"A man who is always honest is a child" ~ is this true or is this not true? | INFJ Forum

"A man who is always honest is a child" ~ is this true or is this not true?

jupiterswoon

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Mar 30, 2012
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I have a really hard time not being honest, and sometimes I think it does turn people off because I can be so honest, but it's hard for me to be any other way.

What are your thoughts on honesty, pro's and con's....

Do you think that it's important to maintain some air of mystique and not to give away everything? Does that feel hard to do as an INFJ?
 
I do try to be pretty honest, but I don't want to give away ALL my secrets :) I think white lies are ok; if they are used to make people feel better.
 
Giving away everything isn't honesty, it's lack of inhibition.

There's nothing important about being mysterious. There is something important about respecting boundaries, though.
 
Lying isnt hard for me and neither is telling the truth.i usually say exactly what others want to hear and what would benefit me most. You have to grow up sometime.
 
Blindly believing in "honesty is always the best policy" is not a good idea, certainly. Being honest is simply not always the best or most moral course of action.
 
I am honest to the people who matter to me. Everyone else gets a facade that keeps them at arms length for my own personal protection. Honesty is usually the wrong policy, people want to be lied to. Very very few people have the balls to accept reality and truth as it is and not as they wish it to be.
 
I'm usually pretty straightforward and honest, simply because I dislike omitting details - it feels deceitful. I fail to see how that makes a man a child (children are deceitful little turds!) =P

Being honest doesn't mean that I'll disclose anything and everything on a whim, I might just pull faces, shrug a question off or refuse to comment "because I don't feel like providing input."
When I try to be nice, soften the truth or tell people what they want to hear, it usually impacts them negatively in the long run. (That's what happens when people value your advice and trust your opinion, and you're too callous, schadenfreude or simply too 'childish' to give them honest answers.)
 
I'd be more apt to say that a man who is always deceitful is a child. For me, I'd rather be honest so that I don't have to remember and keep track of any lies. Selfish? Probably. Do I care? Not really. It makes my life a hell of a lot easier.
 
Being honest isn't the easiest option and it's up to you to take it or leave it. Yes, it is abrasive in the long run but it makes me feel better than saying "yes" when my whole being is crying out "no". Even when I was drunk ten years ago I still said something that I didn't exactly regret because I meant every word of it. Holding back, however, is useful :D when you hold back at the right moment.

There are situations when you have to lie your ass off, I think. Like in war, perhaps. Luckily I wasn't there but I imagine telling lies could be a necessary skill.
 
Being honest is good for the soul. It keeps you feeling free. I have a really hard time lying but I'm great at keeping certain things swept under the rug. Certain things just feel better left unsaid. Certain things in the past that I'm not sure are normal or not, I just don't tell people because I'm not sure how it will be interpreted. People tend to be very scared of other people. It doesn't take much to be written off as strange or scary.3

About honesty being manly, yeah you should hide some things if you want to be perceived as "manly". Never show your weakness.
 
Cephalus, a rich, well-respected elder of the city, and host to the group, is the first to offer a definition of justice. Cephalus acts as spokesman for the Greek tradition. His definition of justice is an attempt to articulate the basic Hesiodic conception: that justice means living up to your legal obligations and being honest. Socrates defeats this formulation with a counterexample: returning a weapon to a madman. You owe the madman his weapon in some sense if it belongs to him legally, and yet this would be an unjust act, since it would jeopardize the lives of others. So it cannot be the case that justice is nothing more than honoring legal obligations and being honest.

source:
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/republic/section1.rhtml
 
Consistent, unceasing honesty for its own sake is pretty childlike, I'd say. Considering it morally objectionable or any number of other well-founded reasons is another matter, but it is not intrinsically a good thing.
When we grow up, it's pretty normal to be forthright about your opinion (except where it's uncomfortable.) We are adamant in one belief or another and tell other people what we truly believe when they ask. Naturally that leads to a lot of petty grade-school squabbles. It becomes conditioned into you, over time, to learn to lie in order to minimize conflict. One could consider that a maturing effect.

Think about how much throw-away talk you participate in each day, and how often you incidentally lie during those brief encounters with acquaintances. If you were honest every time someone picked up a smalltalk conversation with you, you could find yourself in hot water pretty fast, especially in the workplace.

At the same time, lying constantly is perhaps worse than being honest constantly if it's done without basis. Compulsive lying, for example, is a big problem with some people, and can be a sign of mental instability.

Personally, I enjoy both in moderation. I prefer to be honest, but I will occasionally lie in the sense that I evade questions and answer them only in part, out of context, or in an obfuscating fashion. I use vague statements (which could be considered dishonest) because telling a complete lie is usually difficult for me if I don't have it in mind beforehand.
 
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According to Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development - Up until the age of 7 or so - children have no ability to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Not really. Then they move into the black and white phase as they learn what's real and what's not. This goes on till about 10 or so and then they start learning about deception and the "gray" area.

So I think the OP statement refers to the that early developmental stage of children when they tell it as they see it - whether it's real or not. They haven't yet developed the ability to deceive.

One must ask: Why do we as a society expect and even praise deception and lying?

Personally I would love to live in a world where everyone tells you the truth - like - on purpose.

I don't like to lie and I'm not very good at it. It's too hard to keep it from showing up on my face. LOL
 
One must ask: Why do we as a society expect and even praise deception and lying?

Presumably the standard answer would be that, depending on context, it can be considered uncouth or even disrespectful to express one's honest thoughts.

More likely, however, it's that we see good liars not only as outwardly intelligent, but also daring, two qualities which are invariably magnetizing to most people.
 
Honesty is a careful balancing act. Know yourself, know your audience, know the context... things to consider: integrity, trust, needed and desired results/outcomes, relationships, boundaries, safety.
I don't think too many people appreciate a sense of secrecy, but other mysterious qualities may be fine.

The quote doesn't ring a bell for me. I think it takes maturity and character to be honest with oneself as an adult, even though being honest with others to the point of no inhibition can be childlike. But I don't believe the two are mutually inclusive.
 
No, you should never ever lie, because it's most certainly bad. By the way, what's your social security number?
 
No, you should never ever lie, because it's most certainly bad. By the way, what's your social security number?

I can honestly say that I'm not going to tell you… omission isn't lying.

I think honesty is a GREAT thing… I don't care if it IS childish, if someone is honest then I think more of them not less.
 
Blindly believing in "honesty is always the best policy" is not a good idea, certainly. Being honest is simply not always the best or most moral course of action.

I think that it almost always is… unless someone's life hangs in the balance or whatever. The problem is more likely to be that someone is too sensitive to criticism, or that you're being pressured to give your 'honest opinion' when you haven't actually formed an opinion yet. I would say if you're more honest then you're more likely to find a job that you really like, and as long as you know yourself and you're honest with yourself, then you can probably figure out how to relate to people better and people will respect you for being sincere.

But yes, I do think that there are things you shouldn't feel obligated to discuss-- in which case you can just say 'I'm not going to tell you' or refuse to give an answer. It's not immoral, and it's not the same thing as overtly lying to someone.
 
I don't know why openness and living like an open book has anything to do with honesty in general. Lying is being dishonest, but why does hiding a secret room for oneself and one's closest friends so bad? Does that make it dishonest? I think not. Most people would simply walk away if I tried to relive my entire day at day's end with them. I cannot seem to get a full paragraph in without being interrupted anyway. Why bother?........................Revealing one's innermost feelings is much easier to someone that listens with interest and shares their feelings with you.............I have found different people to get different results from me according to "their" attitude.
 
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The only way I can conceive of honesty being childish is when the person who is being honest does so without an awareness of the possible consequences. In comparison, when an individual is honest in the presence of the awareness of possible consequences, and from rational choice (as opposed to impulsivity, carelessness, and apathy), I would consider their act to be one of maturity, strength, courage, and wisdom. There is certainly a difference between the two. Perhaps it's essential to address that nuance when we address the question.