我们每个人都希望自己的朋友、同事对自己真诚

表面上看，诚实是一件很容易的事情

可是事实是这样的吗？

一起来看看下面的英语文章

What is honesty?

On the surface, honesty is a fairly simple thing: the accurate representation of the way the world is, at least from your perspective. This is easy enough to comprehend when you’re stating a fact: “the sky is blue” is either true or false; honesty means saying the true thing. It’s slightly less clear when talking about opinions: “the babaganoush is tasty” is not true or false in any absolute sense – it is only true in relation to the taste of the person reporting on it. In this case, honesty means declaring your actual opinion – even though to another person, it might be wrong.

But beyond the dictionary sense of what the word itself means, there’s the way that being honest acts in the world. Honesty isn’t just a word, it’s a characteristic of an act, behavior, or personality. It’s the difference, for example, between an “honest living” and a dishonest one – the criminal might not tell a single lie in the course of his or her day, but we wouldn’t necessarily call him or her “honest”.

As a way of being and doing in the world, honesty is about trust – it’s about convincing others that we are to be trusted, and it’s about trusting others to be able to deal with the truth as we report it. Consider some of the situations that might lead us to be dishonest:

    * We want something from someone, and have nothing to offer in return.
    * We are afraid we’ll be punished for something.
    * We are afraid we’ll hurt someone’s feelings.
    * We don’t want someone to think badly of us.
    * We don’t want someone to do better than us.
    * We are protecting someone.
    * We are protecting ourselves.
    * We are protecting other people’s image of ourselves.
    * We are protecting our own image of ourselves.
    * We dislike someone.

These are all purposely vague, and possibly overlapping depending on particular situations. The point isn’t to catalogue every possible reason for lying, but to demonstrate that most often, dishonesty is provoked by fear and danger.

Thus, the salesperson lies because he is afraid of losing a sale. The significant other lies because she is afraid of hurting his or her partner’s feelings (and thus possibly losing the partner himself). The employee lies because she is afraid of getting fired, or of getting arrested. The spouse lies because he is afraid of breaking up his marriage. The student lies because she is afraid of failing a class. The criminal lies because he is afraid of being arrested, or of calling down revenge on himself. The doctor lies because she is afraid the patient will sue her (and she could possibly lose her license). The politician lies because he dislikes everyone – and because he is afraid of losing the next election.

Think of all the times you might have been dishonest, even just a little, even just by telling a little white lie? What were you afraid of?

How does it feel to live in fear? How does it feel to give in to it?