Honesty

I certainly don't want to foster an atmosphere in which we deliberately deceive others about important matters, or in which dishonesty is the norm. All the same, the problem with dishonesty is really about harming others, by leading others to false beliefs which will benefit the liar and harm those who are lied to.

Lying about age, for example, is seldom one that will do harm - especially if one does not use it to take advantage of things associated with age - such as getting a driver's license, drinking alcohol, or getting around an AoC law. For example, if your birthday is on the 11th of a month, but you tell people that your birthday is on the 14th, you can still celebrate while corrupting the data of profilers. If you say that you are 19 years old and you are actually 12, that might have severe consequences - but if you are 45 and on various days you claim to be 38, 24, and 51, that is not so serious, because all those ages fit in the same category of "legal adult", which is the important point.

But what does it really mean to be Honest anyhow? If we take this extremely literally we run into all sorts of problems. Much of what we "know" isn't literally true. If we talk about "sunrise" and "sunset", these imply an astronomical model that is patently false. Nonetheless, we use these terms, and sometimes in preference to the truth - as with children who are not yet ready to understand what is really happening. If we want to show a child a beautiful sunset, we don't confuse them with the facts - we show them the phenomena and say, "Look, the sun is going down!" Sometimes we need to do similar things with adults who are not yet ready to understand the whole truth - not with the intent of deception, but with the intent of enlightenment, by speaking to them on a level they can understand.

So when I talk about small lies being perfectly acceptable here, I certainly hope that no one takes this as a license to be dishonest about everything. I am merely speaking of the small lies that may be necessary to one's personal security, or the security of others. Unfortunately, we live in a world where our enemies have endangered us by telling big lies - lies about important things like the nature of Love and Sex, and in such a context it is perfectly permissible - and expected - that we should tell the small lies necessary for self-defence.