Here's a fairly simple question with what I fear is a fairly complex answer: At what point does honesty become selfish?
My first instinct is to say that honesty is never selfish, because people lie to cover their own flaws, and so therefore, when they tell the truth, they expose themselves to criticism, drama, and hatred.
But I don't think that's true, completely. At first, lying is caused by an urge to mask one's flaws. But the need to confess your sins comes later: when the guilt from your web of lies and secrets finally overrides the shame and negative consequences you anticipate for yourself when your secrets are revealed. The people who have gotten to this point, however, find themselves in a peculiar situation: when you have lied for months or years or weeks or decades, exposing that lie hurts everyone in its presence.
I know. I hurt someone who cares very much about me, and now feels they cannot trust me, because I kept a secret for months and then decided to suddenly drop it with no regard for their feelings. I did it to clear my guilty conscience, to make my life easier, and to make myself feel better about the things I had done. But all it did was hurt other people.
Maybe you're supposed to suffer a guilty conscience when you've done something wrong and lied about it. Maybe it's supposed to keep you up at night, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep and unable to bear being awake. Maybe that's your punishment for lying or cheating or stabbing someone in the back. And then, being honest to clear yourself of guilt you deserve, of suffering you've earned: that's just selfish. You'll hurt everyone in your path, and that's wrong. You have no right to ruin lives or break hearts or hurt others to clear your own soul.
So I suppose honesty can be selfish. Some secrets are better off kept, because opening up can mean opening up old wounds, creating new ones, or rubbing salt in ones that were just ready to heal. So either be honest from the start, or take your secrets to the grave.
I'll Keep You My Dirty Little Secret,
Rachel Leigh
This is a blog about things, about thinking about things, about talking about things, and about being as snarky and poignant as I can manage. I hope you enjoy it.
It's easier if you just never tell lies. If it's selfish to be honest and "better" to keep a lie going for the sake of others, then when does the cycle stop? It's foolish.
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary keeping a lie going to "spare" others is really being selfish because really you're not trying to protect them-- you've proved that by not being honest to them in the first place-- you're trying to protect yourself and attempting to not lose someone who gives you comfort. The worst part of this is you're being duplicitous on many levels; not only is there the lie, but you're also saying that you don't trust them to understand, to forgive you, to continue being their friend. It shows you lack the respect for them to actually communicate your true self.
Honesty is the only worthwhile. This doesn't mean "I won't tell lies" but also that you will act according to who you are, that you will be true to yourself, that you will be true to everyone else and not distort who you are. Without honesty what is the point of even communicating? Brings to mind something about misinformation being worse than no information at all.
Or of course, you could do what I do. And tell as many lies as possible. So long as you keep yourself consistent you can weave such a web of deceit around yourself that people won't even know what to make of you.
ReplyDeleteAnd here is where we get stuck. If telling the truth is selfish, and telling lies is selfish, then what do we do? It seems as though our only choice is to choose the lesser of two evils, and this is hardly a preferable option, is it?
ReplyDeleteIt is because of this that we must ignore selfishness for the time being. By being even more involved in analyzing and condemning our own actions, thwarting and forcing ourselves to do good simultaneously, we only make things harder on ourselves. We must accept that every human has a base, underlying reason of selfishness in every action that we do--of course this is so, this is what gives us the drive to create, to do, to live. In fact, we crave other people's selfishness--we want someone, more often than not, to say that they'd rather have us than anyone else, that they would do whatever they can to be with us because that is what makes them happy. People can only be truly happy when being selfish—even when they do seemingly selfless acts, like volunteering, they are doing it because they want to do it, and this is selfish.
Is selfishness really that bad? Sure, people can do very cruel things when acting purely for selfish motives. But people can also do very beautiful things. Is the act of creating a beautiful sculpture now ruined simply because the artist created it for himself? Is the scientific achievement lessened because the scientist was driven by her own selfish desire? We must act not only for others, but for ourselves in most circumstances, or else things would never get done, and we would not be being completely hones. In relationships, we must be selfish--we must do all we can to figure out our feelings, despite how this might hurt the other person--so that we can then be selfless, and sacrifice for the other person freely. If we circumvent this step, we eventually end up hurting the other person regardless of our pure motives--and isn't that then selfish in a way, too?
(This is a continuation of the above comment.)
ReplyDeleteNo matter how good of a person we are, no matter how hard we try, someone will always end up hurt. The object is not to prevent pain on all forms--the object is to make ourselves, and in extension, others, happier. By suffering silently, you may have passive-aggressively hurt your friend regardless of whether or not you were honest with him. Perhaps by being honest with him, you have released him from a burden and have spared him future pain. Who can know? But you are happier for the telling--and eventually, you will hopefully regain his trust and be completely honest in the first place the next time a similar situation occurs.
By not being honest, you may have held repressed bitterness in your heart. This may have been expressed, as I mentioned, passive-aggressively, or it would have been at least a barrier between the two of you. The expression of emotions, be they selfish or not, is integral to the sharing of good feelings between people--if you let the guilt fester in your heart like an open wound, perhaps the pain would have been released upon him but with more devastating effects in the future.
(This is a continuation of the above comment.)
ReplyDeleteNo matter how good of a person we are, no matter how hard we try, someone will always end up hurt. The object is not to prevent pain on all forms--the object is to make ourselves, and in extension, others, happier. By suffering silently, you may have passive-aggressively hurt your friend regardless of whether or not you were honest with him. Perhaps by being honest with him, you have released him from a burden and have spared him future pain. Who can know? But you are happier for the telling--and eventually, you will hopefully regain his trust and be completely honest in the first place the next time a similar situation occurs.
By not being honest, you may have held repressed bitterness in your heart. This may have been expressed, as I mentioned, passive-aggressively, or it would have been at least a barrier between the two of you. The expression of emotions, be they selfish or not, is integral to the sharing of good feelings between people--if you let the guilt fester in your heart like an open wound, perhaps the pain would have been released upon him but with more devastating effects in the future.
Ahh, excuse the double posting! Er, triple, now. :[
ReplyDelete