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“Honesty under Pressure in the Modern World”
Presented by Richard Dowsett
Humanism can be seen as a project to find the best ways to achieve collaboration on the largest scale possible – between all of humanity and our environment. In so doing we seek to resolve conflicts as they arise and free up individuals to be their best. Our tools for achieving this global collaboration – rationality (understanding the states of things and how they interact) and compassion (an attitude towards living creatures that continually exceed the limits of our rational capacities).
Honesty sits at the heart of the Humanist Project. Collaboration is only possible when facts and feelings can be exchanged between individuals and groups reliably over an extended period to achieve shared goals and improved states of being. Collaboration breaks down when those exchanges are found to be misleading, overly self-serving, manipulative or indicative of hidden agendas or motives. Collaboration cannot be sustained over time when parties renege on their commitments or evade responsibility for their actions when mistakes are inevitably made.
But honesty is under pressure in the modern world. The very things that make us honest, the incentives that encourage us to be honest and the very sources of honesty and trust in our society are all in flux. What does this mean to our societies, to our interconnected systems and to our own lives as the “post-truth” world possibly evolves into a “post-honesty” one?
What is Honesty?
Honesty is a fundamental quality of being truthful, sincere, and transparent in thoughts, words, and actions. It involves being genuine and forthright in communication, adhering to moral and ethical principles, and representing oneself and the facts accurately without deceit, manipulation, or falsehoods.
At its core, honesty encompasses:
Truthfulness: Being truthful in conveying information, intentions, or feelings without intentionally misleading or distorting facts.
Integrity: Acting in alignment with one's values and principles, even in challenging or tempting situations, and maintaining consistency between thoughts, words, and actions.
Transparency: Openly sharing information or intentions, allowing others to understand your motives or actions clearly.
Accountability: Taking responsibility for one's actions, admitting mistakes or errors, and being accountable for the consequences of one's behavior.
In this definition, honesty is not only about telling the truth. Honesty is:
· a network of individual truths,
· aligned with a consistent set of values,
· shared as fully and accurately as possible,
· with due care and consideration for your interests and the interests of others,
· with an iterative correction mechanism.
What factors make honest people?
1. Ethical Upbringing - A person will be more personally honest when they are socialized into a family or community that makes honesty a central pillar, that rewards honesty with freedom and consistently acts honestly even when this compromises their short-term interests.
2. Life Experience – the observed outcomes of your own behaviours and all of those around you will teach you lessons about what is likely to happen when you are honest. To be fully honest is to be vulnerable. Many will witness this vulnerability being exploited and will become less honest thereby.
3. Empathy and Compassion: Understanding the impact of dishonesty on others and having empathy can deter individuals from engaging in dishonest behavior.
4. Personality – Honesty is generally correlated with the Big Five (Five Factor Model) trait of conscientiousness and the sub-traits trustworthiness and reliability. Such traits have been found to be generally consistent in individuals over time.
What factors make people honest (or less honest)?
1. Group Membership – we are more likely to be honest with those who are part of our in-group where trust, accountability and shared values and shared interests are perceived to be high (family, culture/religion, friend group).
2. Ethical Leadership and Role Models - Leaders and role models who demonstrate and encourage honesty can influence others to prioritize honesty in their own behavior.
3. Accountability – pervasive oversight, threat of negative consequence, clear individual responsibility combined with an authority structure tasked with enforcing accountability.
4. Existential Threat – a perceived threat to one’s survival can cause people to discard or pare back their honesty in favour of naked self-interest and survival.
5. Trust Level - There is a social advantage to honesty as it makes all interactions smoother and more efficient. But trust must be reciprocal for both parties to benefit. If perceived trust level is low, honesty will be diminished. “There is no honour among thieves”.
How has modern society shifted on each of these factors that impact people’s honesty?
1. Ethical Upbringing - Affiliation with communities that aspire to an ethical upbringing (religions and the like) has declined, though we might strongly question whether such affiliation was ever very effective. There has been no associated flocking to secular ethical communities though educational socialization does seem to have had a positive impact. Mostly I would see that the departure from traditional ethical communities has left an ethical vacuum. HONESTY IMPACT: indeterminate
2. Life Experience – life is materially better for the average modern person on most fronts. BUT, as life experience is a relative measure, many may feel their current life experience is comparably hard to times in the past but hard enough to negatively impact honesty? HONESTY IMPACT: Positive
3. Empathy and Compassion - Awareness of empathy and compassion have no doubt increased over time. The idea that we owe a duty of care to others is a now a key societal value in much of the western world. Whether this has translated into action is not easy to determine. HONESTY IMPACT: Possibly Positive
4. Group Membership – by all measures, group membership is declining as people continue to divide and subdivide themselves into narrowly defined communities made possible by the internet and social media. HONESTY IMPACT: Negative
5. Ethical Leadership and Role Models - The Leaders and role models today are chosen almost entirely for their fame, fortune and success, often in spite of their clear ethical failings. Lying, infidelity, rule breaking and greed have long ceased to be leadership disqualifiers. HONESTY IMPACT: Negative
6. Accountability – shirking personal responsibility is an international pastime. Anonymity can often be achieved and when it is penetrated, denying, deflecting and doubling-down is seen as a more effective defense than accepting and apologizing. Even those NOT implicated are tarred with the “they’re all the same” brush. HONESTY IMPACT: Negative
7. Existential Threat – Perceived threat is higher, on more levels, from more sources and is more pervasive than ever before. These threats don’t need to be physical. They can be social and psychological. They don’t need to be likely, only possible. Threat levels drive openness and trust levels down. HONESTY IMPACT: Negative
8. Trust Level – As Institutions (education, media, government, corporations etc.), once seen as sources of trust are “exposed” both legitimately and cynically, individuals retreat into their bubbles, not wanting to be fooled and seen as naïve. Trust No One is the mantra of our age. Conspiracy thinking pervades. HONESTY IMPACT: Negative
Questions:
1. What additional factors can you identify that impact honesty and what have the trends been, negative and positive?
2. How much do you adjust your levels of honesty to suit a given situation? Has this approach changed over your lifetime. If so, what has caused the changes?
3. The Impacts of Artificial Intelligence – increasingly convincing deep fake videos have been emerging to challenge our perceptions of reality or at the very least, call into question everything virtual. Seeing is no longer believing. How can we handle such large-scale obfuscation? Can we use good AI to fight malicious AI?
4. What are the costs of diminishing honesty?
5. As the larger concept of encompasses openness and transparency, honesty is a two-way street as HOW honest you are is in part determined by how honest other parties are perceived as (i.e. trusting vs trustworthy).
6. Will the Openness and Transparency component of Honesty go the way of the Passenger Pigeon and online privacy?
7. World societies view honesty in very different ways, seeing our reliance on it as quaint and naïve. In fact, in sectors of our own society (business dealings) we established contract law and legalism as a more reliable substitute for honesty to prevent abuse. Is the loss of honesty just the price we pay for a more advanced society?
Join us as we discuss, as honestly as we can…