The Truth
 

...and no, not Carl Williams.

I mean the truth as it applies to daily life. I was thinking about this driving into work today; some comment on the radio spurred the initial thought.

My boss uses a phrase quite often that always makes me think twice. "To be honest with you." Okay, sure, it's a figure of speech, but hearing him say it so frequently makes me wonder.

How much of what we hear day-to-day is really true? I mean 100%, unvarnished fact? How often do people we interact with either outright lie to us, or at least distort the truth - or "their version" of it - with niceties or other forms of misrepresentation? What about things like the news? Government?

I thought this might make for an interesting discussion. And that's the honest truth.

You're lying!

Well, to begin with, thought is distorted by language - so what we hear is an abstraction of an idea, not the idea itself.

But on the flip side, people frequently use language to mask their truth.

Dola...

Seriously, I do think that people are honest about 95% of the time. In most instances, there is not a reason to be dishonest. Now, these percentages tend to fall as you go up the food chain of society, because I believe that the axiom of "power corrupts" does seem to be true and that powerful people tend to be more dishonest to keep the power they have.

I was thinking Walter Berry.

Second Walter Berry reference I've heard/seen in the last week. This is just weird.

Here's my own example of how things can easily get blurry with regard to the truth.

I work with a woman who can be very difficult. She is nice enough, but has behaviors that are highly annoying and frankly she's a little nuts. Nevertheless, I go out of my way to be polite and friendly to her. Like I'll ask her how her weekend was, even when inside I'm thinking "please don't talk to me" and I truthfully don't want to hear anything about it.

...which is an interesting path to trace. Why does power equate with dishonesty?

Well, how much do you go telling people everything about your FOF team in a multiplayer league? The more honest you are, the more info that people who disagree with your politics or simply want your job have to move you out of power. So if you want to keep your power, you have to play it close to the vest.

This is an interesting subject. In my mind there are shades of grey to the truth:

Lies: The polar opposite of truth.
Dishonesty: Exaggerations of the truth.
Partial truth: Telling some of the truth in an attempt to convey a misrepresentation.
Truth: Self-explanatory

Additionally, there are what are called "white lies" or lies that are small as to not offend someone. These lies could be a response to the question, "How was dinner?" "It was good."

I think most people speak in the middle two categories as opposed to telling an absoute lie or absolute truth.

By the same logic, people without power have more reason to be dishonest, in order to acquire power. Dishonesty would not be the only way to maintain power - power itself is currency.

Wouldn't you say that there's a key difference between not telling someone everything and not telling the truth?

I'm not sure that it necessarily does, but I think I agree that dishonesty arises from people's motivations. People are prone to being honest, unless they are motiveted by a potential gain or avoiding a potential loss by being dishonest. (There's an inertia concept in there, I think) So, our natural state is honesty, but we are lured into dishonesty by various motivations.

If that's true, then a person in power may have more reasons to face such motivations -- if he gains his power formally through voting or somesuch, then he has motivation to impress (even deceive) the voters. Replace "shareholders" or "customers" for voters as need be, the same principle applies. If you hold power through more informal means -- like just the esteem or respect with which you are held by others -- then you have a motivation to continue or expand that effort. Thus, the "brown-noser" activity, that (by the liberal interpretation you describe above) is included in being dishonest.

There are any number of reasons to be less that completely honest - politeness and civility are among the rather harmless ones, but I think they count, too. It's just shades of gray to get you from there to outright, malevolent deception.


"Does this dress make my ass look fat?"

You make the call. There's a self-preservation element in this, too.

So that means honesty depends on who's listening and the motivation for revealing information. The more important the audience, the more dishonesty is likely to occur. I'm beginning to think my 95% is probably too high, even for basic common people.