Honesty and Truth

There's a big difference between being honest and being truthful. I taught myself this lesson in college, when I experimented with just how dishonest, and how manipulative, I could be without ever actually telling a lie. By talking about one thing and then quickly shifting the topic, without a noticeable pause in my speech, I could convince someone that the two topics were connected, even when they weren't, without telling a lie.

Thankfully, I was doing this experiment in a game setting, so no one was hurt by it.
But I did learn a lot of tricks. I learned that leaving a word out here and there doesn't necessarily make something a lie, but might make it as deceptive as hell. I learned that some things are technically true even if they seem like lies. And that TECHNICALLY true is all that really matters. You can tell the truth and be a deceptive motherfucker.



It goes both ways, though. Not only can you tell the truth without being honest, you can be honest without telling the truth. That sounds strange, I know. But it's possible. Let me give you some examples.

Say I learn something that happens to not be true. I think that it is, and so I teach it to other people as if it is true. I am not being truthful, but I am being honest. There is no intention to deceive, no intention to lie. That makes sense, right? A pretty simple and understandable case.

But can I do both? I can lie without being dishonest, and be dishonest without lying, but can I be dishonest while lying? Well, yeah. Of course. Most of the time when we lie, we're trying to be dishonest. I know I can intentionally be dishonest with the truth. But I can also be honest and tell the truth UNintentionally.

Say I tell you a story. As far as I know, I'm lying. Making it up as I go along. I'm telling you the story because I want to trick you into believing something, something I think isn't true. But it turns out the story is true; I wasn't making it up, I was remembering it and following the logical structure, which happens to be what actually happened. And the thing I'm trying to trick you into believing is ALSO true. I just think it isn't.

Now I'm telling the truth, but I don't realize it. I'm being dishonest and deceptive, but telling the truth. If you repeat what I've told you, intending to be honest and truthful, you will succeed. And if someone is somehow able to tell if you're lying, they will see that you are not.

But if they have some magical way of telling whether or not you were deceived, they will find out that you were. I deceived you. I lied to you. Even though I was telling you the truth. So even though you think I was being honest, I wasn't.

Which makes it kind of hard to trust anything I say, doesn't it?

But you can trust me here on the blog.  I'm not lying.


Honest.