During my precious few experiences in the world, probably having met less than one percent of the world's population, I have come to the conclusion that the majority of humans lie.
To prevent myself from sounding like Dr. House, I should clarify the kinds of lies most people commit. While there are a small faction of people that blatantly lie about their elemental characteristics, the greater part lie on a more cursory level.
"Hey honey, how does this dress look on me?" Most significant others would respond with an affirmative answer, and rightfully so - there is no reason to make someone feel more self-conscious about themselves than they already do.
But when someone asks you, "What did you think of that poem that I wrote?" what are you to say? For a split second before I tell them that it was great, I think to myself, "You really call that piece of crap a poem?"
I know that I encounter situations like these on a daily, if not hourly basis. Then I deduce that my fellow citizens probably have the same experiences.
Where is the boundary between being polite and being a liar? And in the end, would you rather your friends tell you honestly that your new haircut looks like a ferret crapped on your head, or have them lie to you?
The level of honesty in a relationship, in the end, depends on the solidarity - how well do the two sides know each other; has the cement hardened yet?
Like me, most people wouldn't lie to the significant others of three years. Most people wouldn't lie to their mom or dad. Most people wouldn't lie to their best friend that they met in high school.
But those are relationships where relative courtesy is removed. I would care more to tell those people what I really think rather than appeasing them.
Being gentlemanly overcomes me when I'm dealing with people on a basic level. I would never slam someone directly to their face, no matter how much I hated them. And I would never want anyone to do that to me.
A question remains: are these polite actions idiosyncratic to me, or do all people favor kindness to honesty? Whichever it is, they should prefer kindness. To prove the point, lets consider the outcomes of the respective situations.
Recalling every English class I ever took, the process of peer editing was always a hassle, especially last semester in ENG101.
"Hey Josh, what did you think of my paper about Thoreau's 'Civil Disobediance?'"
When I peer edited this specific paper, I recall that the person didn't speak English very well now did he grasp the meaning of Thoreau's classic work, if he even read it.
Nevertheless, I responded, "Yeah, your paper was good. I made a few grammatical changes in the text, but overall it was good."
It's not that I didn't care about how the kid did in the class. On the contrary, I wanted to be as nice as I could to the kid. Knowing that he would not react well to criticism, as most people don't, I chose to be kind in a different way.
In reality, I would have been willing to sit down with the kid and show him all the mistakes he made. But whatever he would have gained from my exceedingly awkward critiques, he would have lost in pride.
Whether they should or not, most people would take personal offense to this for the following reason; honesty is directly related to judgment. And as much as people would like to deny it, they are always judging people for what they say, what they look like and what they do.
Even though none of us want to be judged, it is happening every second or every day. I don't want to have to live through the brutality of you telling me that my writing sucks or that my opinions are wrong. So I would never do that to anyone else.
In that sense, the old aphorism holds true: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
