Honesty - the Best Policy Essay Example for Free

Honesty the Best Policy EssayHonesty is the human quality of communicating and playing truthful and with impartiality, as best one is able. It is denoted to truth as a value. This includes listening, reasoning and some(prenominal) action in the human repertoire as well as speaking. Superficially, ingenuousness means simply, stating facts and views as best one truly believes them to be. It includes both honesty to another(prenominal)s, and to oneself (see self-deception) and intimately ones avow motives and inner reality.Western views on honestySince the quality of honesty applies to all carriages, one cannot refuse to consider factual information, for example, in an innocent manner and still claim that ones knowledge, belief or position is an attempt to be truthful. Such a belief is clearly a product of ones desires and simply has nothing to do with the human ability to know. Basing ones positions on what one wants rather than unbiased evidence gathering is dishone st even when just intentions can be cited after all even Hitler could cite good intentions and intended glory for a select base of people.Clearly then, an unbiased approach to the truth is a requirement of honesty. Because intentions are closely related to fairness and certainly affect the degree of honesty/dishonesty, there is a wide spread confusion approximately honestyand a general belief that world dishonest means that one alwayscorrectly downstairsstands if their behavior is either honest or dishonest. Self-perception of our honorableity is non-static and volatile. Its often at the moment we refuse to consider other perspectives that there is a clear indication we are not pursuing the truth, rather than simply and simply at the moment we can muster up evidence that we are right.Socrates had much to say about truth, honesty and morality, and explained that if people really understood that their behavior was wrong then they simply wouldnt do it by definition. Unfortuna tely, honesty in the western tradition has been marginalized to specific instances perhaps because a thorough understanding of honesty collides with ideologies of all types. Ideologies and idealism often exaggerate and suppress evidence in order to support their perspectives at the expense of the truth.This process erodes the ractice and understanding of honesty. To an ideologist the truth quite often becomes insignificant, what matters most are their ideals and what ever so supports their desires to enjoy and spread those ideals. Human beings are inherently biased about what they believe to be good due to individual tastes backgrounds, that once one understands that a decidedly biased approach to what is authoritative is inherently dishonest, one can also understand how idealism and ideology have poorly served the ask for an honest, moral society.Both honesty and morality require that we base our opinions about what is good upon unbiased ideas of what is dead on target r ather than vice versa (determining what is true ground on what we feel is good) the way all ideologies would have us believe. The studies of Confucius about honesty Confucius recognized several aims of honesty, fundamental to his ethics His shallowest concept of honesty was implied in his arbitrariness of Li all actions committed by a person to build the ideal society aiming at meeting their surface desires of a person either immediately (bad) or longer term (good).To know that one sought immediate gratification could however make a bad act better, and to disguise ones long term goals could cloud a good act. A key principle was that a man must strive to convey his feelings honestly on his face, so that these could help each other line up for long term gain for all. So there was a visible relation between cartridge holder horizon, etiquette and ones image of oneself even in the mirror. This generates self-honesty and keeps such activities as business calm, unsurprising, and aboveboard.In this conception, one is honest because it suits ones own self-interest only. Deeper than Li was Yi or righteousness. Rather than pursuing your own interests you should do what is right and moral based on reciprocity. Here too time is central, but as a time span since your parents washed-out your first three years raising you, you spent three mourning them after they die. At this level one is honest about ones obligations and duty. Even with no one else to keep you honest or to relate to directly, a deeply honest person ould relate to ancestors as if they were alive and would not act in ways that would make them ashamed. This was part of the moral code that included ancestor worship, but Confucius had made it rigorous. The deepest level of honesty was Ren, out of which flowed Yi and thus Li. Confucius morality was based upon empathy and understanding others, which required understanding ones own moral core first, rather than on divinely ordained rules, which could si mply be obeyed.The Confucian version of the prospering Rule was to treat your inferiors as you would want your superiors to treat you. Virtue under Confucius is based upon harmony with others and a recognition of the honest reality that eventually (say in old age) one will come under the power of others (say ones children). So this level of honesty is to actually put oneself in context of ones whole vivification and future generations and choose to do or say nothing that would not reflect ones familys honour and repute for honesty and acceptance of truth, such as eventual death.Partially because of incomplete understanding of these deeper notions of honesty among Westerners, in Asiatic countries it is common to refer to those who do not have them as barbarians. While sometimes Asian cultures sanction an almost intolerable degree of delay and ambiguity for Western tastes, it is very often to turn away lying, or giving a positive impression where doubt exists. These would be thou ght dishonest by Asians. Thus pressing for a decision on a matter where it is not yet feasible to give an honest commitment or answer is seen as extremely rude in effect, forcing soul to choose to be either rude or dishonest.Both being unthinkable in traditional culture, one thus delays. A Buddhist teaching on honesty Thanissaro Bhikkhu taught Real honesty is being honest about what your possibilities are, what your potentials are. Thats where true honesty lies. It stretches us. Its not simply admitting where we are thats a beginning step, its not the end step. So be honest about where you are but also be honest about what your possibilities are. That keeps the challenge of the path always before us.