishonesty will never become a virtue; dishonest people will always find reproach. But at the same time there will also always be dilemmas and dishonesty will be chosen over honesty, and that's alright if one understands the way of the world.
People will never tell that they prefer to hear a lie. It is implicit in the cases where truth is not conducive to a wholesome emotional experience. Romantic love is a classic example of it. And there can be many instances/experiences in life in which if one minutely scrutinizes oneself, it's hard to not notice how much of a liar one is. It happens intuitively, because our biology knows the optimal survival strategies better than our intellect.
If radical honesty is not in wide currency, that's because natural selection (evolution) would eliminate a radically honest person. If it was viable to be radically honest then we would see at least one such person in the world; especially, after centuries of teaching "honestly is the best policy" and things like that. Maybe because radically honest people, if at all there have been any, have not succeeded in passing on their genes! Radical honesty doesn't pay for long.
Corollary is: lying to an extent is not a bad at all.
Some people argue that children are always honest. They don't deceive others because they are not afraid of the consequences. They say what they feel. And that's a good quality. We all like children for that. And that's actually something adults should learn from children.
This argument is not just ineffective, but fallacious. Children do a lot of things that when an adult does, he/she becomes insufferable. That same candor which is so charming in young children is considered rude and tactless in adults. Reason: The dynamics underlying the adult life is different from that of the infancy, and consequently an adult must behave differently than an infant for the same level of wellbeing and security.
Answer: The world would fall apart.
Our world is not designed to function with radical honesty. Lies are essential to keep the world from falling apart.
That doesn't mean I favor dishonest people, or don't consider honesty a virtue. But the fact is that humans do operate with double-standards; and that's the way is it should be left to operate. The reason for this is that humans have two conflicting forces driving them: 1) Reason/intellect, and 2) emotions/impulses. Radical honesty means acting totally out of the first; which is only possible in theory.
If your girlfriend asks you whether you find her friend sexy, or whether you ever fantasize about someone else, and you don't lie if you really do and expect your girlfriend to be "rational" enough to accept this, you are being naïve. Your girlfriend will rather choose a liar. Because humans are not mature enough to deal with certain emotional pangs; and there's evolutionary reasons why irrationality is so powerful within us. Romantic love, for example, is totally irrational from human perspective, but it's so powerful, because it's a mating drive, which has evolutionary significance.
Dishonesty will never become a virtue; dishonest people will always find reproach. But at the same time there will also always be dilemmas and dishonesty will be chosen over honesty, and that's alright if one understands the way of the world.
People will never tell that they prefer to hear a lie. It is implicit in the cases where truth is not conducive to a wholesome emotional experience. Romantic love is a classic example of it. And there can be many instances/experiences in life in which if one minutely scrutinizes oneself, it's hard to not notice how much of a liar one is. It happens intuitively, because our biology knows the optimal survival strategies better than our intellect.
If radical honesty is not in wide currency, that's because natural selection (evolution) would eliminate a radically honest person. If it was viable to be radically honest then we would see at least one such person in the world; especially, after centuries of teaching "honestly is the best policy" and things like that. Maybe because radically honest people, if at all there have been any, have not succeeded in passing on their genes! Radical honesty doesn't pay for long.
Corollary is: lying to an extent is not a bad at all.
Ineffective argument for Radical Honesty
Some people argue that children are always honest. They don't deceive others because they are not afraid of the consequences. They say what they feel. And that's a good quality. We all like children for that. And that's actually something adults should learn from children.
This argument is not just ineffective, but fallacious. Children do a lot of things that when an adult does, he/she becomes insufferable. That same candor which is so charming in young children is considered rude and tactless in adults. Reason: The dynamics underlying the adult life is different from that of the infancy, and consequently an adult must behave differently than an infant for the same level of wellbeing and security.
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