How important is honesty to you?

[ham]

I think everyone has at least lied or told a white lie to save someone's feelings. In this respect, I was wondering how important honesty is to everyone. I feel like many conflicts could be resolved if honesty was involved but at the same time I feel being "too honest" can be detrimental to relationships (could be family, platonic, or romantic).

When I was younger I took honesty to extremes and no matter what the circumstances were I would always try to be honest. What ended up happening for me is I would get into a lot of trouble and friends would no longer want to be friends with me. The nicest way anyone has put it was "you are refreshingly honest" but I've often come to find that many people dislike this bluntness I had attributed to being honest.

For me, I value honesty, but I have come to realize that it has its place in certain situations. Being honest all the time can bring about more problems through misunderstandings. I weigh in with my honesty when it becomes imperative to be honest. What about you guys?

[Mr. Carnelian]

The rules I strive to live by regarding honesty are pretty simple. If telling the truth will help someone, or make things better, tell the truth. It may hurt them now but help them in the long-term, that's something you have to use your own judgement on. If telling the truth won't help someone, or even hurts someone with no long-term benefit to balance things out, then kindness is more important than honesty. If telling the truth will help one person and hurt another, you have to make a judgement call.

Another important aspect of my feelings about honesty are that you can be honest without necessarily telling the whole truth. This comes into play a lot in professional contexts, particularly when dealing with clients/customers. For example, if you're working as a salesman and a customer asks you what the best product is within their price range, you should give them an honest answer even though it might not necessarily be the most expensive product (which it would be good for you and the company you work for if they did buy). But, you're not (I feel) morally obligated to tell them that they could get something better for the same price elsewhere.

[Loony BoB]

I'm very big on honesty. It's very important, although I do forgive people who lie because I've done it before and unless they're actually hurting me, I just presume there is some insecurity behind it and hope that the person can improve their lot over time to get past that, or something.

But yeah, I can be brutally honest and sometimes this doesn't work in my favour because I can upset people with it, but I do my best to let them know that when I say I care about them, or that I think they are amazing, it means they can trust me absolutely on that because I would tell them if I felt otherwise (well, if they asked - if you can't say anything nice, it's still usually best to say nothing at all).

[Del Murder]

I believe in being genuine over being honest. I'd rather be with people who show me their true selves and I can trust their intent, even if they don't always tell the truth, over someone who is bluntly honest. Sometimes the truth isn't what you need to hear.

[Fynn]

Honesty is one of the most important things in life. You get one life - why waste it by fabricating anything.

[Vasher]

It depends on the context of the situation and the severity of the “offense”. If in a casual conversation a little white lie is told to avoid delving into the (long and drawn out) particulars, it doesn’t faze me, but when someone lies to “save face”/avoid responsibility or impress it lowers their stock. I know two such liars, one “irresponsible”, the other a fabricator/embellisher/exaggerater. Each a pathological liar that will take the inconsequential down a path riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions, lies upon lies to cover the lies.

It’s painful to listen to, I almost never speak to them because of it.

[Christmas]

If you lie, your nose will grow longer!

And your Penis will grow shorter.