Honesty

HONESTY is without doubt the foundation of a good life. It seems, on the surface, to be so obvious: telling a lie is really telling two lies --- the lie you tell others and then the lie you tell yourself to justify the lie. Then, of course, there are all the lies that you then have to tell to cover up the original lie. It’s so much easier to be honest in the first place.

Would that it were all so straight-forward. I don’t consider myself a particularly political person, but I am fascinated by the process of politics. I grew up in conservative surroundings that broached no other opinion. In later years I had to unlearn much of what I had learned about politics and life in my younger years. I had to struggle against my own misapprehensions, my unchallenged assumptions, my distorted perceptions. I had to let go of ideas and positions that made me very comfortable. I had to struggle, honestly, to see what was really going on.

There IS such a thing as objective truth, and ideas can be so crippling to us when we are confronted by what’s real and present and dangerous. Liberal democracy may be imperfect, but it is premised on robust debate and discussion of issues. When ideas become more important than reality, we are in trouble. We may well end up wearing tin-foil caps to fight against the harmful rays being beamed on us from our nefarious government. We may attack public figures in a vile and personal way because our ideas are different from theirs. We may become such hostages to ideas that we end up living in unassailable little bubbles, consumed by our little ideas and our little world.

It has been said that integrity is telling the truth to myself, and honesty is telling the truth to others. Politicians create slogans like “alternative facts” and “fake news” to hide an inconvenient truth. Pontius Pilate questioned the notion of truth because it challenged his own power and position, and the fence he was trying to sit on. Truth used to be the first casualty of war: now it is the first casualty of the increasing polarisation of our society.

Honesty is about looking outwards, about becoming informed enough to see the world straight, about admitting that not all of our ideas are good ones, about truth telling, about truth living, about truth loving.