Radical Honesty

[brenden]

What do people think of radical honesty as a concept? Like, I'm talking, someone speaks the wholehearted truth as a policy, always. I'm sort of halfsies on this. Like, I prefer to be as honest as I can be. I'll readily own up to both my character weaknesses (and strengths!), compliment people even if it's weird and sometimes just be hurtful if I'm asked a question and the only way to avoid it is to lie. I like to think that we'd all be hypothetically less sensitive if everyone were radically honest, because we'd just be used to people having their opinions and would be more comfortable accepting opinions of all variety. I guess if we were radically honest, that shit in our consciousness that only we know about would have to come out. Like, I don't care how closer you are with someone, you would never completely share your mind with them. There would have to be one thing you'd block out and just give them the rest lol.
Would you prefer everyone to be radically honest? Is this even moral as a principle? If you aren't radically honest, aren't you a liar? I mean, is honesty not a black and white sort of thing? I can be very a very manipulative person, and it feels really dishonest sometimes, even when I do the manipulating via being totally honest. So at what point can a human being be considered honest, if ever? I just think this is fucking cool (and sometimes really disconcerting) to think about.

[FlorianK]

I'd consider myself a really honest person. However not radically honest. Radical honesty implies for me that you kinda tell people everything. I often just say nothing instead of lying.

[lala1911]

I've also been thinking about this a lot lately..

I like to think I'm an honest person and I genuinely am an honest person actually. If I don't like something I usually try to point it out and I like to give my opinion even if its cruel, in the end, words don't hurt.

I know this one guy in my year level who is extremely confronting and to be honest, if I was talking shit he'd blast me with the truth and be confront the living hell out of me. I actually like this, opposed to being friends with other people who probably think lowly of me however don't have what it takes to actually tell me.

Also I agree, we do live in a society where words are extremely hurtful and people are so sensitive to words. I think the major contributor to this is dishonesty, really. Too many compliments are thrown around and people are just trying to avoid their weaknesses and flaws, however when someone points it people get so sensitive. I have quite a few flaws myself and I don't like it when people act as if they're nothing, I'd rather people just ignore it or be brutally honest. Man, I really hate it when my mum says something like "oh don't worry, it wasn't that bad" for example if I was to do a speech and when in reality it was shit. I'd rather my mum say "that wasn't the best, you were nervous and didn't do the best speech but you can work on it".

I don't know many honest people in my life, including my family. They're not really exactly honest with me, like, they try to be extremely nice and compliment me, although I'm more of the judgmental type who would want to point out the truth opposed to hiding the flaws.

Anyway, apart from me blabbering on about rubbish, my opinion is that yes it is possible to be completely honest with someone however I've never had that kind of relationship with someone before. I think it would be good to have a completely honest relationship, just because you know that the other person is going to be honest with you and you wont have to wonder what the other person is thinking.

[brenden]

I'd consider myself a really honest person. However not radically honest. Radical honesty implies for me that you kinda tell people everything. I often just say nothing instead of lying.

But does the absence of lying also expel dishonesty?, or spell honesty in its entirety?

I'm honest with my partner and my best-friend, and they're definitely the two best relationships I've experienced. I assure you, you definitely have to wonder about what they're thinking , but not having to worry about whether or not their telling you the truth is a gigantic relief.
I also hate being mollycoddled, I'd rather cop it straight.

[QuidProQuo]

Honesty is of course necessary, but I don't think that radical honesty is always desirable. 
Firstly, we often think things that we don't actually mean - out of impulse, tiredness or frustration, we might call someone a "whatever" in our heads - but we aren't obliged to tell them outright that we think that of them. Doing so would create unnecessary tension due to something we don't even really mean. The movie 'Thoughtcrimes' highlights this perfectly. 

Secondly, I'm thinking that this question is a bit similar to the question of political transparency and journalism. In order to have stable relationships, we need to keep honest, and people do usually respect those who are outright...but constructively. Otherwise it won't be effective, and the person is likely to feel offended. But (with journalism etc in mind), we need a degree of flexibility in what we say or what we don't. Certain situations I think justify a bit of dishonesty - for example, say you're at a friend or family's dinner, it probably wouldn't be the best idea to say 'the food tastes horrible', or telling somebody that their dress looks wrong on them. If everyone started to be radically honest with each other, we would have a lot more conflict and misunderstanding than needed. I mean, there's a statistic that most people believe they are something like 30% smarter and good-looking than they actually are, as a mechanism to reduce self-consciousness and depression. If most people can't be completely honest with themselves, it implies that most wouldn't be able to deal with total honesty from other people, and that whilst trying to remain as open as possible, we need to use discretion to decide when such radical honesty is appropriate or not. 

[Limista]

^ agreed. Radical honesty does have social ramifications at times.

[yearningforsimplicity]

Radical honesty looks good theoretically but I don't think it really works in practice - and if it does work, then people can be either hurt or offended by your 'radical honesty'. I don't think it's possible to be 100% honest all the time especially when other's feelings or emotions are involved - imo it's not being totally "dishonest" but it's more like placing a filter upon what you say so you can be socially accepted whist not offending or hurting others. I mean, come on, humans are social beings and regardless of how much we look down on group dynamics like 'conformity', people do conform to a certain behaviour to remain within their social groups

I've come across people who are 'radically honest' and tbh it's inevitable that at some point they will say something out of 'honesty' that might offend, hurt or make you feel uncomfortable For that reason only, I don't expect myself to be radically honest nor do I expect it from others. If not being 'radically honest' is immoral then I guess it's a necessary evil in some sense!

[Eriny]

I think radical honesty would work if you were just being honest about facts, but actually people confuse honesty with brazenly expressing their opinion. Your opinion isn't a fact, it's just what you think. If you're being radically honest about your opinions and you think that everyone needs to hear them all the time, then there is the danger of coming across as an asshole. So, depending on the context, it isn't wrong to hold back a little, or at least phrase what you think is the truth in a tactful way.

[QuidProQuo]

I think radical honesty would work if you were just being honest about facts, but actually people confuse honesty with brazenly expressing their opinion. Your opinion isn't a fact, it's just what you think. If you're being radically honest about your opinions and you think that everyone needs to hear them all the time, then there is the danger of coming across as an asshole. So, depending on the context, it isn't wrong to hold back a little, or at least phrase what you think is the truth in a tactful way.

^ I think honesty implies something further than just the retelling of fact; to be honest is also inherently, I think, to be open about one's perspectives and views. Agreed, there is a danger of coming off as overly opinionated and perhaps moralistic. Just, sometimes mere facts can also be offensive to a person - e.g. in preparation for a VCE Maths exam, one wouldn't like to be reminded that they failed their Maths exams in Years 9 and 10, and scraped into Year 12 by one mark... So, fact can imply opinion - in this case, that the friend doesn't have faith in the Maths student passing the VCE exam - even if it's not explicitly stated.
But you're spot on with the last line: we don't have to be blunt to be honest - and most nice people will keep 'tactful honesty' at the fore of their creed.

[Lolly]

Is it better to be "nice" or truthful, though?

I would better appreciate  people who challenge me rather than gloss over details or flaws for the sake of a relationship.

[QuidProQuo]

You can be both, I think.

One doesn't have to be false to keep a relationship going, and one also doesn't need to be so brutally honest that they offend before the person can be grateful for their criticism.

The manner I'm endorsing is highlighted perfectly by Itzhak Perlman (link below - watch approx. 1 minute from 1:55) - offering pure criticisms but in a gentle and encouraging manner. Perhaps, like IP does, praising before critiquing. It shows that you want the person to improve, rather than a manner that suggests that the person is just putting them down and perhaps implicitly asserting their own intelligence/superiority here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkUqsqf_np4

[brenden]

Being nice - this falls into radical honesty. If he plays piano very well, of course, you say, 'you play piano very well.'

A note on tact... This is a great loophole for honesty. I'm a really manipulative person (not in a "Neighbours" kind of way) - and it's easy to make someone believe something that isn't entirely true by just telling them things that aren't a lie. I think that's really dishonest, even though a lie hasn't been told.

[Chazef]

can't imagine anybody seeing this post, considering this thread ended about 7 days ago but I'm procrastinating so meh. I believe that if EVERYBODY was radically honest, then eventually people wouldn't be so hurt from blunt expressions of truth. I mean, currently we live in a world where we need to read between the lines so much due to the amount of euphemism and sugar-coating that occurs in everyday language, meaning we hear something like 'there's slight room for improvement but you're doing great' and automatically convert it into what we perceive as the actual truth: 'you need to improve'. Because we apply this mental up-scaling to criticism so much, we get shocked when somebody says bluntly 'you need to improve on...', because we scale it up in our minds. If everybody was honest, this internal scaling would decrease, meaning people wouldn't need to sugar-coat their criticisms in order to prevent offending people. I don't believe the world would be a better place if everybody just said every thought in their head, but if people just stopped euphemising every criticism they had, it would make such conversations far easier to deal with. Way too often, in my math class, I see somebody answer a question on the board and the teacher says something like 'you're on the right track, but...' when the person isn't even on the same planet as 'the track' and I think the hand-holding needs to be toned down so that people can realise how black-and-white something like mathematics is. Convincing somebody that they're half-right when they're not right at all only obscures their understanding. Also, I find that when a person is far more honest than others, their words hold more credibility when they express an opinion, in that everybody knows the person isn't lying about their opinion.

[walkec]

There's a fine line between being honest and radically honest. I don't know about others, but sometimes I refrain from saying something for fear it will hurt the person or it wouldn't be socially appropriate, but that doesn't make me a liar does it?

If someone were to say "give me your honest opinion"... Then I would interpret this as you can put the other persons feelings aside and say whatever you want because they asked for your true thoughts and they should be prepared for any response.

[QuidProQuo]

Being nice - this falls into radical honesty. If he plays piano very well, of course, you say, 'you play piano very well.'

Interesting point; I hadn't thought of that.
Just, I'm wondering: why would one want to lie about something like that? Unless they're being a bully/jealous etc, I don't really see why someone would criticise another person or make an effort to withhold praise when they actually laud the person inside - praising them wouldn't have the same social consequences as criticising them may. Given that, how does one define radical honesty? For me, 'radically honest' is sort of synonymous with 'brutally honest', rather than being extremely nice, since the issue is essentially (as I understand it) about whether we should express our opinions more openly with people according to whether or not society could handle it. Haha, I think the world would be a lot more pleasant if everyone gave each other more compliments where due (and criticisms where due of course)! So yes radical niceness all the way