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Chapter Five: Is Honesty Always the Best Policy?
Donna: What about honesty, for example? I mean, not just in the sense of working hard and being productive—but in the sense of being truthful and not telling lies.
Neville (shaking his head): Seems doubtful to me. Liars become President of the United States and dictators of small third world hell holes, heads of labor unions and major corporations, and wealthy professional athletes. Given that fact, how could you ever show that success depends on truthfulness?
Donald and Donna are quiet, thoughtful, struggling with a difficult question.
Donald (groping): Let’s go slowly here and think out loud, OK? A lie is false, right?—a deliberately told falsehood. If, for example, a kid doesn’t go to school but tells his mom that he did, then his claim is false.
Neville: Yeah, so? If his mom doesn’t find out, then he gets away with it. He’s happy plays hooky, and will probably do it again and again.
Donald (a small light switching on in his head): Oh, but that’s just it. Can he? He might be able to pull the wool over the eyes of his parents once—but then the liar tries it again and again. Then he begins failing classes, and his parents become suspicious.
Donna: And his plan inevitably falls like a house of cards?
Donald: Sure—and then his teachers contact his parents to find out why he’s missed so many classes. What then? Does he tell them more lies to cover up his first one? What does he say? That the teachers don’t like him, that the school is making it all up to get him in trouble?
Donna: I see your point. Then the parents check with the other kids, and at least one tells the truth, confirming that their son has, indeed, missed all these classes—and what then? Does he tell even more lies to cover up the original ones?
Donald: Perhaps. But eventually he’s caught. There’s no escape for a lifelong liar, because his claims are usually false. They contradict the facts of whatever the case of the moment is, and so perceptive people will recognize the discrepancy.
Donna: That’s right. I like your example, because it shows that lies lead necessarily to more lies in an attempt to avoid the negative consequences of the first pack of lies. The liar has ensnared himself in a web of untruths that clash repeatedly with the facts of a given case.
Donald: This is why liars are eventually caught and exposed. The web of lies they spin conflicts with what’s actually real. A husband cheating on his wife, to take a second example, must repeatedly lie to explain his whereabouts and lengthy absences. If she’s unusually naïve, he might even get away with it for a while. But if she is even the least bit observant, she recognizes the inconsistencies in his explanations and begins to get suspicious. God knows how many marriages have ended in divorce because of such underhanded actions.
Neville: Yeah, maybe, in the long run a chronic liar gets caught and suffers consequences. But in the short run, he can certainly get away with his untruths and enjoy himself. Maybe that’s more important to him than the long-term losses he will suffer.
There is a brief silence while Donald and Donna think about this.
Donna: I don’t know about that. I think that even in the short run he necessarily lives with a lot of unnecessary anxiety. Somewhere in his head he realizes that he’s lying, that he might—and eventually, probably will—get caught, and that the consequences will be painful. In other words, the “pleasure” he experiences is necessarily mixed with an inescapable fear and guilt. It’s so different from the pleasure experienced by an honest man who performs his responsibilities, lives the truth, refuses to lie, and, on his days off, engages in the enjoyable activities he loves. The honest man’s pleasure will be an unclouded joy. The liar’s will be mixed with unavoidable fear, with only a sneer to replace genuine pleasure. And self contempt.
Donald: Good point. Also: in addition to undercutting the pleasurable activities he seeks in the short run, does he really not sense the inevitable long-term disaster that he brings on himself? How can I put this? A lie is not self-contained; it’s not a single claim standing in isolation; when challenged about the discrepancy between the lie and the facts, the liar covers it up with a new pack of lies that also clash with the facts. One major problem is that when a series of claims conflict point-for-point with the truth, it is impossible to keep from being exposed. We’ve already discussed that.
But there’s another even more important problem.
Donna (curious): What?
Donald (struggling to crystallize a half-formed and complex realization): You’re living in a fantasy world. It’s…it’s…for want of a better word, it’s not reality. You’ve concocted a fabricated realm of untruths, one that exists only in your dishonest thinking and in the delusions you’ve created for gullible others, but not in the real world. How could you achieve anything then? On such a policy, how could you gain an education or have a productive career or maintain close friendships or establish a trusting and fulfilling love relationship?
Donna: You couldn’t.
Neville: Wait a minute. We’ve already recognized that dishonest people often become leaders, rulers, superstar baseball players, etc. How can you plausibly maintain that liars can’t gain all of these valuable things that you mention? It seems preposterous.
Donald (perplexed but excited; his steady, stolid personality is on to something and his face and voice are clearly animated): Of course, good question. It’s something that has often puzzled me. But I think I see something.
Neville: What?
Donald: Are people always perfectly consistent?
Neville: Not at all.
Donald: They’re often inconsistent, right? They combine characteristics that are at odds with each other—that are sometimes in conflict. For example, there’s the dedicated professional who works diligently at his career but who neglects his children. He fully accepts all of his work responsibilities but shirks his family ones. Or the clergyman who venerates God, extols the spiritual over the bodily, but seduces the wife of one of his congregation. Or the politician who promises free food, shelter and medical care and yet also promises never to raise taxes. I could go on—but you get the idea. There’s an endless list of such phonies, hypocrites, and liars.
Neville: True. So what’s your point?
Donald: The principle applies to the successful men you mentioned who are also liars. It’s the honest, not the dishonest part of such a man’s character that is responsible for his achievements. For example, a man does not become a major league baseball player by lying about his skill or by cheating—but by relentless practice and work outs. Similarly, men who become U.S. Senators or Presidents study, they go to college, very often to law school, and gain knowledge. CEOs of major companies generally work their way up a corporate ladder by years of hard work and productive performance. Dishonest, underhanded dealings do not qualify a man to hit a baseball, sing professionally, graduate from medical school, run a successful business or any of a hundred other accomplishments. It is the honest effort that gains a person such accomplishments. It’s not the dishonesty and double dealing that does it.
Neville: Okay, but even so, lying and cheating can help some one who is basically qualified go even higher. That’s why great athletes covertly break the rules by using performance enhancing drugs—and intelligent, well-educated future Senators cheat at Harvard—and wealthy corporate and union executives embezzle funds, etc. Don’t you agree that cheating and lying can be effective in these cases?
Donald (quietly): I don’t see that.
Donna (friendly but adamant): Certainly we don’t.
Donald (thinking carefully, speaking slowly): The great athletes you refer to were great athletes well before they started doping. They were probably born healthy—and definitely trained relentlessly to develop their abilities even further. What did the doping get them? Did it raise their already great skills slightly higher for a brief period? It’s possible. But look at the cost. Remember the great football player who died of brain cancer? In his pitifully wasted condition he attributed it to steroids and traveled the country speaking out against the dangers of steroid use. He’s just one example. In professional wrestling there’s been a very high incidence of young athletes dying of heart attacks—most likely linked to the heavy doping they’ve done. In baseball, we’ve seen a number of superstars publicly disgraced because of their rule-breaking, cheating, and drug use. The saddest part of it is there are several great players who put up Hall of Fame numbers before their steroid use, but who now, because of their disgraced state, will not be admitted into the baseball Hall of Fame. Ask them now if the cheating and illicit drug use benefited their careers. Of course, many of these athletes you can’t. They’re dead. And those that are alive know their victories were not due to their own effort.
Donna: And that U.S. Senator you’re speaking of—the one who cheated at Harvard—was expelled from the school for that, remember. He paid a price for his dishonesty. Not only did he have to serve several years in the Army and demonstrate “good citizenship” before being re-admitted to Harvard, he also paid a much higher price – a psychological price. And just in the last 40 years, one President resigned in disgrace because of his lying—and a second was impeached, and, although not convicted, was publicly and spectacularly exposed as a serial philanderer and chronic liar. The guy’s a former President and yet he’s an embarrassment—the butt of endless jokes, and even the members of his own Party want do not want his endorsement.
Donald: Right. And the corporate executives you mentioned—the ones who defrauded their shareholders—what happened to them? First of all, their dishonesty bankrupted their company. Secondly, they were arrested, tried, and convicted of criminal fraud. Should we ask any of these previously successful guys how their dishonest schemes worked out for them? No, I stand by the point I made before: people are often mixed regarding their moral character, and it is the honest, hard-working part that leads to whatever degree of success they attain. Any dishonest elements lead them only to failure, misery, self-contempt, and disaster.
Neville (shaking his head, laughing good-naturedly): Wow, you oughta be a preacher. What a sermon.
(thinking carefully): Seriously, you make some good points—ones I’ve never before considered and want to think more about. But am I convinced? No. Perhaps it’s just that old beliefs die hard, but I’ve seen or heard of too many people who commit egregious moral transgressions and still, without any such terrible consequences as forced resignation, public disgrace or early death, rise to a significant and enduring success.
Donald (patiently): It is possible that, in the short run, a dishonest person might avoid exposure and punishment. Nevertheless, a significant and enduring success requires productivity and honesty—and can’t be gained by mooching parasitism or double-dealing. For people who are mixed morally, it is the honest, hard-working part that contributes to their happiness; the dishonest part leads only to problems and failure. Don’t you think that this is very compelling evidence that morality—not immorality—is a necessary condition of living well?
Neville (squirming slightly, starting to get uncomfortable for the first time): So you don’t think, for example, that acting unjustly against innocent people can lead to a man’s greater success? And yet, we’ve all seen in the corporate world cases of a boss co-opting one of his subordinate’s ideas and pawning it off as his own. On your theory, how would you explain such an injustice?
Donna: That’s a good example. (Turning to her husband.) It’s true that employees—and employers too—are treated unfairly all the time. Can being unjust to others really be more rewarding than being fair and just?
Neville: Good question. Why don’t we see if talking a little about justice and injustice helps?Back to Chapter Four
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