The Need For Honesty Essay, Research Paper

The Need for People Honesty.

Everyones heard the tale of the Boy who cried Wolf right? Sure, shepherd boy thinks he’s funny, makes a fuss about imaginary wolfs, villagers come running – no wolf. Then when wolfs actually do come, he yells and screams, yet villagers weren’t about to play his game again, his sheep get nailed by the wolves. Moral of the story.

“Liars are not believed even when they tell the truth”

The reasons people are less than truthful are many, they do it because they lack the courage to say what they think, they do it because they are comfortable in their pretensions, and they do it because they are insecure.

I spent a long time asking myself why should people be straight up, what moral chains are there? It’s to easy to say because society expects it, or because history has presented its heroes as paragons of virtue. No, I believe the reason to be much more selfish, the need for people to be straight-up is that individually you become better people for it.

But why? Why would you be a better person for speaking the truth?

If you leave behind all the morality, all the chains of ethics, all the issues of virtue.

What is it?

If truth was an object or feeling how would you describe it? Is it a goal to strive for? A gut feeling? An instinct to pass on your interpretation of events without deviation?

Who knows exactly?

All I know is that I hold it high, and I refuse to abnegate this belief for anyone, better yet I expect people to follow suit. Never am I more disconcerted than if someone I trust has lied to me, to my face, how dare they?

Why do we feel this way? because we just do?…Neh.. To easy, because society demands that we do? No, I don’t feel bad if someone’s lied to me because society says they shouldn’t.

No, I feel bad because I’ve been betrayed. I trusted them to be like me and they weren’t. I trusted them to hold the same set of beliefs that I do, and they didn’t. Yet the only way I can expect that of them is if I have a sure fire justification that my way is right…but I don’t so where am I? Who knows?

Is honesty some common unspoken societal belief? Or spawned of some religious base? Or are people only honest because they fear retribution? Are they better people for speaking it out of fear, and not obligation?

These questions have been asked for centuries, the dude who told “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” was born in the 6thCentury Before Christ. He was a slave to Egyptian King Cleombrotus, his name was Aesop. The questions have been answered using words like nobility, integrity, and virtue. Yet none of them fit, none of them completely explain why people owe it to each other to be honest. This is because they don’t owe anything to each other, they owe it to themselves. People that lie go against the grain, they are frowned upon and rightly so. Deep inside everyone knows that if they lie its wrong, a little fib here, embellishment there, whats the harm? I’ll tell you what the harm is, its a *censored* load of grey in my life that I don’t really need.