I'm a little over honesty these days.
I know the internets are ALL ABOUT some honesty. It's held up as the highest possible standard in all things. Politicians are scum because we know they're liars. People who believe different than us are scum because they lie about politics, religion, etc. Even if they've just been duped by THEIR liar politicians, clergy, etc, well, that just makes them sheep.
But just because we have all these lying liars around us doesn't mean we'll let them damage OUR integrity. OH no. We will say what we believe to be true and we will say it strong, we will say it proud, even if it is the unpopular opinion because THAT IS JUST HOW AWESOME WE ARE!
YAY HONESTY!
Phhhhhbt.
You've all seen it. The person on the internet who opens up a sentence with "Well, to be perfectly honest..." and you just KNOW that they are about to be an asshole to someone? The person who then does the message board equivalent of backpedaling with their hands up by making some kind of comment about how they were JUST being HONEST and GOSH I wish you people were MATURE enough to handle it?
Let's all have our moment of nodding our heads in knowing judgement of "that guy." And then let's smack ourselves on the back of the hands because what we SHOULD have been doing is nodding in shame of "us."
Because you do it.
You.
The one reading this. (And yes, that includes me.)
We have, most of us, been that person.
Oh, the words might have been different. You might have used the phrase; "Well, technically," or "Just playin' the Devil's Advocate here..." or "Inconvenient truth time!" or "Well, if you did your research," or "Hey, check your privilege!" but at some point you have been an asshole to someone on the internet, you have KNOWN that you were being an asshole, and your internal rationalization for it was that you were being honest.
YAY HONESTY!
This all happens because honestly, it's pretty darn easy to be honest in certain situations. But I fail to see what is so virtuous about easy honesty.
The guy who takes naked pictures of a woman and posts them online as revenge is being honest. These are pics of her, he's mad at her. Totally truthful and straightforward. The others who look at those pictures despite knowing how violating that is to her are not lying, either. They believe it is all okay. Because they like looking at naked pictures of women.
The person who takes the private information of someone else and posts it on-line (doxxing) to open them up to RL harassment is being real honest, unless they fake the info. And when they say that they cannot control what people do with that info? Also completely honest.
These are, of course, extreme cases. There are varying levels of assholery, from the merely malicious to the downright harmful. But nearly ANYTHING can be justified with honesty so long as you believe in what you are doing, and how much do you actually do that would need justifying that you DON'T believe in?
The truly crazy thing? Is that we KNOW this. Pop Culture is full of people whose leading trait is being "perfectly honest", from Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice to a whole freaking faction in Divergent, and one and all they are seen as HIGHLY annoying. At best, they are Cassandras, forever telling the truth, but never listened to.
And what purpose does it serve, in the end? Despite the pedestal that we have apparently set Honesty on, no one is walking about encouraging others to just believe what anyone tells you. We know that we live in a world of lying liars. So it's not like our near universal dedication to the truth as we see it (maintained by most people I know) has actually made us any more truthful.
Far from not properly edifying our society, easy Honesty ALSO doesn't do a great deal to win arguments from day to day. Name one time an argument has been won on the internet by a "harsh truth." Name all the facts, studies, tests, witnesses, etc, that you like, all Honesty like that serves to achieve is either reinforcing those who agree with you; "Hah, they haven't read that study yet? They ARE all uninformed idiots!" or getting the opponent to dig in for a fight. "Crap, they might have a point. Well, darned if I'M going to give in to THAT asshole..."
Now, my point isn't to just be a liar without shame. It's just that we should probably stop thinking of honesty as justification for what we know are crappy actions. And so, with no further ado...
PASTOR DAN'S EXAMPLES OF WHEN HONESTY IS HORRIBLE
1. When your honesty is serving as a justification to say something horrible to someone. Seriously, just don't. If you know you are being horrible, don't be horrible.
2. You know that little tingle you get when you know that what you are about to say is gonna make someone else feel bad but make you feel great? I don't care how honest you're being. Don't say it. Even if they need to be told it (and here I mean they need the info, not to be socially edified) let someone else do it. Because that right there is undeniably going to be a horrible thing to say.
3. When your honest opinion means you get to treat an entire group of people as less than people carte blanche? That is undeniably going to be horrible. It doesn't matter if the group is female journalists, gay people, Republicans, or veterans, just keep it to yourself. No one else is going to benefit from it, honest or no.
4. When your honesty turns you into a message-board avenger. I get it, you see someone being horrible to someone else. It makes you angry, it makes you want to fight. But you know what? Like I said, you aren't going to flame them into another person, no matter how many after school specials have that effect on the starting antagonist. Feel free to give tons of energy to supporting the victim while IGNORING the horrible one and THEIR honesty.
5. When you know you shouldn't.
I feel like, most of the time, we KNOW we shouldn't say these things. Everything from the defensive way we post to the self-righteous indignation we muster afterwards SCREAMS that despite all of our honesty, we know that we are being horrible. And yet, we raise that shield high and scream our defiance because while everyone else is a lying liar or a blinkered sheep WE will have our integrity, or values, and incidentally, get to say whatever the hell we want.
Maybe it's time we stopped focusing so hard on being honest to others, in favor of, for once, being honest with ourselves.
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