Class Work
Somebody, anybody, please tell me why these kids take so long to do anything? I gave them a simple assignment today. Timed Writing, multi-paragraph essay. They had to comment on the quote, "Honesty is the best policy." We spent the last week discussing the topic and reading the literature related to it. And yet, still I get 30 percent of the papers in the class incomplete. I wrote along with my honors class, which, as you might expect was the only class with both a 100 percent attendance rate, and a 100 percent assignment completion rate today. Here was my essay:
Honesty in all things is not always possible, nor do I feel that it is even necessarily desirable. Of course when faced with something that requires truth on a grand scale, we must bite the bullet and offer it up, but the small concealments and half-truths that we practice every day are the stuff with which society is bound together.
Small lies are crucial to maintaining a polite society. They grease the wheels of human interaction. If we had to practice absolute truth all of the time, civilization would cease to be civilized. It would dissolve into a morass of hurt feelings and anger. We use our “little white lies” to ease the feelings of those we care about. How many of us would admit to their mother that she had put on a few pounds, even if she begged for the “absolute truth.” We even use them to ease social situations. At a party recently, a woman standing nearby was carrying a purple satin purse with orange and red feathers around it. I thought it looked awful, but when we were introduced, I commented to her that the purse was “so interesting, and very creative.” It turned out she had designed the bag herself, and was thrilled with the compliment. We wound up chatting and she agreed give me an interview when she launched her website next spring. So, a small half-truth that cost me nothing to give away wound up getting me the goodwill of a new acquaintance and a possible lead on a story I can write later. In this case total honesty would have not brought nearly so great a reward.
Emily Dickinson’s poem "Tell all the Truth—but tell it slant" makes the same compelling point. She likens the truth to a bolt of lightning that can blind you if viewed head on. Dickinson advocates that the truth should be “gently eased”, given to the listener in such a way that they are not harmed by it. Hence the “slant”, the speaking of the truth tempered by kindness, by the notion that the feelings of the receiver be taken into account.
Truth is so often no more than the opinion of one person masked as universal law. And this is another problem with total honesty. It can sometimes be used to deliberately hurt someone. Insults and small digs are often expressed by someone who insists they “just wanted to be honest with you.” In fact, that very phrase—“Can I be honest with you?”—is one widely recognized by psychologists as a marker of just the opposite, the prevailing wisdom being that someone who is being honest with you does not feel the need to announce their intentions. A friend who gently tells you that your dress isn’t flattering before you leave the house is being honest. A friend who waits until you are out for the evening to tell you “honestly” that your outfit is all wrong probably is using that truth to make you feel bad, and also help make them feel bigger and more powerful you.
Total honesty is one of those things that we all say we want. But when we are faced with it, we often find that the truth is the last thing we want. We live in a society where the truth is bent constantly in everything, from advertising to politics to relationships. Some of us even lie to ourselves. We live in a fog of half-truths and light fabrications, but it is a happy fog, and the dimmed view we have of the world makes it much more tolerable.
Not bad for 45 minutes and at least 5 interruptions, huh?
