The Problems with Being Too Honest

Michael Leviton has written quite a thought-provoking article. He was raised to be too honest and when he encounter the real world as an adult, he found that it kept him from getting hired and made romance impossible. He discovered that he needed to be less honest, but how? Here's an excerpt from "What I Learned About Love When I Stopped Being Honest."

There were no support groups for people who wanted to be less honest. Therapists advised people to speak their truth, not to shut up for once. Whatever advice everybody else needed, I needed the opposite. So I came up with my own system, made myself lists of subjects that I’d no longer discuss and various rules for myself, such as:

Hide your feelings and observations.

Instead of searching for people who will appreciate who you really are, try to be what the person in front of you wants. Learn to make small talk.

Do NOT be yourself.

This felt both stupid and impossible. My brain had been built to be honest. I couldn’t even answer “How are you?” with “Fine” without feeling ill.

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Is religion honest?

Most religious adherents would be aghast if one suggested that they, or their religion, were fundamentally and consistently dishonest. However I believe that is indeed the case. I read a comment on a recent blog post by Ed Brayton (honesty vs intellectually honest). Ed's post argued about the distinction between honesty and intellectual honesty, and noted that intellectual honesty must recognize not only the arguments in support of a position, but also any evidence or arguments against that position. One of the commenters (Sastra) then made the following case that faith was fundamentally intellectually dishonest:

[...] An intellectually dishonest person blurs the distinction [between being intellectually honest, and being emotionally honest], and seems to confuse fact claims with meaning or value claims. To a person who places emphasis on emotional honesty, strength of conviction is evidence. An attack on an idea, then, is an attack on the person who holds it. The idea is true because it's emotionally fulfilling: intentions and sincerity matter the most. Therefore, you don't question, search, or respect dissent. A person who is trying to change your mind, is trying to change you. For example, I consider religious faith [...] to be intellectually dishonest. It is, however, sincerely emotionally honest. [...] "Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of what is not seen." There's a huge emotional component to it, so that one chooses to keep faith in X, the way one might remain loyal to a friend. You defend him with ingenuity and love, finding reasons to explain or excuse evidence against him. He cannot fail: you, however, can fail him, by allowing yourself to be lead into doubt. Being able to spin any result into support then is a sign of good will, loyalty, reliability, and the ability to stand fast. The focus isn't on establishing what's true, but on establishing that you can be "true." This emotional honesty may or may not be rewarded: the real point, I think, is to value it for its own sake, as a fulfillment of a perceived duty.
This is exactly the case with religion, and religious adherents. Their faith in their god is entirely emotional, and no amount of material evidence will alter their belief. They may be entirely honest in their belief, and may be entirely honest in their objection to evidence (cf Karl, Rabel, Walter, et al) but in doing so are being intellectually dishonest, because they refuse to recognize valid and entirely relevant evidence - they conflate with great consistency and verve fact claims with value claims, and deny any difference between them stating it's all 'interpretation'. No, it isn't all interpretation. It's dishonesty.

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John McCain’s honesty problem

McCain's honesty problem has been condensed into this short YouTube video by Robert Greenwald. The mainstream media needs to focus on what McCain himself has claimed.   This is not character assassination, but forcing McCain to deal with his own statements. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c[/youtube]

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