Theists often argue that if there was no god, nothing would stop people from going on a crime rampage. They believe we need a supernatural deity to provide us with rules to live by. Yet societies across the world, no matter how isolated, no matter what their beliefs, have some societal rules and habits in common. It’s likely these common behaviours developed so widely because all of them are beneficial to human societies, whether they are in the Saharan desert, the gentle damp hills of England or the dense jungles around the Amazon river.
Being honest is considered a virtue everywhere. It’s easy to think of reasons why this may be so: honest people are more likely to be trusted, and being trusted is likely to be advantageous to you. When honesty is the norm, you have no reason to fret over whether you do or don’t have accurate information, leading to less stress, and more of the health benefits brought about by stress reduction. Lying also brings stress to the liar, as you have to pay attention to what you do and say to preserve your lies. Dishonesty can spin a sticky web around you, until you’re trussed up and suffocating. It’s best all around to just stick to the truth.
Read more:
Human Nature: Intrinsic similarities shared by all humans
Hear more:
Steven Pinker: The Blank Slate
Comments on: "Honesty" (4)
While I agree that honesty is usually the best policy, it’s difficult to think of it as a common value. People lie to each other all day, every day and if we were to tell the truth it would not benefit us. Telling the truth often creates pain that people don’t want to deal with. Theists lie and atheists lie. The common thing between everyone seems to be that we know what is “right” or what we see as right but are mainly too feeble to follow through. It seems like what is really most common among all people groups is to wear a mask, whether that mask is visible or not.
I have to take issue with your statement that people lie to each other all day, every day. That may seem to be the case, but it isn’t. If you think of the statements you made over the course of your day yesterday, how many would you say were true? How many were lies? Most people as a rule tell the truth. They lie, but that is the exception to the rule, and people for whom that is not the case quickly become known as liars, and are as a result not trusted.
However, my message in this post was not about the truthfulness of people in general, but that honesty is valued everywhere, that being truthful is a good thing, and that honesty is good for the individual and for society as a whole.
Yes, my thoughts on how honest people are is probably based on slightly black and white thinking, too.
Interestingly (and not just to debate, but it would be a lie of omission if I failed to mention it-hehe) in one of my recent psychology courses we talked about how many of our misconceptions about how humans are the same everywhere are simply not true.
As an example Clifford Geertz, and anthropologist, found that the Balinese have an entirely different sense of self than what he’d ever encountered before. In Bali when one is in public, what is most highly valued is a person who can play his or her role as if on stage. One slip of letting one’s true feelings show is considered deeply shameful. That’s not “truthful” at all.
We also learned of a tribe in the jungle who used lies to keep women as the subservient members of the tribe—they literally had huge masks and scary things hidden away that all the men in the village know about but no women ever did. They were terrified that if they disobeyed men the punishment would be one of these “evil creatures” coming to get them at night.
While I’d much prefer that honesty was valued I don’t think TRUE honesty is valued. Of course when it comes down to the big stuff (did my husband have an affair? Did my children break that vase?) we all say we value the truth. But most people tell only the amount of truth that will allow their peers to think of them as honest and trustworthy. This still serves evolutionary theory. If we are pack animals, it’s always in our best interest to be well-liked by the top dogs.
I hear you with the differences between people, but at the same time in that Steven Pinker talk I linked to he refers to the startling similarities that were found in people worldwide. I don’t have the individual references for his claim, but I would imagine he does.
I know this is anecdotal, but here’s something I found about honesty worldwide which supports the view that people are for the most part honest.