Rampant dishonesty.
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Most people would describe themselves as honest. And most of them would be lying. Not intentionally, in a devious, twirly moustache kind of way, but in an unconscious, unaware way.
If you’re reading this, you probably think of yourself as a decent, truth-telling kind of person. I do too.
You generally don’t tell lies, you’re honest with your partner and your friends, you don’t lie to your boss or your colleagues. Generally honest. Generally.
There are layers of fallacy to this, perhaps helpful, perhaps unavoidable but that need to be reckoned with if we seek to live better lives.
Perhaps our most consistent source of dishonesty is the lies we tell to ourselves. To some extent, this is unavoidable. As we move through our development from children to adults, we develop a series of personas, the parts of our ego consciousness that interact with the outside world.
Each one is a performance to some extent, a role we play based on a story we have formulated. This may have been given to us or developed internally. And these stories change over time.
If you reflect on the story you tell of your childhood now, it’s probably quite different to what you told five or ten years ago. It’s likely wildly different to the childhood story you told as a teenager.
The change to the story comes from a combination of time, maturity, knowledge and development. But no matter what story you’re telling, it’s highly probable that it still includes some deception, whether intentionally or not.
We might even need these myths as fuel for our lives - the childhood poverty we experienced, for example, can become the reason we are so keen to accumulate material wealth, when the real reason might actually be that we quite like having money and stuff.
“True words are often unpleasant; pleasant words are often untrue.”
- Lao-Tzu
This is normal, perhaps even essential. We all fabricate stories about who we are, a personal myth that gives some structure or narrative to our lives. A lot, of course, depends on the myth we are telling ourselves.
What, though, of the smaller lies we tell, both to ourselves and others? What about how we present our private lives for example: “Oh, I don’t eat anything with refined sugar”; “I don’t really use social media, it’s just for work”; “Yes, I never watch porn/reality TV”.
We sometimes lie about our core values, the supposedly immutable drivers of our lives. We’ll say we care deeply about climate collapse or inequality, but our behaviour, our lifestyles and our political votes contradict this.
In organisations, this struggle with honesty is perhaps best exemplified by the difficulty most managers have in giving regular feedback. They will typically over-index on either being overly complimentary, thus robbing people of valuable developmental input, or towards articulating weaknesses without recognition of what has been done well.
Why all this deception? Why the struggle to be truthful?
Attempting to be truly honest is a deeply painful and humbling project. To practice this for even a single day puts us into encounter with all manner of cognitive dissonance, social expectations and uncomfortable truths.
Of course, we might argue that some lies are socially valuable. When your well-meaning aunt gives you a hideous sweater for Christmas, isn’t it just polite and nice to say “Aww, thanks, I really love it,”?
“The most exciting relationships are where the contract is to share truth. Many relationships don't have that kind of a contract. They have a contract of you won't threaten my ego and I won't threaten yours. We'll both feel comfortable.”
- Ram Dass
Maybe. Or maybe it’s a slippery slope from this social nicety to telling bigger porkies all the time. The less we practice telling people who we are and what we really want, the more we will encounter the temptation to lie.
Years ago, I had a friend who knew I appreciated good whisky but would always buy me a bottle of eye-wateringly peaty scotch for my birthday. It often smelt more like a medicine or something I should wash my floors with, but I didn’t have the courage to tell him I preferred something subtler and sweeter, particularly as it was expensive stuff. Thus, I ended up with a shelf of whisky that I didn’t drink or like because I couldn’t be honest.
Honesty is a commitment to be practiced endlessly. There is a reason that many of the more challenging personal development or healing rituals, including the 12-step programme, emphasise practicing deep personal honesty and personal integrity.
The Conscious Leadership Group, who work with executives and leaders all over the world, emphasise 15 commitments for conscious, healthy, high-impact leadership. Several of them emphasise truth.
There is Candor for example: “I commit to saying what is true for me. I commit to being a person to whom others can express themselves with candor”.
There is also Gossip, or rather not gossiping: “I commit to ending gossip, talking directly to people with whom I have an issue or concern, and encouraging others to talk directly to people with whom they have an issue or concern.”
To embody just these two principles is a challenging task, particuarly in environments and cultures where subtle dishonesty and obfuscation might be the norm.
Unless we are willing to be as honest as possible with ourselves and with others, it is unlikely we will make the change we are seeking in our lives - or in the world. Without radical honesty, it is too easy to make the petty bargains and small fibs that undermine the whole thing:
“This one chocolate bar won’t hurt, it’s been a tough day and I have been to the gym…”
“Just one cigarette after dinner, that’s all, I won’t have any more…”
“It was just a little kiss and a fondle when I was drunk, it doesn’t mean anything…”
I’m not saying one leads to the other like a gateway drug, but something more important, and that is inner and outer coherence. In other words, do I speak and behave in a way that is consistent with my actual inner thoughts, beliefs and values? If not, why not?
At its most extreme, this incoherence can look like personality disorders such as psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism (sometimes referred to collectively as the Dark Triad).
At this stage, it’s hardly revelatory to suggest that the world is currently run by people with a high degree of Dark Triad traits, which would explain the daily experience many of us have of living inside the mind of Patrick Bateman.
But I wonder too, whether we’re all a little bit ‘Dark Triad’, whether our society encourages and rewards it? And if so, are we not sustaining the very culture and conditions that keep us in this worsening predicament?
If we are not willing to be honest about our own role and position in the human project, how do we expect society to change?
Is it better to pretend we care about the environment because we do easy things like recycle and have an EV whilst living a life that is generally extractive, or is it better to have a diesel 4x4 and declare “I’m not really fucked about climate change to be honest”? At least the latter is coherent and gives us a truer view of where things stand.
Perhaps it is not the undesirable yet honestly spoken truth that is the issue, perhaps it is our small dishonesties everywhere - in our relationships, our politics, our organisations - that are really killing us.
“Realisation itself is synonymous with truth, authenticity, and honesty. Tell the truth today, all the time. Be honest, be real, be authentic—not only with others but also in your own self, even with the dialogue in your mind. You’ll realize that being truthful may reveal more than you imagined.”
— Adyashanti
Tipping Point: navigating collapse and crisis.
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
— ‘Small Kindnesses’ by Danusha Laméris
About me.
I’m a leadership coach, consultant and facilitator living in Berlin.
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Thank you Jindy, this was a great read. I love your line about living inside the mind of Patrick Bateman! And I absolutely buy the idea that inner honesty is the deep work.