Honesty

Let's say that every history of rock and roll class we have somewhat of an outstanding lesson of the day. They tend not to be so much about music but growing up and accepting the responsibilities of growing up, becoming an adult. Today, that lesson was not honesty. Honesty was, however, a small part of today's lesson and I thought it's pretty relevant to my life.

My parent' raised me expecting honesty and while they haven't always received 100% honest reports, they have at least taught me when it is appropriate to be honest. To me, like most people, lying is acceptable if the benefits outweigh the consequences, true for pretty much most choices. However, I differ from people by my standards of what is considered overall beneficial. I believe that often enough,  people only way the short-term consequences of their decisions and therefore, often avoid confrontation of the truth as they're scared about how the other individual(s) will react. In contrast, I believe that this confrontation is often necessary as by not deceiving the individual(s) at hand, you allow for them to gain insight in the future, although temporary awkwardness may need to be sacrificed. This sounds like a lot of blah, blah, blah so let me put it into context.

Say a female is fat: the big American scenario to not, NOT, NOT, tell the truth. I disagree with this ideology. While it is inappropriate and rude to go out of one's way to tell a female that she's fat, if a female were to ask me directly if she is fat, I would tell her she could benefit from picking up physical activity. Clearly, this is a euphemistic yes, but I believe the short-term emotional detriment that will result due to this incident is beneficial overall. I would proceed to attempt to help this female lose weight due to appropriate exercise, diet etc. until she's comfortable and happy with her own body weight.

The moral of the story: since the female has suspicions about being fat (and is probably self-conscious about it), lying would only extend her self-deception of the problem and incorporate you in the moral culpability of her self-deception. Telling the truth is not heart-warming but can at least provide a beginning to resolving the origin of the "whether-to-tell-the-truth" debacle. Of course, this is assuming that the female is discontent with her current body.