I didn’t call you selfish, callous, or evil. I said the acts were. If I had intended to insult you I wouldn’t have done so indirectly.
I’ll give you a situation in which I felt it was immoral to tell the truth. When one of my cousins was dying of AIDS – and I mean literally on his deathbed – several of his relatives refused to come visit him unless he repented of the “sin” of homosexuality; they didn’t want his boyfriend allowed in the hospital room either. My cousin’s brain was swiss cheese at this point; for instance, every time he saw me he got tremendously happy, because he thought he hadn’t seen me in years. He asked several times if his beloved Aunt & Uncle were coming to see him; one of my brothers and one of his decided to tell him that they were on the way and that they wanted him to know they loved him and accepted him as he was.
At a minimum, telling our dying kisnsman the truth would have been stupid of my brother and cousin. More likely it would have been selfish, evating their moral comfort over his dying pain. At worse it would have been sadistic.
Is there any ideal that is important to you for its own sake?
This is pretty simple for me, I’m looking at the question more as “would I rather be remembered as an honest person, or a nice person.” I’d choose the first one hands down.
That said, there’s a significant amount of overlap between these two things, where one can consider how one words things to avoid being overly harsh, but it can quickly devolve into white lies if not careful. Either way, I try to establish with people I know that I’m a straight shooter and I say what I mean and I expect the same thing from people talking to me. It actually works quite well except when people expect lie to me or expect me to deviate from it myself.
That said, I will lie on occasion, but it’s usually in situations where there’s a huge downside in being inconsiderate and little or no gain in being honest. That is, I don’t say even the smallest amount of truth is infinitely more valuable than consideration, but it certainly is a lot more.
Although, also in consideration is that truth isn’t necessarily a single value. With the Liar Liar, when he got pulled over by the cop and the cop asked if he knew why he got pulled over, there’s a whole spectrum of answers that would have been 100% factually accurate. Hell, a flat out no would have been absolutely truthful because, while he knew he broke some laws, he can’t say with any certainty which violations he was pulled over for. After all, the cop is only interested in knowing so he can get a confession out of you, so you’re also answering the implied question of him asking if you want to incriminate yourself. I would still say that giving a factually correct but misleading answer (eg, “meaning of is”) is being dishonest, but that’s starting to get into the gray area which probably isn’t really relevant.
I think there’s ways to answer those questions being both completely honest and not hurting people either.
Using the first one as an example, many people would just lie to their kids and say yes. Instead, I would ask what the kid is really asking. Is he asking whether he thinks it’s a wonderful piece of art? Or is he asking if he thinks it’s a good expression and that he appreciates it as a gift? I don’t think you’ll see a lot of 4 year old kids thinking they’re some kind of artistic genius, I think more just want to know if their parents appreciate that they made something for them. If you’re genuinely saying yes because of that, not only are you still being honest and not hurtful, you’re actually getting much closer to what the kid actually wants to know.
For the second question, well, it’s a bad question. What does she really want to know? Do they look good on her? What if they don’t make her look fat, but they’re still somehow unflattering? Is she looking for an opinion on how she’s dressed? Is she looking for an opinion on what you think of her in general? In the past I’ve been asked similar questions, and I’ve always answered honestly. I never said “yes, they make you look fat.” But if I liked them, I’d say so, and if not, I’d say not and why not. The only time I remember a girl getting upset about my response was when I was asked something like “How do I look?” and I said she looked good “…what do you mean good? You don’t think I look great? I spent 2 hours…” But, well, the relationship was already going down the drain by that point, so there were other problems.
For the third, I don’t believe in heaven per se, though I do believe in a type of afterlife. But even if I didn’t, does it matter? What is that person really asking? Are they religious and looking for reassurement? Are they non-religious and having last minute doubts? What they’re really looking for is comfort and you can give comfort in response to that question without going on some tirade about why heaven doesn’t exist or why their beliefs are wrong or whatever. Hell, even being “nice” and saying yes probably won’t be a whole lot of comfort to them, especially if they never really believed, so you’re probably even failing at being nice in that case too.
Oh, good grief. The four-year-old you’re postulating doesn’t understand the distinctions you’re trying to draw, because she’s a freaking four-year-old. Your attempt to divert the kid’s attention is just going to confuse the kid, without doing anything to provide something that four-year-olds need: knowledge of their parents’ unstinting love.
Not that it’s generally an issue. I don’t fool myself that I am any sort of valid judge of anything my son or nieces or nephew ever showed me when they were little, because in my heart they were magic; I loved every picture or story they wrote because they had written it. They’re probably not as beautiful as I thought, for that matter.
And if you don’t think your four-year-old kid is a gift from Athena there’s something wrong with you.
Well yeah, there are ways to answer those questions that both take a stab at niceness and avoid according-to-Hoyle lies, but that doesn’t *necessarily *mean they’re honest.
Taking the child’s drawing, for instance, assuming the child is actually asking about the quality of the artwork (which would be my assumption is most cases), telling her that you love her and that her gift makes you so happy may be a non-lie that caters to her emotions, but it’s still a deception (or, at best, a deflection).
There is a large element of “it depends”, but I lean more toward being considerate rather than honest. If being honest will cause hurt feelings without any useful benefit then I will go with being considerate of the feelings of others. However, sometimes the benefit of being honest outweighs the impact on someone else’s feelings (“Do you like the stud I just got in my tongue?” “No, to be honest I don’t because you can potentially get a serious infection and cause yourself a lot of problems”).
It sounds to me in those cases like you’re reframing a lie so much so that it appears, in your mind, to be truth. That in itself is dishonest. But it seems like you’d do it for compassionate reasons, so it’s all good.
I went with consideration of feelings, and I don’t think it was hard to pick at all. In my experience, people who claim to value truth above all else either;
a) believe that there are no details about their own personality and life that are subject to criticism because they are arrogant and self righteous, or
b) believe that there are no details about their own personality and life that are subject to criticism because they are completely blind to the obfuscation created by the considerate people around them.
There are times to tell the truth, there are times to lie. To pretend otherwise is incredibly naive, but in normal, day-to-day-type situations it’s generally much better to… buffer the truth, than wield it with conviction.
Honesty is the best policy, but not striclty the only allowable one.
The example that I think of is one my grandmother used to give. If someone says to you “Isn’t Daphne’s dress lovely?”, with Daphne standing right there, and it isn’t, answering “No” isn’t considerate.
Grandma’s suggestion, and my aim is to find a response that is still truthful, but also won’t hurt anyone’s feelings. “The flowers really match your eyes” or “That’s a good length on you” could be true of a dress that isn’t lovely, and aren’t lies.
Fidelity to the truth. Except for the tiniest, most bland of social niceties, it is more important to be truthful. Makes life a lot easier. You don’t have as many friends, but the ones you DO have are awesome.
But what’s the point of the compromise? The “that’s a good length for you” line would likely leave the person with the impression that you thought the dress did look nice (which is no doubt the point). If someone asks what you’re opinion is about X, and you want to mislead them, what difference does it make if you lie outright or just help them along into drawing their own mistaken inference?
If a yes answer to “do you like the dress?” is going to cause it to go into production for the Spring season I’d tell the unvarnished truth.
The premise of my thinking is that lying takes something away from the liar. If I say I like the dress when I don’t I can no longer call myself an honest person, and being an honest person is important to me. It is also important to me to be a kind person. Finding something nice to say that is based on truth serves both of those purposes.
What would be served by a flat “no”? I may have preserved my own honesty, but likely have hurt both the dress wearer, and the asker, who either really did like the dress or was asking as a way to lift up the wearer.
I’m a firm believer in telling the truth, but there’s never anything to be gained if telling the truth is just plain cruelty. Not that I’m advocating lying, but it’s occasionally better to say nothing than to cause needless pain. I’m no sadist and I don’t enjoy the pain of others, even if it’s the truth.
It seems like all of the examples in this thread where honesty > others’ feelings still have better overall outcomes. Telling the truth to a congressional inquiry might hurt Roderick Femm’s wife, but it would benefit everyone else involved in the inquiry, because it would help exonerate innocent people and set the record straight for the future.
Can anyone think of a situation where the person (and/or everyone involved) is genuinely worse off after the truth being told? Does truth win out then?