Synthesis Essay: The Irony Of Honesty

Being honest is commonly seen as the path to righteousness, however only a few people have ever deeply interpreted it. When interpreted, one finds that honesty is less of a virtue but rather a conceptual idea that fosters good and bad effects depending on when one tells the truth. While some may argue that honesty is the best policy, in reality, it is not necessary to always speak the truth because it can possibly harm, not only oneself, but others as well. Although being honest is definitely not a bad thing, the border between when honesty may or may not be the best policy is determined by integrity. Stephen L. Carter highlights this view when he states in his article that “honesty is the most laudable when we risk harm to ourselves; it becomes a good deal less so if we instead risk harm to others when there is no gain to anyone other than ourselves” (Source D). Carter emphasizes that in certain situations, it is necessary that we lie because

Stephanie Ericsson describes the wide variety of ways people lie and their effects on people around them in her article, “The Ways We Lie”. Lies are often depicted as bad omens, but Ericsson does eventually admit that lying is important to society. One example can be seen in the Geico commercial, in which a woman asks Lincoln if her dress made her butt look big. An honest man like him lives up to his name and soon enough tells her the truth that it does in fact make her butt look big. Being a normal lady like herself, she storms out with her feelings clearly hurt because of Lincoln’s answer. This scenario shows how a harmless “white lie” could have prevented the degradation of the woman and a bad day for poor Lincoln. Emily Dickinson further supports this idea in her poem when she writes, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant, Success in circuit lies, Too bright for our infirm delight, The truth’s superb surprise” (Source