Honesty is the Best Policy?

      Recently I finished reading the Odyssey for a class and one of our main topics of discussion was the morals and values depicted in the Homeric epics compared to our contemporary society. We kept discussing how the Odyssey seems to praise cunning and trickery as exemplary qualities while today we typically consider such traits as negative qualities. But I couldn’t help but wonder if we actually believe that.

     I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase “honesty is the best policy” and I’m sure we’ve all shook our heads and acknowledged this.

Then why do we lie all the time?

     We’ve all probably been guilty of telling those little white lies around holidays or birthdays. Most of us lie when we check the box about having read the terms and conditions and agreeing to them. Then there are those everyday phrases like “I’m fine” or “I never got that message.”

If we consider honesty so important then why do we lie so often and why do we accept and tolerate these lies?

     I suppose the reason why people tell so many “little” lies is because we want to avoid confrontation. When your friends asks you why you didn’t text them back you’ll probably tell them you didn’t get the message rather than telling them you just didn’t feel like talking to them. Obviously you don’t want to hurt your friend’s feelings (or start a fight) so you tell a small fib. When we feel emotionally distraught, but don’t want to talk, we say we’re fine even though we aren’t. Lying seems to be a mechanism to avoid unpleasant situations.

     What may be more important than the amount of times we lie is how often we accept being lied to. We’ve all probably had a friend or family member lie to us and known it, and we’ve all probably had moments were we’ve accepted or ignored it. It often seems like we accept the small lies told to us by family and friends because the lies are small and usually harmless.

     Though small lies have a habit of growing into big issues. Remember that lie you told your friend about not receiving their message? Well, eventually your friend found out that you’ve gotten every single message and chose to ignore them. Needless to say your friend is extremely mad at you because you’ve betrayed their trust. So, what started out as a little harmless lie to avoid hurting your friend’s feelings actually hurt them more than if you’d just told them the truth.

     That scenario is small scale and doesn’t really have repercussions that affect a large quantity of people, but what if we consider lying politicians? It isn’t a secret that many politicians lie to us, make promises they have no intention of keeping, and purposely omit important information. This often makes voters upset and angry, but they vote for them anyway. Why? Most likely because we anticipate that politicians are going to lie to us or that it is the nature of a politician to be somewhat dishonest.

This seems incredibly dangerous.

     We expect dishonesty and so when they’re dishonest we still accept them and don’t really care about their deceit. This suggests a very dangerous form of apathy towards dishonesty. We accept people’s dishonesty, vote them into positions of power where they can go against some of their platform, and then we get upset when they make decisions that impact us negatively. Then a lot of times, we vote for them again because why should we expect any better?

But shouldn’t we expect better?

     Shouldn’t we – based upon those lovely mottos that are nearly pounded into our head – expect honesty from others? Shouldn’t we hold ourselves to these same expectations? Shouldn’t we, if our society really considers honesty to be an important moral value, not accept lying (no matter how small) and condemn the action?

     I realize that lying in many ways is bad habit and that we often tell lies without realizing. But even small lies can turn into disastrous situations that hurt people and large lies can only get bigger. Though, I think we are capable of breaking our habit of lying and with honesty create a kinder and more sympathetic society.