“CAN WE CREATE A SOCIETY THAT IS CANDID AND HONEST”

“CAN WE CREATE A SOCIETY THAT IS CANDID AND HONEST”
Can today’s society exist with the concept of honesty, sincerity, integrity, ethical and without a façade of showmanship and playacting to impress others, without utilizing money and power to buy favors, distort the truth and twist justice, create injustice.
We should be genuine, sincere, abhor deception.
There is one way to find out if a man is honest; ask him! If he says yes you know he’s crooked.

You’ve got to be honest; if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

Is peaceful progress through rational improvement actually possible in our cruel, greedy world?

Urge to Honesty
The 'urge to honesty', as herein defined, refers to the internal nudge we feel that inclines us toward integrity. It includes: (1) a mental "pull" that draws us to prefer true over false; (2) private inclinations to choose valid over invalid reasoning; and (3) inner wants that crave fair play.
To expand this idea, the term 'urge to honesty' is a way to name our aspirations to know the truth, our predilections to tell the truth, and our inherent eagerness to learn. It means intellectual cravings that impel us to want to reason in a valid manner, to make efforts to arrange our knowledge in coherent order, and to apply what we know to what we do. It is an intellectual relish for sound rational thinking that prods us to acquire knowledge, cultivate commonsense, pursue unbiased critical thinking, and to practice what we preach. Viewed from another direction, our urge to honesty is our propensity to overcome ignorance, to avoid deceit, to reject manipulation, and to shun hypocrisy. All of these inclinations are included in the term "urge to honesty".
All rational people start out with a lively urge to honesty and most people keep a strong desire to live in an honest world. When talking to people face to face, it is a rare case to find someone with no candid responses.
Although normal humans, in ordinary circumstance, possess a strong natural bent toward truthfulness, honesty is not cultivated enough. Prejudice, conceit, cynicism, superstition, fear and con games frequently interfere with or squelch our natural impetus to be straight forward. The deepest and most far-reaching suppressions of our inclination to honesty stem from root errors promulgated through distortions in the rational style in society.
Honesty and Commonsense
Honesty and commonsense are counterparts. Learning the virtue of honesty requires the cultivation of commonsense, and the cultivation of commonsense presupposes a commitment to honesty. However, commonsense and honesty are not exactly the same. In commonsense, the emphasis is on ability and in honesty the emphasis is on resolve and action. It takes both to reach the quality of negotiation required to achieve a just society. Honesty and commonsense are so basic to building the trust required to make a good society that, without them, our creative efforts, time after time, bring the opposite of our hopes and dreams.

Talent
Obviously, an urge to honesty presupposes a talent for honesty. To encourage honesty presumes a capacity, limited but real, to seek, tell, and use truth in appropriate ways. We do not expect honesty from creatures with no ability to distinguish true from false propositions. A fox, despite his wily ways, is not dishonest. Only humans can be honest and only humans can be dishonest.
A potential urge to honesty is natural but to become actual it must be used. Once activated, it increases the more it is applied. After a desire to be honest gains momentum, our inner inclination keeps us probing for truth to some extent even if negative prone ideologists persuade us to abandon goals of rational consistency and coherence. Because most of us hold in our minds a point of foolishness beyond which we will not go, we are protected to some extent from inanity. Our natural urge to honesty provides us with a measure of immunity from corrupt dialectical theories.
A taste of truth easily activates our desire to know. Putting aside problems of brain damage and serious nurtural deprivation, normal people begin to exercise truth-acquiring talents at an early age. Soon new learners connect bits of knowledge in rational relations. They test their conclusions in practice and evaluate consequences. With encouragement, this process accelerates and becomes habitual. In advanced civilizations, encouraging a search for truth is part of the education process. The more students are encouraged to seek truth, the more they will join in humanities quest for knowledge. Acquiring and sharing knowledge goes on and on.
Every rationally functional person has some integrity and practices honesty to some degree. When we nurture our impulse to be honest, it becomes a source of energy and pleasure. Admittedly, a few, described in clinical terms as psychopaths, seem to have almost no inner urge to honesty. Perhaps these unfortunates cannot distinguish their own imagination from reality. However, attempts to cure them presupposes that an inclination exists to be awakened if we could discover how.
Although not always dominant, the urge to honesty resides to some degree in all non-psychopathic persons who are rationally mature enough to function in society. People who share developed commitment to honesty enjoy being together.
Virtue of Honesty
The virtue of honesty does not require stupidity. To be honest one need not out every rude thought that comes to his or her head with no regard of the consequences. The honest speaker tells the truth that needs to be told, when it needs to be told, the way it needs to be told. The virtue of honesty does not hinge on one proposition told truly, but on many propositions well knitted. An honest person digs for truth and puts truths found in prudent perspective.
Well developed honesty arranges bits of truth in proportion to long term value. Although the virtue of honesty presupposes propositional veracity, honesty is not one truth lived but, rather, is an integration of many truths held in an interconnected network of tested belief. Mature honesty presupposes judgments measured one to another, and applied to situations in an unbiased logical manner. The virtue of honestly grows out of a wholesome inter-relation of fact and principle in which we value truths proportionally and applied them with care. To live in a society that cultivates honesty is a privilege.
Commitment
As mentioned, honesty develops from commitment. We gage the depth of an individual’s commitment to pursue truth by their perseverance over obstacles. Strange to say, those with firm commitment to honest living rarely put their conviction in words and those with the strongest private commitment to seek truth often say the least. However, the intensity of inner resolve speaks for itself. By noticing the way responsible people act, we soon recognize that their personality proclaims integrity. Clearly, individual commitment to honesty cannot be measured by bragging but, rather, by doing. Some, with the deepest mettle, would be genuinely surprised to learn they held a more than usual determination to be truthful.
Odd to say, those who put on a show of honesty, often prove to be the worst hypocrites. Who gives more lip service to ‘honor’, and ‘virtue’ than the charlatan setting up his mark for the take? Because people bent toward deception misuse the symbols of honesty, we quickly learn that, when slick speakers talk about ‘truth’, we best prepare for a trip through fantasy land. As Augustine said of the Manicheans,
"They cry ‘Truth’, ‘Truth’ ‘Truth’, and tell ‘lies’, ‘lies’, ‘lies’".
The specific deception of the fabricator might be relatively innocuous but the long term effect is ominous because the fabricator gives a bad name to our highest ideals. The damage done by rogues, con artists, and sorcerers goes far beyond the malice of the individuals involved.