24 November 2020

Honesty

Looking up from my leather La-Z-Boy throne on Sunday morning, I noticed how splendidly sunlight was spotlighting our old model of Pinocchio. He stands on the rosewood mantelpiece in our front room but for many more years he resided in my mother's display cabinet where she kept a variety of fascinating treasures.

I guess that everybody associates Pinocchio with lying. His lies caused his wooden nose to grow but in the end he learnt the errors of his ways and his embarrassingly long snout shrank back to more normal proportions.

Pinocchio's lies were never malicious. It could be argued that they were rather typical of the kind of lies that little boys and girls tell as they develop their moral senses and how to function acceptably in this social world. Ultimately, lying impacts upon our sense of self-worth though there are arguably situations in which being economical with the truth is the wisest way to proceed.

Do you lie? How do you feel about lying?

One of my pet sayings is "Honesty is the best policy" and for many years it has been one of the guiding principles of my daily life. I sleep better in my bed and feel better about myself because of this. 

Last week when walking between Everton and Gringley-on-the-Hill, I passed through a sea of ripened maize. I visualised boiled golden cobs steaming in bowls, slathered with salted butter and reached out to twist one of those cobs from the mother plant. Surely, the farmer wouldn't miss four corn cobs would he? I was about to take my "Converse" rucksack off my shoulders and put ripe corn cobs inside it when a voice inside my head said "No!"

I felt better about myself as I walked on minus the corn, realising that future munching upon stolen cobs would not sit well with me.  As I have discovered before, it is better for my mental well-being to live as honestly as possible. Replaying lies and small acts of dishonesty would be tormentuous.

None of us are saints. As human beings, we err and if you peel away the layers you will undoubtedly find that no one  is immune from lying - not even The Pope or The Archbishop of Canterbury. We might avoid the corn but deeper than that, deep inside what lies might we find?

There's more to the original Italian tale of Pinocchio than initially meets the eye. 

54 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Regarding your last question, I certainly would not condemn or call out poor or hungry people who literally took their lives in their own hands. In fact, when I think of the vast profits that Tesco, Aldi etc make, I would not bewail reductions through shoplifting. This post was about my own attitude to lies and dishonesty - it was never meant to imply that others should share my outlook.

      P.S. At 21, were many of your friends horses?

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    2. My response is now beached like flotsam on a November shore.

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    3. A beached whale is worse.

      My comment was overly long and not as succinct as I'd have liked to have been. It's an almighty subject you have brought up, deserving of quite some thought. I will come back to you and it; have to go out briefly before dusk descends in a couple of hours. Sun is shining in Sin City. Be still, my beating heart.

      U

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  2. Anonymous10:41 am

    I agree with honest behaviour and who wants to lie, but at times you must too protect yourself or protect others.

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    1. Yes. There are situations where honesty would be brutal.

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  3. I only ever tell little white lies so as not to hurt another person and have never stolen anything apart from a few paper clip from work and some cuttings from someone's bush as I passed their garden. Does this make me Saint Addy?

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    1. You would have been a saint apart from the paper clips and the cuttings. I bet it felt good to confess.

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  4. There is a difference between telling lies and stealing, and while generally both are condemned, most reasonable folks would agree that under certain circumstances, both can be justified.

    Two Sundays ago, O.K. and I walked past a vineyard where some beautiful dark blue grapes were still left on the vines after harvest. I could not resist and picked a small bunch. They turned out to be sour to the point of being inedible. That'll teach her, the vine must have thought.

    Lies? Whenever I tried it on my Mum, she knew exactly what I was doing, and I soon learned best not to tell fibs about where I'd been or what I'd done. But in my teens, I skipped school on average one day per week, and feigned the excuse note with my Dad's signature. I am not proud of it and would not recommend young people to do as I did, even though nobody but myself came to harm by this - I never made it to university (and yet enjoy my work and am reasonably well paid for it, too).

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    1. I think you would have been an excellent university student - perhaps specialising in languages...or data protection. It is not too late to confess to your father about the forged signatures.

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    2. He knew, Neil. Mum did not... until through an unfortunate chain of events it all came out. I had to repeat a year and was politely asked to do so at a different school.

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    3. So you dodged school, one day a week, and forged your Daddy's signature?
      And then you had to repeat a year, at a different school?
      And now you are finally making a full confession, Meike?
      Before the world-wide internet community?

      To adapt the chilling words of Cardinal Richelieu of France:
      *Give me six lines written by an honest Librarian, and I will find something in them to condemn her by.*

      Condemnation is coming, Meike. Sentence is suspended while we await a report from social services.

      Yorky will submit a plea for clemency, but Hamel(d) responded by saying:
      *In cases like this, leniency does not work, and we have to show children everywhere that dodging school is a punishable offence.*

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    4. There were mitigating circumstances your honour! Besides, the accused has lived a blameless life since those wayward days of yore.

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    5. A blameless life, is it?
      And I suppose ye would say the same, Yorky?
      *Oh, it's the Fine Fella I am, I even feed the wee birdies in winter!*

      Begob, ye are no better than ye should be. And a lot worse than some, including ...

      Yours blamelessly,
      Holy Willie.

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    6. Mitigating circumstances = puberty, full-on.
      Also, in German legal terms, my sins from back then have long been verjährt. We are talking 1983-1984 here.

      Blameless life... that depends. Until some years ago, my motto was "Trouble is what others make of it". I was not troubled by my actions.

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    7. Meike, blow me down with a feather. What a surprise you turn out to be. I had you down as so proper, twinset and pearls, not a hair out of place.

      Sorry, truly sorry, about your mishap at school. Being set back a year is cruel. It is public shaming of the highest order, and achieves nothing than misery. Whilst I am highly critical of part of the British school system, how and what they teach, one thing they do not do is put you back a year on failing in one or two subjects. Good on them.

      I salute you on your honesty here, in reply to YP's post. I know one or two people, not least one of my sisters, who lied to their unsuspecting parents through their teeth. It was astounding to watch. Sometimes I wondered whether my parents let her get away with murder, knowingly so. Obviously, I never said anything. I wish I could say "no harm was done" by their ignoring some warning signs. Now I am not so sure.

      Main thing in life, Meike, is to pick yourself up, brush yourself down (and become a librarian). And that you have done.

      Hug,
      U

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    8. They did put you back a year, Ursula. If you failed the 11 plus and then made good in the first year at Secondary Modern school they would relent and let you into the Grammar School - in Year 1.

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    9. To Meike:
      Do not be throwing German jurisprudence at me, Young Lady.
      You have confessed to historic offences against the German School Attendance Act circa 1947. Falsifying the autograph of your father is a far graver offence. The documents will be produced in Court.

      Your advocate Lady Ursula will offer a plea of your immaturity at the time, and you have Character References from Yorky and Mr. Dunham if he can be taskered. Clemency is not an option. Justice must be SEEN to be done.

      Imagine yourself standing before 4 Judges with faces like thunder:
      Konrad Adenauer, Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker, and Hamel(d).
      Need I say who is the most terrible?
      You have guessed it. Ulbrecht trembled at the sound of my name.

      For those who have sinned comes Nemesis.

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    10. I didn't know that, Tasker. The son of a friend of mine failed the Eleven Plus by a whisker but she never mentioned he was given a second chance. I am talking ca. 2002 or so.

      U

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  5. I was taught not to lie when young and do my best to keep it up. I was very religious at one time in my life and that went a long way to my not lying, I've since given up on religion and feel a lot better for it.
    But, I do know people who habitually lie and seem to get through life a lot better than others.
    I think it's just a question of conscience, some people have it and others do not.
    Briony
    x

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    1. Thanks for your input Briony. I wonder if religions are just intricate webs of lies - how ever well-meaning.

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    2. Rene Girard said his work as a humanist led him to Christianity.
      The Journals of Kierkegaard make useful reading as does his Either/Or.
      David S Pacini has a book I want to read, The Cunning of Modern Religion, in which he said that modernity is religious not secular. (A quote online.)

      Karen Armstrong is well worth reading.
      Tom Wright (he also writes as N.T. Wright) is a professor of New Testament studies and wears his learning lightly. He answers questions on YouTube.

      Dan Dennett said religions can be looked at as clever evolutionary systems, which is why we may have religion in the brain always. He has a Ph.D in neurology and is an atheist and friend of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

      I would NOT drink ayahuasca tea for, ermm, all the tea in China, but I am interested in brain chemistry, and there are a number of YouTube vlogs on people who find transcendence in this plant.
      When the natives were asked how they know to mix the plants, in order to brew the trippy tea, they said, *The plants told us.* Jordan Peterson the clinical psychologist lectures on it on YouTube.

      Graham Hancock (YouTube) said he is under the guidance of a female divinity when he goes on the 8-hour ayahuasca journey.
      As a Christian and a rationalist I think this is demonic.
      As GK Chesterton said, there is a road to heaven and a road to somewhere else.

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  6. I cannot tell a lie (as George Wasington is supposed to have said to his father about cutting down a cherry tree); I cannot find the word "tormentuous" in my dictionary.

    So then, would you have turned Anne Frank in to the Nazis?

    After all, it's all about feeling better about yourself.

    My dad could not pass a rose bush without taking a rose.

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    1. Good question about Anne Frank that proves my point that there are indeed "situations in which being economical with the truth is the wisest way to proceed".

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    2. Someone did betray Anne Frank and her family. He was named in a book.

      To withhold information, or alter the facts, is the moral thing to do when we have to combat evil, or when we have to confront the forces of injustice.

      The means do not justify the ends.
      But when we are up against depravity of the kind that destroyed Anne Frank and her family, we can use what means that are available to us. Including force, chicanery, and strong language,

      Jesus called Herod Antipas *that fox* and referred to the corrupt chief priests in the Temple as *a den of vipers*. Strangely enough he did not say that all priestly authority was null and void, even though he was Messiah and the divine Son of God.

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    3. I meant to write: *The ends do not justify the means* since every communist and fascist country employed evil means to justify their ends.
      So does secret government in our democracies.
      The CIA told President Nixon they did not think the war in Vietnam could be won, but this information was kept from the American public.

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  7. What an unexpected image!
    Pinocchio's shadow gives the photo depth and mystery.
    Little Woodenhead is sure to spring into life when the children are asleep.
    Nursery toys always do, at least in stories.

    Paparazzi mi amore.

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    1. Glad that the image grabbed you John. You may be pleased to learn that our Pinocchio is holding an apple and not a corn cob.

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    2. Read *The Apples of Paradise* by Stan Barstow.
      It's a novel, shrunk to a short story. Such economy and skill.
      From a collection titled *The Glad Eye*.

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  8. As with so much in life, there are gray areas and that's all there is to it. Situations AND humans are more complex than simple questions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, black and white. I have a very, very hard time lying too. Two of my favorite sayings about the truth are "Oh what a wicked web we weave when first we practice to deceive," and "Tell the truth and shame the devil!"
    Does it matter that both of these gems of wisdom came to me from TV shows? Comedies at that?
    Nah. Andy Griffith knew what he was talking about.
    But yes- what about situations where we might hurt someone badly with the truth? Depends, of course. What if it's life or death? Few of us will ever have to face that one but as has been discussed- Anne Frank's story clearly illustrates that there are times when lying is absolutely unavoidable.
    As to stealing- I am not good at that either. Never have been.
    The few times I've done it still remain in my heart as stains.
    Your story about the corn reminds me that back when Central Florida was full of citrus groves, it became apparent that tourists felt quite free to stop their cars and pick the ripe fruit by the highways. Grove owners found a good solution- they planted the sour fruit varieties of citrus on the peripheries bordering the tourist-traveled roads so that if the trees were picked, the thieves were sadly disappointed.
    So it goes. Sometimes.

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    1. An excellent tactic by the orange farmers. Of course you are right that in this moral area things are rarely black and white.

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  9. You know, I think honesty is pretty simple. You don't do anything that hurts another. You don't bear false witness. You tell the truth whenever you can. Stealing and lying are both examples of honesty. Lying is using words to be dishonest, stealing is using action to be dishonest. That being said, I try hard to be an honest person. I think that I am for the most part, but every person has some episodes of dishonesty. You look at things squarely, and then step out with the determination to do better. I remember once that someone posted a question about unattended farmer stands. He asked if we took extra produce. I said, "Never." He got quite outraged at me and called me a liar. I was surprised because it would honestly never occur to me to do such a thing.

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    1. How odd that that poster imagined that his own flawed morality could be so easily transferred to others. Like you I would never steal a thing from an unattended farmer's stand. The farmer is trusting passers-by. Why would I wish to abuse that trust?

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  10. Two things. Field corn is pretty gross to eat. You wouldn't have eaten it. How do I know. I stole some ONCE. Then what you're talking about here is stealing. Is stealing any different from lying?

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    1. There was a time when we never saw maize growing in England's green and pleasant landscape. In contrast, you Canadians are maize experts.

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  11. Honesty has always been very important to me. I always knew if my sons were not telling the truth and they knew that it was better to admit their mistake than to lie about it. Their punishment was worse for dishonesty than any thing else they could have done. Yes, there are "white lies" occasionally only to protect a person's feelings but even then I try to find a way to be honest without hurting feelings. I love your Pinocchio!

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    1. Your sons had a good mum who did her best to raise them with love and a healthy morality. I guess your husband helped too!

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  12. I see, YP, that you have mellowed a little in replies in the comments above.

    You saw my original take on your post so I'll only repeat the most poignant points.

    Sometimes truth needs bending. Just a little. Often for a good, beneficial reason because the truth (and I assume we are talking factual truth rather than so called "truth") being told serves no purpose whatsoever. As I am known to be able to keep my mouth shut I will take some people's secrets and misdemeanours to my grave.

    Which brings us neatly to the occasionally quoted "lying by omission". There you are, you know something but choose not to disclose it. Is that lying or is that being pragmatic? With most things in life the question regarding any of our actions is "What purpose does it serve?". And you know what, I have known so called honest people, people who pride themselves on NEVER(?) lying who heap piles of shit on other people, causing havov. But, at least, they can sleep at night. Clear conscience because they didn't lie. Enter snort (mine) full of disdain. Yeah, sure, the saintly. God in heaven might send them, at least briefly, straight to hell for being sanctimonious.

    Yes, so we have "lying" by omission. Then there is bending the truth to escape being strung from the next tree. I'd say permissible unless your bending the truth has someone else dangling. That ain't cricket.

    If the worst comes to the worst you can always go to the Confessional (if you are Catholic - I don't know what I, a Protestant by birth, am supposed to do. Rot for eternity?). That's the beauty of the Confessional. You can do your worst. As long as you confess you'll be absolved. Seven Hail Maries on the rosary and go to heaven. To all Catholics who read this - my sincere apologies. I am NOT making fun of your beliefs. Still, if you think about it, it's pretty convenient.

    Then there is the question what to do when caught lying. Depends on the lie. There are feather weight lies, there are heavy weight lies. So heavy to sink relationships. Relationships of whatever kind, friends, family, professional. If caught out don't go into denial. Don't insist you didn't do it, you didn't mean it. You did, and you did. Contrition doesn't come easy to anyone. A heartfelt apology, an owning up to having crossed a line does wonders to heal the broken. Just don't fake it.

    If the above makes me sound as if I were defending lying, I am not. In fact, I am one of the most honest people you may have the misfortune to encounter. I can also say, hand on my heart, that I have lied on other people's behalf - virtually never on my own, and even then only to protect the innocent and their feelings. Laugh if you must. It's the truth. I don't bullshit anyone. I stand by the vase I've broken. I'll even confess having broken a vase though someone else did.

    My middle name is Perspective. We need to weigh cost/benefit - not ride on a high horse of self righteousness. And then, of course, there is MY hobby horse - Damage Limitation. Can't recommend it highly enough.

    U

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    1. I am not here to defend the sacrament of Confession or Reconciliation as it is now called. I worship at Reformed churches.
      Blaise Pascal's thoughts in *Pensees* are worth quoting.

      *The Catholic religion does not compel us to disclose our sins indiscriminately to everybody; it permits us to hide them from everybody; but it makes an exception in the case of one person to whom we are bidden to reveal the bottom of our heart, and to show ourselves as we really are.

      *There is only this one man in the world whom it orders us to tell the truth about ourselves; and it imposes on him an inviolable secrecy, with the result that to all intents and purposes, the knowledge he has of us does not exist.

      *Can you imagine anything more lenient or more charitable? And yet the corruption of man is such that he still finds this rule a hardship; and it is one of the main reasons which has caused a large part of Europe to rebel against the Church.*
      (My translation from French.)

      I wonder if the priests who raped children, and the bishops who covered up their evil, reflected on Pascal's central idea that the heart is corrupt?
      And I wonder how the good priests feel about it?

      It is hard to speak about faith in a world which does not recognise the concept of sin and corruption. I came to faith through reason, after studying history, and all other world faiths.

      Paul's Letter to the Romans, when unpacked by one trained in exegesis (not me) makes sense of the rag and bone shop of the human heart.
      Paul's mind soars beyond anything in Plato. And yet I have friends who sneer at him. I tell them to read *The Gualg Archipelago* and then turn to Paul.

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    2. Thanks for that, Hamel(d). It's always good to hear another's take. Take on board another perspective, a different angle. Yet I can't bear sunglasses. When wearing them the world and its colours don't look as I know them.

      Pascal sits on my bookshelves. Out of pure mischief I have put his "Pensees" right next to Montaigne.

      U

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    3. I have been reading *Montaigne on Faith and Religion* by Alain Legros (Oxford online) so I don't think Pascal and Montaigne make such quare bedfellows.

      As for sunglasses, the author of *The Gulag Archipelago* saw the mystery of iniquity with eyes unfiltered by roseate lenses. He said those with faith had a better chance of survival inside the death camps than those without.

      According to Svetlana, Stalin and Beria uttered a stream of obscenities whenever the subject of Russia's pre-revolutionary faith came up.
      *For now we see through a glass darkly ... *

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  13. That guy on the telly says dishonesty is the second best policy - evidently he has stolen a load of his own old newspaper articles and put them in a book.

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    1. You mean David Mitchell? I think it's called a stocking filler.

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    2. I could believe he is a stocking filler.

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  14. I try my best not to lie but I have lied. I tend to be very blunt which many people don't like. I'm not good at small talk so I just say what I think. I think honesty is the best policy, much easier to remember too.

    However, I have lied in the past and have lived to regret those lies to this day.

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    1. As you suggest Lily, if you habitually live honestly you are not going to trip yourself up.

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  15. I too, have lied in the past. Not often, but there was a very big one and I have felt very ashamed ever since. I make a point now of trying not to put myself in a position to have to lie to anyone as it would make me feel so bad.

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    1. Intriguing JayCee but of course I will not press you to tell all because a lie like that is very hard to share with others.

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  16. Dear YP, in the midst of night thoughts and memories borrow deep.

    Here is another dimension on truth and honesty. What if you do tell the truth and you are NOT believed? That's tough titty. It has happened to me a number of times throughout life. The first, and rather amusing, when I was late for the day's first lesson. I was seventeen/eighteen. I walked in, apologized. The teacher wanted to know the reason. So I told him the TRUTH. He noted in the class's register something to the effect that "Ursula's ever increasing inventiveness knows no bounds".

    Boy oh boy, YP, that was a lesson which shook me. I had effing (not that I knew that word then) told the TRUTH and was NOT believed. My boot's heel had broken off on my way to school and, not wishing to limp to everyone's hilarity come first break, I'd gone to have the heel repaired. What I took away from that interlude that, in future, I'd just come out with the lame LIE of "I overslept", "I missed the bus". What does that teach you? That truth, sometimes not only doesn't pay but is met with stinging sarcasm.

    The years fly by. The last such incident happened only eighteen months or so ago. Remember, we are talking about truth yet NOT being believed. By accident I came across the death notice (two months earlier) of father of a good and lifelong friend of mine. Not only did my friend's father mean a lot to me so does my friend. I picked up the phone (as usual we are talking different countries) to convey my condolences and asking why I hadn't been told. My friend who, at the best of times is rather prickly, told me he had sent me the death note by email and the obituary by post. I had received neither. Did my friend believe me? Yeah, well. It was a monumental moment in my life. He sneered in derision. I later wrote to him, asking what I was supposed to do with his not believing me. Where his disbelief would leave us, our friendship. It was bitter. I didn't even receive a reply. All contact coming from him has ceased. When I call he doesn't answer the phone, when I write he doesn't reply. Yes, my dear YP, says she with a tear in her eye, it's one thing to lie, it's another to not be believed when telling the truth.

    U

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    1. Thanks for sharing your swirling late night thoughts Ursula. My blogpost seems to have stirred up quite a number of things for you. We are not dissimilar. I just have to close my eyes and I can relive in vivid detail moments when I was wronged or disbelieved. I wish that it was just as easy to recall unfettered moments of joy. There have been plenty of them but it's being wronged that I remember best of all - accompanied by the realisation that I cannot press a rewind button and change what happened.

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  17. Now I know where to place Ursula: She is Cassandra, priestess of Apollo, fated to tell the (prophetic) truth and not to be believed.

    Christa Wolf wrote a novel about her (Kassandra) which has been reprinted in English in a bonny paperback edition.

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