There’s an interesting conflict in recommendations from others around honesty: people will tell you to be honest or deceptive depending on what leads to the best outcome. Now, for those of you who have read The Meaning of Life: A guide to finding your life’s purpose or previous blog posts on the honesty ethic, that will not be a surprise since ethics are not universal and unchanging but are very situational and subject to change with conditions. However, if you’re used to simple ethics, this might be confusing.
The reason for the seeming contradicting advice is that ethics are about maximizing/optimizing growth and minimizing harm, not about absolute rules that work in every situation. As such, the reason why honesty is a good general rule is that if you wish to maximize your own growth, you need support from people who trust you. If you lie, they won’t trust you. Hence, generally speaking, you should tell the truth. It is just a great general rule, then, to be honest.
However, there are situations where people would recommend that you deceive yourself or others for your own well-being. For example, before perfectly synchronized clocks on smartphones and smartwatches became a thing, people used to set the time 5 minutes ahead intentionally to fool themselves into leaving early to get somewhere on time. Sometimes, people believe in the power of positive thinking even when their reality is pretty negative. With others, everyone knows the examples of posting a wonderful life on social media when you actually might be miserable or not telling other people about your goals so they don’t discourage you. Then, there’s the “fake it until you make it” approach where you put on a façade to convince yourself and others that you are capable of doing something that you do not have the experience or qualifications to do initially.
So what is going on here? Well, as mentioned above, it is all about what results in the best outcome. If being honest with yourself might cause you irreparable damage, you tell yourself the comforting lie. We see this all the time with “cognitive dissonance”—i.e., when people change their beliefs when there is such a discord between them and their reality. When people might tear you down or think less of you, you hide an embarrassing personal goal or hobby. Deception and lying for a positive reason is all about whether the outcome is better than with the truth with no added harm.
Of course, we also know of instances where people lie to themselves about their lies being harmless (yes, this is getting convoluted); for example, don’t tell your partner that you cheated so you can live happily ever after rather than get divorced and ruin the family. Yes, it might seem like the best outcome for all parties, but people still value the truth and living in reality and might prefer that pain to a life of lies (interestingly, others actually might not). The likely real truth, however, is that people are simply lying for personal gain—a “have your cake and eat it, too” situation—and not necessarily for a greater good. It is hard to tell…it can always be both (not hurting the partner and also getting away with it), as humans are complex creatures.
And that is what makes life so difficult: everyone is weighing the right thing to do, but there are so many perspectives on what the right thing to do is. The most difficult part of it all is that even if people agree on the basic ethic like don’t lie, they might disagree on when the ethic doesn’t apply because someone else lied, there is too much harm done by telling the truth, or deception is expected or required (e.g., surprise parties, “I’m fine” pleasantries).
That brings us to the final point of this post: the nuance between these recommendations. Unfortunately, humans have multiple definitions for the same word—in this case, “honesty” can mean being truthful, being open or forthcoming, or being authentic. So, “being true to yourself” is about authenticity—e.g., dressing in a way that you like vs. dressing in a way that you think will please others. So you can somehow be authentic (true to yourself) while also lying to yourself to get to appointments on time (lying) while also keeping yourself from thinking too much about harmful thoughts (closed). Similarly, you can be truthful to others (honest) while withholding all personal information (closed) and presenting yourself in a way that makes them more comfortable such as cleaning up your language or wearing certain clothes (not authentic). Humans can be complex social creatures.
So that’s the goal for you as you think about how you deal with yourself and the world: what ethics do you hold regarding honesty, transparency, and authenticity when it comes to yourself and others? Clearly, you want the best outcome for yourself and others wherever possible, but what happens if the best outcome for all parties involves lying/closed/inauthentic or when the best outcome for one of the two parties is to lie while the other party is worse off? How will you behave? As usual, I can’t/won’t dictate how you behave, but I can lay out the options for you:
If you follow those three rules, you can get the right level of honesty, openness, and authenticity that will work for you most of the time. You, of course, are able to choose to be completely open, honest, and true to yourself all the time (example: autists often do this) or say whatever benefits you (example: sociopaths often do this)…but just know that there are always trade-offs and consequences (e.g., autists don’t often have many friends, sociopaths are hated if caught). Most importantly, realize that life is, in fact, complex, and it’s not that some people are always perfectly right/wrong but rather they are simply making different ethical calculations on what the best approach is given the intent, situation, action, and outcomes.
Remember that if you break the general rule (“honesty is the best policy”), you have to make a compelling case as to the benefit because the default position (see: “attribution bias”) for any person is to think that you are lying because you are bad and they are lying because they have a good reason. And, if you benefit at someone else’s expense, then they are likely/usually right that your lying was unethical. Whichever path you choose, be ready for the consequences—you will run into conflicts, lose friends, and possibly harm yourself either way, as both lies and the truth can hurt one’s relationships and emotional well-being. Unfortunately, life isn’t always as simple and easy as blanket rules make it seem.