On asking around I found many people reportedly always tell the truth (wink and a smile on that). A good many others stated that lying to protect their own, or a loved one's reputation was acceptable. Most people said that honesty stops when the need arises to protect someone from harm, or even just to protect someone from hurt feelings. Almost everyone defended minor embellishments -- "little white lies" (a rather antiquated racist expression if you ask me). But some folks unabashedly espoused honesty as the only policy, lambasting the unnecessary evil of lying, and abjectly denying any past or present perpetrated fallacies. To wit I responded, "but you are lying right now." This effectively ended most of those conversations.
My little survey results make me question the moral designation that we assign to the concept of honesty. Apparently it is something without any hard and fast rules since we can decide in accordance to our own purposes which lies we shall deem necessary in the name of protecting the feelings or reputation of someone else, and which lies should otherwise be considered immoral. In reality, it comes down to outright self preservation. And in any given critical circumstance, we all will, and do fabricate an untruth or otherwise cover up something that is true. We say that we lie for the protection of loved ones (or whomever), but I submit that the lie is told more for the purpose of protecting the relationship that we hold dear which is an act of self-preservation – because if the truth in some way harms a loved one, then the act of telling the truth may very well insight consequences that may remove us in some degree, or entirely, from the valued relationship that we otherwise would have protected with a lie.
Oh no! Did I just denounce all of those glorious, self-less acts of deceit by pointing out that the act itself is indeed intrinsically selfish? Yes I did. But don't misunderstand -- I completely support selfish intentions so long as they do not harm others. After all, selfishness is what puts food in your belly and a roof over your head. And that leads me to conclude that telling a lie to protect someone, thereby maintaining harmony in your relationship or environment, indeed is not a bad thing - at least not from the perspective of the person you are protecting, and yourself of course. It is damned near instinctual. Or at least genetically encoded as people have survived the millennia on just such instincts. I am reminded of a scene in the movie "Schindler's List" when a Nazi officer, after shooting someone for not revealing the identity of a thief, asked a boy for the same information, and the boy claimed that the thief was the man who the officer just shot. A lie that saves your life, or the lives of others in such a circumstance, can be considered nothing less than morally virtuous.
But then honesty must have its place somewhere in the stack of moral virtues does it not? Of course it does – and for exactly the same reason that dishonesty has its place – self preservation. If you are dishonest or deceitful with your partner you are compromising the relationship that you hold dear, which will in all likeliness lead ultimately the demise of the relationship – and rightfully so. If you misrepresent yourself in applying for a job, your ability deficiency may result in your termination, and damaged reputation..... and so on, and so on.
Therein lies the truth. The moral value of honesty is a matter of expediency. We lie or should certainly speak truthfully depending on which will better serve our needs. So in the name of what I have irreducibly exposed as common sense -- stop lying about lying and just tell the truth. To be perfectly honest, we lie.
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