Is honesty overrated?

“I’ll chain you to the truth, for the truth shall set you free!
I’ll turn the screws of vengeance, and bury you with honesty!”

mainstream view of honesty is greatly overrated, for good reasons i think,
nothing like the internal peace honesty can give

i guess its ‘cool’ to say it is and all, but no, it is in no way overrated…
in hindu mythology, Krishna (that awesome, youthful, wise, and flirty rockstar of a god :)) advices dishonesty in certain cases (10 i think). like when it comes to saving another’s life… i dont remember the other situations, :P
but honesty FTW, i say!

vishnu do you mind further explaining this ?
both you n skafish bring this up
get this (hopefully this makes sense)
question ->answer->a lie or the truth->justification for prev choice.
1 2 3 4
any subdividing after 3 , and we loose objectivity.
I would still love to hear the hindu take on this.
yess ghandis’(nice) sounds very intresting, soo many things soo little time

haha yess ofcourse,
so
the instant we justify our reason to lie we are in the land of moral subjectivity….
but i still wouldn’t mind hearing the hinhuism behind this.
the thing everything is subjective when it comes to morals, but now if we can create some artificial objective view: using the intersections of individuals’ subjective. One day ethic might prevail.

@praneeth, i’ll get back to you shortly with the hinduism take on this

and @praneeth and @lisa, ok to put it very simply, i think we are all talking about being honest to ourselves… if you think about it, moral subjectivity is nothing but that.
so, in SkaFish’s exaMple of being questioned about drug use by authorities… its cool to lie to them cuz we are asking ourselves, “according to me, this guy trying to punish me, on doing what i think is right, is right?? ” and the answer is no. he’s wrong in the first place. so we are being honest to ourselves, and dishonest to the authority…
does that make sense? (pleasedo pleasedo)

as someone who used to lie and misrepresent myself a lot and has totally turned that around, honesty allows me to live a very simple life, without any pretense. everybody in my life knows where I stand and accepts me for who I am today. I never have to “fake” anything. in fact, when I started being honest it really helped me grow, because I was setting much higher standards for myself, raising my expectations for my own behavior.

as skafish illustrates above, lying and cheating are actions people use to cover weaknesses, compensate for making bad choices, and avoid changing.

I really think people would be a lot better off if we just stopped lying to each other–lies lead to misunderstandings, which can quickly escalate to hatred and war.

…kind of on the topic, has anyone seen, ‘The Invention of Lying’? Check that out to see what a world of all-truth would be like…lol

Lies are fucking immature, cowardly and disgusting. I have no respect for people that lie. Whatever happened to holding values and principles for yourself? And if you don’t, why do you expect others to?

No. Lying to yourself is bad enough. I don’t know why people lie to others.. I’m also reading Plato’s The Republic right now. The first book was really good about the just vs the unjust. His arguments always lead the just to be the “winners” in life, and the unjust the “losers”. I have always been honest before I read it though. Of course everyone will lie to themselves or others every once in a while, we’re human! But everytime you do it just realize it and think, “Ok, I’m not going to lie again for a while” just so habits don’t start.

What if there was a social experiment involving two communities. One normal, one completely honest about everything. With just these two guidelines, which one do you think will be better off?

Ok, now how hard is it to just tell the truth………

Well, I have troubles with a lot of people for telling them the truth. I just can’t stand ass-kissers. And I had a tiny trouble with the law for telling the truth in someone’s face in front of an audience. It’s always fun to see how other people lie and then it comes back to them. I don’t know why they do it. It never ends well. I’m talking about big lies. Small lies are for everyone. Silence is dishonesty. Two months ago I made an experiment. I wanted to know the opinions of at least 50(they might have been 200. I stopped counting when I saw the major result) people that I chose randomly. My question was: “Which hurts more – The truth or that someone lied to you?” The majority answered the truth. I’d like to do the experiment again but on a bigger scale. I’m not sure if they answered adequately but I was amazed… Most of the people want to hide from themselves.