Freedom's Virtues—Honesty

In the first Daily Freedom in this series on “Freedom’s Virtues,” I listed the following virtues: integrity, responsibility, honesty, competence, productivity, dignity, and courage. The virtue of integrity was dealt with in that first article. responsibility was discussed in the previous article in this series. Honesty is the subject of this Daily Freedom

The Virtue of Honesty

When discussing ethical issues, there is a fundamental mistake that is almost always made, which is the assumption that ethical issues are primarily social issues. Ethical principles are not social in nature, but principles which determine what is right and wrong for individuals, how they must think, choose, and act if they want to live successfully and happily in this world.

One’s ethical principles will determine how they relate to other individuals in a society, but it is not those relationships that determine ethical right and wrong, but ethical principles that determine the appropriate relationships.

Honesty, as a virtue, is not about how one relates to others, but a fundamental principle of how one makes all their choices in accordance with a ruthless adherence to the truth. Since truth is that which identifies reality, honesty is living entirely in conformance with reality. The honest individual allows no evasion of any truth, no “faking” of reality, no pretension that anything is ever other than what it really is.

A Common Pretense

One of the most common evasions of truth is the pretense of ignorance. One may be truly ignorant of whether a thing is ethically wrong, or of consequence of a choice or action, but to use that ignorance as an excuse for doing something potentially wrong or a suspicion of wrong, is an evasion of reality. Old timers used say, “if it’s doubtful, it’s dirty,” with the illustration of a plate one is about serve a meal on, that doesn’t look quite right. Though one may not know the plate is dirty, if it is suspicious, they do not know it is clean. If it does happen to be dirty, and their are germs growing on the surface of the plate, an infection is possible. If one chooses not to use the plate, even if it happens to be clean and only look dirty, the only price is having to rewash and already clean plate, but the much more serious possibility of infection has been avoided.

The idea might seem be just playing it safe, but it is much more than that in ethical terms. The honest individual cannot do what they are not certain is ethically correct.

Consider the so-called MLM (multi-level marketing) schemes that so many fall for. Those who promote MLM schemes are completely unethical. They rationalize their dishonesty by the pretense of ignorance. They know that the only ones who actually “make money,” on these schemes are those who get in early. As the “market” for any one of these schemes (or scams, which is what they really are) becomes saturated, the late comers not only do not make any money, but lose whatever they have “invested” in the scheme. It is the money they lose that is the earlier player’s “profit.” Of course the MLM marketer doesn’t know who will win or lose or when, because he doesn’t know how long the scam will go on before it finally collapses. But he does know it will collapse and he does know innocent gullible people will lose their money. The MLM marketer is essentially a thief, whether he knows who the particular victims of his theft are, or not. It is totally dishonest.

Honesty First With Oneself

Honesty is nothing more then embracing reality in everything, especially about one’s self. One does not pretend, especially to oneself. One does not say, “I did the best I could,” if they quit when they could have gone on. One does not pretend to be what they are not, to themselves or anyone else. If one has a fault, it cannot be corrected if one pretends they do no have it.

Honesty Is The Health Of The Mind

The most common evasion of reality are all those thoughts and or behaviors one excuses with the idea that, “no one will know but me,” as though what made a thing right or wrong is what someone else thinks of it. The words, however, are a confession, that what one is about to think do is wrong. The mistakenly think that if no one else knows they have done something wrong, they will escape the consequences of doing wrong. They forget, the only person they cannot deceive about what they do is themselves, and their own mind will not let them off the hook.

It is not possible to deceive oneself. That feeling of guilt, the cause of which they cannot identify, is frequently the result of the attempt to evade reality. True ignorance does not lead to guilt, evasion is only possible where one knows or suspect the truth but refuses to acknowledge or examine it, or simply refuses to be conscious of it.

One’s mental health depends on ruthless honesty. The sense of that honesty is the sense of one’s rectitude, what the religious call “righteousness,” it is the consciousness that one is “right with the world,” because they are—all their thoughts and actions are in agreement with reality, with the truth which is the identification of that reality.

Freedom—Honest and True

If you want to be free you must first be honest in every thought, every choice, every act, because anything short of total honesty is an evasion of reality, the very reality one must be in conformance and agreement with to succeed in anything.

Perhaps the first thing you have to be honest about is, do you really want to be free? Most think they want to be free, but what most people want to be free from a “free from problems,” “free from difficulties,” “free from worry.” None of these is freedom. Freedom is freedom to do, and if you are doing something you will have problems, you’ll have resistance. It is impossible to move in this world without producing friction. Only the individual who is doing nothing has not problems. Nothing worthwhile doing is easy, easy is never doing anything hard. Everything in life is risky, and the greater the reward, the more risk there is. You can live without risk, without ever having to worry about anything, but you will have to be someone else’s slave.

Be honest. If you want to be free, you must be.